“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another." (1 John 4:9-11) A few weeks ago, I heard a radio show where the radio hosts called a man on behalf of a woman. Apparently, the woman was upset because the man hasn’t called the girl back after their romantic date. She thought they connected and just wanted to know why he didn’t call her. She thought this was love; she said she was absolutely sure that this was love. However, when the host called the man, he didn’t think it was a date at all. He met the girl on the street and casually told her where he’s going with his friends for dinner afterwards He didn’t invite the girl, but the girl appeared at his restaurant. They had a few conversations about her but that was it; he didn’t even know her last name. He didn’t think it was love at all. They shared the same evening, but they had very different opinion of whether it was love or not. How does the Bible define love? The way God loves us is how the Bible defines love. Firstly, God’s love is seen in Jesus, God the Son’s mission of atonement. This is how God demonstrates his love to the world: God’s sent Jesus into the world so that we might live through him.
Secondly, we must remember that Whatever we think our love for God is, whatever service we give, whatever song we sing, or whatever sacrifices we make, these are not definitive acts of love, as good as these acts may be. True love is God’s love for us.
True love is God sending his Son to us so that those who believe in him can live through him. True love is God sending His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. To atone is to make amends for one’s wrong. The problem is no matter how hard we try, we can never make amends for our wrong against God. We are far too sinful, far too weak, to make amend for any sin we committed against God, let alone a life time of sin, for at the core of all this is our lack of love for God; we don’t love God as much as we should. We’ve all fallen short of God’s expects of us, and we have no way to make amends for our sins. Our lack of love for God and for one another rightly makes God’s angry at us. But God, out of his love for us, God sent his Son Jesus Christ to be the ultimate atoning sacrifice. It’s because Jesus had faced God’s anger, died on the cross and rose from the dead, that we can have life. Jesus was the sacrifice that God made to take away his wrath against us. How do we respond to God’s love?
“Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.” 1 John 4:11 If you know and love God, God’s gifted you with his love. The word translated ‘must’ at the end of verse 11 can also be translated as owe. You owe God’s love to them. For Christians, there are two debts that we have between one another. Firstly, as sinners, we have a debt of sin that we owe to others and others owe us. We need to forgive them, cancel their debts, just as God forgives you. Second, as followers of Jesus, we all have a debt of love that we owe to God and his people.
We will always owe them our love. As we begin this new year, let’s remember what it means for God to love us in Christ. He paid for a debt that we cannot repay. In light of what Christ has done for us, let us forgive our debtors their debts (Matthew 6:12) while at the same time, never cease to pay our debt of love to Jesus our Lord and to one another (Romans 13:8)
Soli Deo Gloria
In Christ,
David
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