The Love of God
The only way to enter into God’s kingdom is through the love of God. The only way to grow in spiritual wisdom and maturity is through the love of God. God’s love is the orienting principle of the kingdom of heaven. It’s the map, compass, and guide all in one.
But I don’t understand God’s love.
In fact, it's exactly because I don’t understand God’s love that it has the power to overwhelm me. His eternal love, reaching beyond my imagination, makes him worthy of praise and adoration forever.
We don’t understand God’s love, but sometimes we think we do.
Romans 5:8 NLT says, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
How can I know how great God’s love is if I don’t understand the glory of heaven, the beauty of Christ the Son, the tenderness of the Father, and the depth of my sin? I can’t comprehend how unholy I am and how supremely holy God is. I can’t understand how far apart those two realities could be.
Thus, the only explanation for why God would send his son to die for me while I was still a sinner is unconditional and underserving love. The only reason I even have a chance at freedom and life with God is because of the love God showed me.
I don’t understand God’s love, but I don’t think we are supposed to.
Paul calls us to seek to know God’s love in Ephesians 3:18 NIV, saying, “May [you] have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Yet, he goes on to say in verse 19, “And to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Is full knowledge of God’s love even possible? Maybe in those holy moments in the gathering of believers in the unity of the Spirit, we can grasp (as Paul said) something like an understanding of God’s love. It seems to me that the moment we grasp this love, we realize once again that his love surpasses knowledge. God’s love overloads my capacity to understand.
So I’m left with one response: fill me up, Lord.
Though we can’t fully comprehend it, we can bear it through the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of it like John said in 1 John 4:16 NLT. “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”
In seeking to know God’s love, we will always find more expanse and more depth in his compassion toward us. The invitation or calling is not just to get it in our heads like a school problem. The calling is to live in love. Live in a love that was extended to you unexplainably, impossibly, undeservedly, and yet fully and freely given for your redemption.
I don’t understand God’s love, but I can live in it today.
