My good friend Seun Idowu wrote a fantastic article on his blog. Please find the link below
Because I want you to read his blog, I will not belabor the points he made; I think a brief summary will be enough on this platform: He makes a valid point that God is Love and the attributes of love as expressed in 1Corinthians 13 are attributes that belong only to God. God has however enabled us to have this love; he has in fact “poured out” his love into our hearts (Romans 5:5). He then concludes with the imperative that we ought to love like God loves (because in fact we can)
But how do we get to the point where we willingly and unconsciously walk in the unconditional love that the Trinity has shown towards us? My friend gives the only solution; it is in experiencing the love of God first hand. In 1 John 4: 19, John discloses to us a startling discovery: “we love because he loved us first”. This means the only reason we love God or people is because we were first recipients of his love. This also means the more we enjoy his love and bask in his love for us, the more loving we become. This of course leads to the next question, how do I experience God’s love?
It is at this point that I believe I must speak, for unfortunately my friend did not expressly tell us how to experience the Father’s love. The danger in that kind of open-ended instruction is that people tend to look for love in all the wrong places. In my years I have noticed people who have created yardsticks for whether or not God loves them- and by extension everybody else. They either use their personal circumstances (financial, Health, relationships) as evidence of God’s love or the peace and serenity of their immediate environment
Let me just be direct with you and say that nothing on this earth can truly prove the kind of love the Bible tells us God has. If we look to our physical world as evidence of God’s love, all we will be left with is a “God” whose love is fluctuating; We could look to nature and all its beauties and this great universe that God made in order to accommodate Human life, we can be in awe, but what about earthquakes and disasters, diseases, terrorism and all these other things. The moment we witness any of these, we might conclude that God has somehow stopped loving the unfortunate victims. If we look at our lives and all the good things he has done and use that as a yardstick for God’s love for us, we will definitely be encountering a fluctuating God. Nobody’s life is perfect, and sometimes in our minds the bad occurrences in our lives far outweigh the good. We could lose a loved one, go into debt, and experience untold hardship. Times like those will give you the impression that God is punishing some sin or is one way or the other displeased with you. No!!!! The Godly love we read in the Bible contradicts the conclusions we make when we look to our environment for an experience of His love.
God is not displeased with us under the New Covenant neither is he any longer the author of Natural disasters. We live in a fallen world, where Adam has dragged all of creation into death. Christ came to conquer death thereby transferring us from death to life. However, the earth is still groaning for us to begin to manifest that son ship by pulling the earth out of its dying state (Romans 8: 18-22). Furthermore, not all men have come to believe in this great work that has been accomplished on our behalf by God. As such we have several people who are still living with an Adamic state of mind. They still take stupid actions and these actions ripple into horrible consequences for themselves and people all around them. All around us are people who are not living out of a relationship with our savior; bosses, colleagues, friends, enemies, and even ourselves sometimes, people whose decisions whether good or bad will affect our personal well being. That is not God!!! That is us being victims of the poor decisions we make. So what is the answer? How can we experience this love? What is the yardstick for quantifying how much he really loves us?
I got the answer from John.
John 3:16 makes a radical statement that sums up the whole topic succinctly; the Father so loved us that he sent his only begotten son that as many as believe in him will not perish. “God so loved the world” is a great phrase. Unfortunately we say it so much that it has kind of lost its power in our minds. We must understand that the father sending the Son to incarnate is a very big deal, the Son went from being the second person of the Godhead, in a realm untainted by sin and death, with omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, to becoming a Human being; limited by time and space, surrounded by sin, going hungry, thirsty and tired (even though he never ceased being God at any time, he lived like a man at all times during his stay on earth)and ultimately dying a most horrendous death on the Cross. Why? So that whosoever believes in him will partake of the life that He shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
“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. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:9-11 (NIV)
The only barometer for God’s love is the Atoning work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, whenever we doubt or our circumstances seem contrary, this is the anchor for our souls. Whether we are in a pit or on the highest mountain, this is the one event in all of History that assures of the love of the incomparable God. Nothing changes the fact that God did what he did for us when we were totally unworthy
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8 (NIV)
I love the message translation:
6 -8Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
It is only when we begin to bask in this great love that we can in anyway begin to express love and Grace to others. Joseph Prince puts it this way “Boast not of your Love for God rather boast of God’s Love for you”. The aim of the Christian life is not for you to keep examining yourself and your actions. It is the constant beholding of the Love of God as expressed in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Grace be multiplied unto you.
p.s: I did not exhaust the riches of this mans blog, there is more to it than this, so check it out
