God's Love

John 3: 16-19

For God so loved the World that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whosoever would believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the World to condemn the World, but that the World through Him might be saved.

So what is this Love by which God loved us?

The World does not understand what Love is. It teaches the concept of eros, which is physical, sexual love. 

But God's love is even greater than the phileos, the love of a friendship. 

It's agape, the true love of wanting the very best for the one loved, regardless of the cost to us. It is sacrificial love. "God so loved that He gave ..." and what He gave was His most precious, His beloved Son. 

This is the Love by which God loves us. The Love He puts into our hearts, when we realize how much He loves us. This is the Love that is to guide our thinking and our relationships and our lives. When we love God, we will trust Him, and not give anything priority over Him. And when we love one another we will be obeying all the laws pertaining to our relationships, in not lying, or stealing, or coveting, or any other activity that would harm our relationships. 

Jesus said, "I came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it" (Matthew:5:17). As He lived His life, he fulfilled the letter of all the Old Testament laws, and when He died He fulfilled all the sacrificial laws. That's why no one brings an animal to be slaughtered on an altar today. 

This New Covenant supersedes the Old, making the Old obsolete. This New Covenant is the one prophesied, that God's Law would be in our hearts instead of on tablets or parchment. So now we have the principle of Love to guide us. 

This principle is the agape love, in considering others over ourselves. Making whatever sacrifice that would benefit the one loved. This is the New Covenant, the New Testament, the New Contract God has made with us. 

We sign this contract when we realize that Jesus took our death upon Himself as our substitute, individually. Then God puts His own Spirit into our spirit which was born dead because of sin while our body and soul lived, and it comes alive. That's why Jesus called it being "born again," or "born from above" (John 3:3). Our spirit needs to be alive to communicate with God. 

That's why, 

V. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he that does not believe is already condemned, because he does not believe in the only Son of God. 

We all inherit the DNA of Adam's sin, so we're all born spiritually dead. That means that we're born condemned, and need that sin removed to be free of it. 

V. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the World, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 

Their deeds were not in accord with the Love we are to love each other with. And they know that they are wrong, so they want to stay in the darkness, to hide their sins. 

We all have those parts of ourselves we'd rather not show the World, that we're not proud of, that we're ashamed of and regret. This is wanting to stay in the darkness. 

But to heal those wounds we need to shine the sunlight of Truth on them to clean them out so they can heal (I John 1:9; James 5:16). 

O my Father, thank You so much for Your great Love! Thank You for loving me with Your unlimited, expansive, all-encompassing Love! You have known me, and You have already taken care of all my faults and defects and depravities. You have cleansed me in the Blood of the Lamb to make me pristine as though I had never sinned, and caused me to be born into Your own Family, making me Your daughter, Your princess. 

Now I pray that You help me to hear and listen to Your voice in my spirit, leading me in Your paths of righteousness, not turning to the right or to the left. Entering in to that strait gate that leads into the narrow path, hedged in on both sides. 

Show me how to put a guard on my heart, my mind, and my tongue. Teach me to think Your thoughts, reason with Your pure logic, and express to others Your ways in all that I do and say. 

I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul rejoice! 

You are my everything. I rejoice in Your blessings, in the bounty You placed in the Earth for our benefit, and in Your faithful promises of what You have planned for me in the future, both in this World and in the next.

And I enjoy Your presence with me every day, walking hand in hand with me and carrying the weight of every load. And Your sweet embrace when I feel alone. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!