No matter how you feel today, however lonely or loved, you have, in Christ, the ability to love like no one else knows how to love. Knowing the love of Jesus equips us to love with a deep, costly love with which the world is not familiar, and by which it is often confused.
We know the deep depths of unconditional love.
In the Son, the Father exhibited the deepest depths of unconditional love the world has ever, or will ever, know.
Whenever I get frustrated with my wife, whenever I get angry at a waiter, or whenever I don’t want to forgive a friend, I have to remind myself of the depths to which God loved me despite my brokenness.
No level of brokenness was too stark to be outside the affects of the blood of Jesus. So, those of us who are saved by the love of Jesus ought to love with the love of Jesus.
We know what it’s like to be loved in spite of sickness and sin, and it is by our love for one another that we will be known as followers of Christ (John 13:35).
The unconditional love of God saves us in the blood of Jesus to love others as we have been loved.
On what basis does the unbeliever love unconditionally? Is it some sort of ambiguous ethical urge that ultimately ends in self-interest? It must certainly be. For, only the one who knows the unconditional love of Christ can reflect the unconditional love of Christ.
We know the high cost of sacrificial love.
In the gospel, God saves a people who didn’t deserve saving by killing Someone who didn’t deserve dying. In this, He exhibits the most perfect love in the universe by withholding what we do deserve and giving us what we don’t.
God’s love for me cost Him the life of His Son.
My love for my wife occasionally costs me my comfort and preferences, which, in my weakness, I only sometimes, begrudgingly, give up.
The deep sacrifice of God on behalf of His bride is foundation for my sacrifice on behalf of mine. On what basis does the unbeliever build his understanding of sacrificial love? A simple, selfish hope of reciprocation?
Only those who have been purchased by sacrifice the Bridegroom know the true depths of sacrificial love go beyond giving up personal preference—it may very well cost you everything.
The unconditional, sacrificial love of believers’ marriage provides a safe haven in which one man and one woman are given the grace to fumble their ways to Christlikeness without fear of abandonment.
Loving others isn’t always going to be easy, even if you love Jesus. But, the love of those who truly grasp the gravity of the love of Christ ought to look different from those who don’t.
This post was originally published on millennialevangelical.com
