“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.
1 John 4:9-10 nLT
There is a tendency in our humanity to think that we are the measure by which God exists. To some degree, this is true. Our witness has an effect on whether people come to know Jesus for who he truly is. But we must remember that our witness is not the same thing as our story. When we speak of the gospel, it is God’s gospel, not our own. God can only be demonstrated through his own revelation. Our “love,” is meaningless without his son to give it that meaning. It is not our love that demonstrates who God is, but rather our recognition of his love. For all of our capacity to love, we can never do what he did. A being of infinite dimension loved us so much that he sacrificed himself so that we may be able to love him. This is the true context by which all of our love must define itself. It makes any conflict I have with my brother, father or spouse seem trite. It gives perspective to my tendencies to feel overwhelmed at the thought of losing something for the sake of love. It gives me hope when I can’t fathom being loved. It solidifies the truth of the character in whom I place my allegiance. The world’s love is a dim and sloppy caricature of the work of Christ. We must bring his love into every relationship. Doing so will allow that relationship to touch the very heart of who God is and sustain it meaningfully in a way that our earthly efforts never could. We only know what love is because he loved us.
This post first appeared at JoshMcGary.com
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