Today's Devotion

1 John 4:7-12

God’s Love Changes Our Lives

“Dad, how come every song is about love?”  Even my 11 year-old daughter recognizes that there is no topic quite as popular as love.  It’s the theme of an entire genre of movies, the driving force behind many poems, and the basis for interesting conversations at work.  Love.  We can’t seem to get it off our minds.  Yet do we really know what love is? 

The apostle John says that “God is love.”  He explains, “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.”  God’s love is more than an abstraction, more than a feeling, more than a philosophical concept.  It is a definite reality in Jesus Christ.  Here we see what love really is.  In Christ we learn that God’s love is sacrificial, unconditional and totally undeserving.  God loved sinners so much that he sent his one and only Son to suffer and die for us, so that we might have life with him forever.  This is love.  It reaches down from heaven and changes our lives. 

Those who know the love of God want to love others.  At the end of the wedding ceremony the pastor sometimes tells the bridegroom, “You may kiss the bride.”  The groom usually doesn’t feel like this is some burdensome obligation that he has to carry out.  Instead he rejoices because it’s exactly what he wants to do!  It’s kind of the same when John encourages believers to love one another.  Since we have experienced God’s love in our lives through Jesus Christ, since we know that he has forgiven our sins and made us his children, this is exactly what we want to do.  We want to love others as God has loved us.  Amazingly, when we do, others might see God’s love in us.  They might see this love and wonder about its source.  It’s then that we can point others to God who loved us enough to send his Son to die for the sins of the world.