Day 2: God is Love

Think for a moment about the most unselfish act you have done or that someone has done for you. Or just imagine for a second the most unselfish act you would do if someone were to ask you. Got it? Now shift your focus for a few minutes onto the Creator of the universe, perfect in every way. The God who created the stars and the moon, the sea and the land, the mountains and the valley and all they contain. And He created you and me. He created you and me just because He could. He created us for His delight and He loves us because He created us. He can't help but to love us, because He is love! It's part of His nature. Does that blow your mind?

And this same God who created you and me for His delight showed us the most unselfish act of love that the world has ever known. Over two thousand years ago, God sent His one and only Son, King Jesus, to the earth to pay the penalty for our sin. Jesus was sent in the form of a man to walk the same earth that we walk, to demonstrate love in it's purist form so that we would have an example to follow. The following passage from Philippians 2:5-11 is a beautiful picture of what the Lord came to do and how we are to follow His example:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God

something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death-

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Wow. Can you see how this act is the ultimate act of Love? 

God sacrificed His Son to be the penalty for you and for me because of the sin that started in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Each of us was born into this life as sinful creatures and there must be a penalty for that sin. The good news is that the Lord paid that price for you and for me and if we call on His name and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Lord, He will save us. We no longer are held down by the chains of our sins, but we are welcomed to walk in the freedom of the King that was given to us through this beautiful, terrible act. And as if that sacrifice wasn't enough, God exalted Jesus, raised Him from the dead and gave Him victory over death and the grave, so that you and I may have eternal life! If this isn't love, then I don't know what is.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for loves come from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

1 John 4:7-21

Have you decided to follow Jesus today?