another look at love

Yesterday I said this:

We don’t understand and can’t grasp the love that God has for us.  Try as we might, it is out of our reach.  But listen up.  We have God’s love.  We can know and feel and believe His love in huge ways.  Yet we can’t understand what this unconditional love is really like and how it never ends.

That seems to be a strange statement, at least part of it does.  Why can’t we understand or grasp God’s love?

Being the day after Valentine’s Day I thought we’d give a little more perspective to understanding what real love looks like.  Real love is what stands in opposition to fake or fading love.  God’s love is unconditional.  Our love or human love is conditional.  Just look at the divorce rate among both Christians and non-Christians.  It is shocking.  People say they love each other but days later that can’t be true.  Our actions say very different things.

Think for yourself about God’s love.  Stop for a minute.  Don’t think about His love from your perspective because too often your perspective is warped and off track. 

2 Thessalonians 3:5 NLT

May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.

John 3:16 NLT

For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:16 NLT

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

Romans 5:6 NLT

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

Romans 5:8 NLT

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Retrace those thoughts with me.  What do we learn?  God’s love is patient with us and teaches us.  Simply put, God loves people. That is us. We put our trust in someone who loves us more than we know.  That is God.  When we were helpless (like we still are so often), Jesus was sent for and died for us.  Unworthy is what we are without Jesus.  His love, God’s love makes us worthy.

Feeling and knowing God’s love is something so different.  Often times I don’t feel loved or don’t feel like loving someone else.  But God’s love is a fact.  It is unconditional.  That love is not an emotion or a feeling.  We strive for that kind of love.  It is hard.  It seems impossible.  Yet we strive and push forward. 

We can and ought to love others like God loves us.  AGAPE (the Greek word) love has no strings attached and is completely genuine.  I want to know and share that love, God’s love and His kind of love, with the people around me.

Here is the last verse of the hymn The Love of God, and I will leave you with this big idea that gives us another look at love.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

  And were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

  And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

  Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

  Though stretched from sky to sky.