Realizing God's Love

Realizing God's Love

I love it when you can read a verse, one you have read hundreds of times, even taught from it . . . but suddenly the Spirit of God has a new message for you. I recently was perusing the New Testament and once again read the letter from Jude. When I hit verse 20-21, something “popped” in my heart:

“But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” (Jude 20–21).

When I read those verses this time, I heard the Spirit whisper to me: “Jeth, you have come a long way over the years, but you have yet to come into the fullness and joy of my love. You have the theology right—but you haven’t yet experienced the ecstasy and rest of keeping yourself in my love. Up to now, you have only been in it up to your ankles. But there is a whole ocean of my love for you to swim in.”

Wow! I thought I had experienced God’s love . . . but evidently, it is far deeper and wider than I have ever imagined! The Bible is filled with the Truth of God’s love. But I admit that there are times when I allow myself to wonder how the Lord could ever love me. It’s not that I doubt his love; it’s more a failure on my part to keep myself in the knowledge and assurance of his love to me.

Now when we first come to the Lord, when we are born-again and the Holy Spirit is poured into us, we certainly receive a revelation of God’s love, but it only comes in part. If you were to ask most Christians what they know of God’s love for them, they will answer, “I know God loves me because he gave his Son to die for me.” Remember the old Gospel song: “Jesus loves me, this I know . . .” but the continuation of that song goes, “For the Bible tells me so . . .” Hmm, maybe that’s it? I love Michael Card’s rendition:

“Jesus loves me, this I know.

It’s not just the Bible that tells me so

I can feel it, feel it in my soul

Jesus loves me, this I know.”

That’s the way it should be! New believers can quote John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

That’s a start. It’s a wonderful moment when you grasp this truth. You suddenly realize, “God loved me when I was lost, undone, a stranger. And he proved his love for me by sacrificing his own Son on my behalf.”

The problem is, though, that many Christians never learn how to be kept in God’s love. We know something of our love toward the Lord—but we seldom seek the revelation of God’s love for us. In fact, if you were to ask most Christians to find biblical passages on God’s love for us, they could point to just a few. Understanding the love of God is the secret to an overcoming life. Multitudes grow spiritually cold and lazy because they are ignorant of the Lord’s love for them. They don’t know that their greatest weapon against Satan’s attacks is to be fully convinced of God’s love for them, through the revelation of the Holy Ghost.

In his final prayer on earth, Jesus said, “Father . . . You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24). What an incredible thought; Christ was greatly loved by the Father before creation.

Then Jesus prayed this remarkable prayer. “Thou, Father . . . have loved them, just as you have loved me” (vv. 21, 23). He also prayed, “That the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (v. 26). Christ was saying, “Father, I know you are going to love those I bring into my body, just the way you have loved me.”

What he is saying is that when the Father loved Jesus before eternity, he loved us too. Indeed, when man was still only a thought in God’s eternal mind, the Lord was already numbering our parts and planning our redemption: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love” (Ephesians 1:4).

How long has God loved you? He’s loved you since he has existed. Did you read what I wrote? Not as long as you have existed—but as long as HE has existed. Why? Because God is love. It is his very nature. He loved you as a sinner. He loved you in the womb. He loved you before the world began. There was no beginning to his love for you—and there is no end to it.

When will God stop loving you? He’ll stop loving you when he stops loving his own Son—which is impossible. Christ says, “The Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).