Valentine’s Day is behind us, and now we are on to the Easter season. In this season, we remember what love really is - that God would send His Son to die for our sins.
First John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” That’s a pretty fantastic description of love. A lavish love. It is rich, elaborate, generous, extravagant, profuse. The words that begin that verse “see what kind” or “behold what manner” actually means “of what country” in the Greek. In other words, nothing has ever been seen like it. It is supernatural. It is not of this world. It’s exotic. It’s foreign. It’s as if John is saying, “Can you believe we have access to this kind of love? It’s astounding!”
So what do we do with this kind of love? We can be happy and proud of this kind of love if we are in Christ. We can rejoice in it. But the most important thing we can do with this kind of love is share it. It’s not to be kept to ourselves. We love our spouses. Okay, good. We love our families. Awesome. That’s what we need to do. But we are called to love others as well. First John 4:11-12 says, “Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.”
I need to be honest and tell you this is where God has had me sitting for a while now. Yes, I love those I’m supposed to love. But I have a hard time loving those who are outside my circle or those who may have wronged me. Do you? I can love easily if you act like I want you to act and do what I want you to do. But if you step outside of my rules, I tend to be done with you.
Is that how we are to love? No. That is not the Great Commission. Jesus pretty plainly said, “Go into ALL the world.” John tells us in those verses that because we have been given such a lavish love, we are to then give it to others. If we reread the last part of v. 12, we see what we are to do: “No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.” In other words, we are Christ’s ambassadors walking around in the flesh. As the old saying goes, we may be the only Jesus other people see. That means we must love. And not just halfway. Lavishly. When we do that, God’s love is made manifest to the world. The gospel is preached. The kingdom is built. And we are being obedient to the mandate we’ve been given.
Is this easy? Absolutely not. So how in the world do we love lavishly? I think Romans 5:5 gives us the best way to do that: “This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” I heard a Bible teacher once say that when we have a hard time loving, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to pour His love into our hearts. As I said in the beginning, this is a supernatural love. The only way for us mere humans to show it is to have supernatural help. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love every single day so we can love the world lavishly.
We have been lavishly loved. Let’s love the world lavishly.
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