Love DefinedSample

  “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

John and Paul (the other John and Paul) describe love through the eyes of the cross. They didn’t resort to personal experience, feelings or preferences, as these terms, all well and good in other contexts, could never begin to describe how God shows his love for us. They are hopelessly inadequate. 

This is how we know God loves us: Jesus died sacrificially in our place, for our sins. Anything less would be less. This is love – that while we were incapable, before we even realised it, Jesus acted by dying for us. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Love goes before us. It acts before being asked, before even being acknowledged. This is dramatically different than an instinctive love, a reactive love, the sort of love we are more familiar and more comfortable with. 

God’s love is pre-emptive. Without any promise of our reciprocation (although God knows all things) his love was openly expressed in the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Love bore the load, love paid the price, and love freed us; God’s love frees us – to love. The action of the cross was the finest love letter ever crafted from the lover to the loved, soon to be beloved.  

This means God’s love isn’t left to the private domain of emotions and sentiments. It is boldly, clearly, publicly, and graphically portrayed in the cross. This is how we know God loves us.  

God defines love – in the action of the death of Jesus Christ, regardless of our condition or our acknowledgement. How remarkable. 

This is love defined.