Skip to main content

The Gift of Love

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. [1 John 4:9-10]
The Bible teaches us that the love of God is not theoretical. God has actually proved his amazing love to us by sending His Son, the Lord Jesus to us. How does God sending Jesus reveal the incredible love of God to us? The apostle John answers that question for us in the passage above. Here are five reasons that makes the sending of Jesus an incredible gift of love. 


First, because of who the sender of this gift is. We know the weight of love of someone’s love for us by their status compared to ours. The same gift given to us by our next door neighbour has greater value to us, if it comes from Her Majesty the Queen. We know we are deeply loved because the Eternal God, who created all things, has sent us the gift of Jesus to us.

Secondly, because of whom the recipients of this gift are. We know the weight of someone’s love for us by how little we deserve it. If the gift comes from someone we have done favours for in the past, it would not prove their love as much as from someone have offended! God has sent his gift to underserving sinners. People are the enemies of God and are not able to love Him.

Thirdly,  because of what this gift of love has cost Him. We know the weight of someone’s love for us by what it cost the person to show us affection. If a person sacrifices all their life savings for us it means much more to us than if a person simply uses their spare change in the pocket! God has sent His only Eternal Son of God to come as a gift to us. It is not simply that God has sent someone else to come to us. God has come to us in the person of the second member of the Trinity to willingly offer himself as a precious sacrifice for our sins. 

The word John uses to describe this sacrifice is propitiation. It means a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath and turns it to favour. All human beings have rebelled against God and our sin provokes God to act against us with wrath and judgement! And yet God has offered to satisfy His deserved anger against us by sending God the Son to not only turn away this anger but fully absolve it! Jesus has willingly taken upon Himself the full punishment we deserve. He has fully absolved its full impact and ferocity intimately. This is the depth of God’s love for us who has placed our faith in Him.

Finally, we know the depth of God’s love for us because of the benefits of what this gift from God to us accomplishes. The greater the benefits we receive the more we feel loved! If the neighbour helps us to find the right shop to buy pampers, we will feel loved by them. If we have been kidnapped and the neighbour comes and shoots us the place up to free us, we will feel we even more loved by them!
The benefit of Jesus dying on the cross for us grants us forgiveness from our sins so that we may now share in the very life with God . Jesus died and rose from death to bring us into new union or koinonia with God. Jesus plugs us to into the very life of God. 

God sharing His very life with you is the greatest act of love we can ever know! God is perfect, you are sinner. God is immortal, you are mortal. Yet this wonderful God has offered to become one with you! He plugs himself to you by taking on all sin on Himself on the Cross! No one loves you like this God does because no one offers to bridge such gap as God has done for you in Jesus! What an immeasurable gift of love!

Love Series :


Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2017
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Humility of Newton

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly shaped by t
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →