There are times in my life that I'm really unsure of my relationship with God. Any person in a relationship, any kind at all, will wonder what love looks like. How do we stay in love? How do we choose love? What does that all even mean? Do we choose love or does love choose us?
If we choose to say that God is love, surely we can switch anytime that we say, as Paul does in 1st Corinthians, that "love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." If God is love, then God is patient. God is kind. God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God does not insist on God's own way. God is not irritable or resentful. God does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If God is love. Then God does all these things.
If God is anything but love, God ceases to be God.
There's a post on Patheos about how we shouldn't say anything about God if we can't say it about Jesus. Here.
I think that's pretty powerful. And it's absolutely true. It is nearly impossible for any Christian to talk about the love of God without talking about God's love for humanity in the person of Jesus.
God cannot love us any more than showing us the love in the person of Jesus. God loves us so much that God would send God's Son into this messy, awful, messed up world to save us. It is this person who embodied love that shows us the love of God.
But sometimes it's hard to see love.
It's difficult to see God's love in action at an individual level sometimes.
We want a divine revelation of this love. That is, we want a subjective view of God's already objective love in Christ. And it is nearly impossible to see this love without the aid and help of the Holy Spirit.
It is God's Spirit, the same spirit that cries Abba and shows us the deep and never-ending love of God for all of us, that tells us how much God loves us.
We all want love. We all want to feel love. We all want God to show us how much God loves us. And God already has. The Lord has already shown us how much God loves us with the sacrificial love of Jesus. In Romans 5:10, it says, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." Jesus' life and death showed us love.
Jesus loves us. This is what the Bible tells us. God loves us, this is what Jesus shows us. The Holy Spirit guides us to this knowledge.
I love God, but sometimes I'm afraid. I need God, but sometimes I know it more.
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