In a world where love is often conditional, it can be difficult to fully wrap your head around the truth that God’s love is unconditional. Many times people will say, “I love you because” or “I’ll love you if or when…”
But love is God’s very nature and core. It’s who He is (1 John 4:16). Maybe you grew up hearing this, or maybe you’re hearing it for the first time; whatever the case, truly knowing God’s love for you is a total game changer. And there’s always a deeper level of God’s love that we can get to know and experience.
It matters that we know – through experience – God’s love for us. God wants us to know His love, and He wants to continue to show us who He is and how much He loves us.
How do we come to know God’s love? By faith. You hear the Word, believe it, and receive it in your heart and allow it to take root and grow. When you access God’s love by faith, God’s love toward you is unconditional.
God’s Word reveals who God is – His nature, His will, His love for you.
God’s love isn’t earned; it’s been freely given! God has already made the decision to love us unconditionally. Your actions, whether good or bad, do not affect His love for you. While much of religion ties God’s love and acceptance of you to your performance, His Word tells us otherwise. He made us accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6). His Word tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God made the first move:
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
God has always made the first move toward us because of love. His love is revealed to us through Scripture. It’s known through experiencing His goodness and faithfulness in our lives, through revelation given by the Holy Spirit.
I don’t know about you, but I continue to want a deeper revelation of God’s love for me. He is the best thing.
The more we come to know God’s love, the more we love Him back. We’re not doing the right things out of obligation (that’s old covenant behavior) but out of love for the One who loved us first!
We love because He first loved us (1 John 1:19), and perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
A deeper revelation of God’s love will get rid of any fear you may have in approaching Him (1 John 4:17), give you the confidence you need to live by faith and with authority, and give you the heart and ability to love others well.
Get a deeper revelation of God’s love for you, and it will change your life!
Think about this: God – the Creator of the universe (!) -made a way (thank you, Jesus!) for us to be as close and as much in love with Him as we want to be.
That is awesome. There is no greater love (and no better valentine).
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:14-21
