Photo: Zac Durant – Unsplash

I have found over the years that THE most important thing for me is to know that I am loved. That changes everything. But where does love come from? And what is the ultimate love that I am made for?

1, God loves you

Love began with God. God is a community of love – the Father and the Son loving one another by the bond of the Holy Spirit, with a happy, joyful, life-giving, other-focused, faithful, overflowing love. Heaven is a place of perfect love. God loves you. He made you and all things as an overflow of his love, and he longs for you to enjoy all things in community with him.

2, We have all rejected God’s love

Tragically, we have all rejected God’s love. We have loved other things rather than the God who made all things. Above all, we love ourselves, looking inward rather than outward. Though this seems attractive, in the end it takes away life and leads to death both now and for eternity.

3, Jesus reveals God’s love to us and opens the way into his love

God has revealed his love supremely in Jesus. In his love Jesus, the Son of God, chose to come to earth 2,000 years ago. He loved those he encountered with a perfect self-giving love, and he loved us to the uttermost by dying on a cross, taking the penalty of our death on himself. He rose again from the dead, and returned to the eternal community of love with the Father.

4, God lovingly calls us to enter his life of love

Each of us has a choice to make. God lovingly calls us to enter his community of love which lasts forever. We can do this by saying sorry for rejecting his love, and asking him to bring us into his life of love by the bond of the Holy Spirit. If we do he promises to make us his deeply loved child – to bring us into this community of life, which endures through physical death and into resurrection life. If we reject his offer we remain on the path of self and death forever.

5, God calls us to live out his life of love for eternity

This isn’t a one-off choice – it continues forever. As we enter God’s community of love we join a path of happy, joyful, life-giving, other-focused, faithful, overflowing love. We embrace a community of giving, serving, and reaching out to others with God’s love. We choose the way of rejecting our old loves, including self-love. There will be times when it feels hard, when following that way goes against our desires. But it will always be good – for it is the path of life and of love. 

Because of his overflowingly loving heart God is calling you. How will you respond?

Taking it further

For more on the question ‘What is love?’ see here. To find out more, why not visit your local church, or talk to a Christian friend, or try here or here.