For all our celebration of love in Western culture, we really have no idea what it is. A current popular definition, if you can even call it a definition, is “love is love”. That’s pretty open to interpretation! No wonder we are so confused.
Even as Christians familiar with the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, we often miss the profundity of true love because we don’t take enough time to ponder the source of all love, God Himself.
For years, 1 John 3:1 has been a verse to which I’ve returned with wonder over and over so that I don’t forget the extent and character of God’s love for me. As a child of the 90s, I grew up memorizing the verse in the NIV which translates as, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
Most other versions call us to behold or consider the love that has been “bestowed” on us that we should be called children of God, but I find myself meditating on the meaning of “lavish”. Merriam Webster defines it as “expending or bestowing profusely; expended or produced in abundance; marked by profusion or excess”.
Soak in the meaning of that word for a moment as it applies to God’s love for us. The love of God has been given to us in such great abundance that it profusely, excessively spills out all over us, making us His children.
In a world that is increasingly depressed and anxious, angry and sick, I know that I need a moment-by-moment reminder of a love beyond this world, a love that supersedes the weak or confusing muddy version portrayed in many of the movies or books of our day.
I need a love that isn’t weak or unpredictable or abusive or selfish or fleshly. I need the great, lavished love of a Heavenly Father to a child.
This is a love that never sleeps, bringing comfort when I wake from an anxious nightmare.
This is a love that steadily pursues me, even when I fail to remain faithful and get caught up in myself.
This is a love that fills the places deep in my spirit that no human relationship or fleeting pleasure can reach.
The truth is, this love given by the Father is an everlasting one with a promise that our fault and failure to return that love will one day be fully cured with His appearing. As John says in the following verses, “what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Our Father’s love is unconditional, and to the day of the fulfillment of His promise to us to make us like Him, we are fully, lavishly, profoundly, excessively loved. No, love is not just love. God is love (1 John 4:16). And His love is unmatched toward His children, to those who look by faith to His Son Who is the life of love.
That kind of love we can never have in excess. It’s never too much. It will never end towards us, and we will never grow tired of its abundance.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Taking It Further:
What cracks in your heart need filled by Your Father’s lavish love today? What places are you trying to hide that you fear will keep Him from bestowing His love?