Devotions

The love of God is conveyed to us only through Jesus Christ. According to John, all of God's love dwells in Jesus: "Of His fullness we have all we received" (John 1:16). You may ask, "What's so important about knowing that God's love is conveyed to us through Christ? How does this affect our everyday lives?"

This knowledge is more than just a biblical concept. Knowing that God's love is conveyed to us through Jesus has everything to do with how we keep ourselves in his love. You see, it's not enough for me to know that God will always love me and won't stop loving me through all my struggles. He also wants his love to have a certain effect on me.

So, how exactly does God's love impact our lives? We can't look to man's example. There are licentious Christians who would turn the revelation of God's love into a license to sin. They convince themselves, "God loves me unconditionally. He has to keep loving me in spite of all my drinking, adultery and pleasure-seeking. His grace is greater than my sins." Such people do despite to God's love.

We have to look to Christ as our example. Jesus has already told us the Father loves us in the same way he loved the Son. So, what impact did the Father's love have on Jesus? The fruit of the Father's love was in Jesus presenting his body as a living sacrifice for others.

John writes, "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us" (1 John 3:16). Here was the fruit of God's love in Jesus. He gave himself as a sacrifice for others. The second half of this verse tells us the purpose of God's love in our own lives. It reads, "And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (3:16). God's love leads us also to present our bodies as living sacrifices.

When will God stop loving you? He'll stop only if he stops loving his own Son, which is impossible. Christ says, "The Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end" (John 13:1). This helps us to better understand what Jude is saying when he instructs, "Keep yourselves in the love of God" (Jude verse 21). He is telling us, "Keep this truth. Lay hold of it and never let it go. The knowledge of God's love is meant for your comfort, your strength. It will set you free and keep you free."

To keep yourself in the love of God is to know, believe and keep trusting in his love even in your struggles.

John tells us how we can keep ourselves in God's love: "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16, KJV). In short, if we "dwell in God's love," we will keep ourselves in his love.

The word "dwell" here means "to stay in a state of expectancy." In short, God wants us to expect his love to be renewed to us every day. We're to live daily in the knowledge that God has always loved us and will always love us.

He is telling us in these passages, "No matter what trial you face, you must never doubt my love for you. If you are actively trusting in my love, then you're living the way I want you to live."

Are you enduring some great temptation? Have you been overcome by some old lust you hate? Is your marriage in turmoil, your family in chaos? These are the times you need most to keep yourself in the love of God. You have to know that, through it all, the eternal Father still deeply loves you. 

According to Jesus, in the Father's eyes Christ and his Church are one. Paul illustrates this with the analogy of a human body. He says Christ is the head, and we are his body – bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. "[God] put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23). "We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Ephesians 5:30).

Do you see the implication here? When the Father loved Jesus in eternity, he loved us, too. Indeed, when man was but a thought in God's eternal mind, the Lord was already numbering our parts and planning our redemption.

"Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love" (Ephesians 1:4).

God has always loved both his Son and us. His love is as everlasting as he is: "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3). "Our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation" (2 Thessalonians 2:16).

Nobody can gain God's love by any godly thing he or she does. Jesus didn't earn his Father's love by going to the cross, or by his obedience, or by loving his Father. Likewise, God didn't start loving you the day you repented and received Christ. He didn't suddenly love you once you began to obey his Word and walk in the Spirit. You were already loved from eternity.

How long has God loved you? He has loved you since he has existed, because God is love. It is his very nature. He loved you as a sinner. He loved you in the womb. He loved you before the world began. There was no beginning to God's love for you, and there is no end to it.

"You, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life" (Jude 20–21).

As I read these verses in Jude, I heard the Spirit quietly whisper: "David, I want you to enter the fullness and joy of my love. You have the theology right. But you have not yet experienced the true rest of soul that comes with keeping yourself in my love. Up to now, you've only been in it up to your ankles. There is a whole ocean for you to swim in."

The Bible is filled with the truth of God's love. Yet I admit that at times I allow myself to wonder how the Lord could ever love me. It's not that I doubt his love. It's more a failure on my part to keep myself in the knowledge and assurance of his love to me.

The revelation of God's love comes in part when we are born again. If you were to ask most Christians what they know of God's love for them, they would answer, "I know God loves me because he gave his Son to die for me." They would quote John 3:16, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."

It's a wonderful moment when you grasp this truth: "God loved me when I was lost, undone, a stranger. And he proved his love for me by sacrificing his own Son on my behalf."

Understanding God's love is the secret to an overcoming life. Multitudes become spiritually cold because they are ignorant of God's love for them. They don't know that their greatest weapon against Satan's attacks is to be fully convinced of his love, which comes through the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah 6 contains a famously glorious passage about Jesus: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). Growing up, my vision of the Lord in my mind was that he was off in a distant place, removed from me, an entity I needed to address in the language of the King James Bible as “Thee” and “Thou.”

Yet what does our high, holy God have to say about us lowly, sinful people who follow him? Isaiah tells us: “Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (57:15). Yes, our Father is holy, majestic and glorious — yet he abases himself to dwell within our humble, sin-stained hearts.

I think every child instinctively knows the difference between hating religion and loving Jesus. One day when my daughter was young, she popped up between the pages of the newspaper I was reading. I was tired and shooed her off, wanting just a few minutes to relax before working on the sermon I needed for the next Sunday. But she kept popping up, saying, “Daddy, I want to tell you something.” I just kept shooing her away, thinking of the clock ticking minutes off my time of relaxation. This back-and-forth stopped when I finally said, “Honey, what do you want to tell me?” She answered, “I love you.”

She knew the difference between religion — my perfectionism as a preacher — and loving Jesus, which she was demonstrating to me. God’s Word makes it clear he wants us to approach him as my daughter did me — calling out to our “Daddy,” Abba, who is nearby, not distant or beyond our reach.