The Love of GodSample

Day 3 Devotional:

The Display of God’s Love

In 1 John 4:9-10 John presents God’s supreme display of His love for us. He writes: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.“

John declares in these verses that the Son did not come to die for us because we loved Him! On the contrary, not only did we not love Him, as John says here, we wanted nothing to do with God, because, as John again reminds us in John 3:19, we loved the darkness of sin rather than the light and truth of God. God the Son came to die for us to display God’s love for us.

From verse 13 to 18, John explains what is entailed in God’s display of His love for us through the gospel. In verse 17, John writes this: “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment.“

John is saying here that the confidence that we can have on the Day of Judgment at Christ’s Second Coming is that, because of God’s love for us displayed in the gospel, we will not get from God what we deserve to get from Him as sinners, which is His judgment of eternal damnation and separation from God. This is God’s mercy to us.

Still in verse 17, John writes: “In this world we are like Jesus.“ Just think of what an extraordinary statement this is!

John is reminding us that, when we become Christians, God now looks at us, and treats us, the same way He sees and treats Christ Jesus.

God treats us as if we have done everything that Jesus Christ has done, and as is if we are everything Jesus Christ was, because Jesus Christ lived the life we should have lived, and He died the death that we should have died.This is God’s grace to us.

Through the grace and mercy of God that shines so brightly through the gospel, we see the love of God supremely displayed to us.