First Love
Session 2: The God of Incomprehensible Love
I. Loved Like He Loves His Son:
God’s love knows no end; but for us who are trying to wrap our minds around it as best as we can for the sake that our hearts can connect to the idea on some level it is helpful to try and measure it. As we look to the scripture to accomplish this feat we find statements too unbelievable to be true; yet Christ Himself said perhaps the most shocking one.
“that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (Jn. 17:23).”
A. How He Loves the Son:
Let us think for a moment about how much the Father loves the Son; the Son who is Himself God.
"He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased (2Pe. 1:17).”
B. If He Sent His Son for Us:
We need to do the math on what God did; if He sent His most precious Son to come and die for us then He has to love us at least as much as the Son He sent to redeem us.
C. He Wants Us to Be with Him:
Jesus further stated that His love for us was so great that He wanted to graduate all of us to be with Him in Heaven. This isn’t just a ticket to a magical inheritance; it is an invitation into intimate proximity to His heart. He is God and He wants us to be with Him where He is.
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory (Jn. 17:24)”
II. His Love Being Made Complete In Us:
When we begin to understand God’s love it rewrites the code through which we view the world around us. This in turn makes great impact in our emotions causing us to live differently the more that God’s love is revealed to us.
A. Love Comes From Him:
As we saw in our last session the origination point of love is God Himself; meaning that if it is truly love, then it came from God; however misguided that love may be altered through the warping of sin. This does not excuse whatever else may have been added to or taken away from it as also being God’s doing but it does tell us that the human capacity to love and receive love comes from God.
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God (1Jn. 4:7)."
B. He Lavishes His Love on Us:
This commodity of love has been shared with humanity. The Father is not stingy with this great commodity that He acts as the wholesale broker for; He lavishes it on the objects of His affection.
"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him (1Jn. 3:1)."
C. The Love of God Then Comes into Us:
God’s love is then described as being in a person who has been transformed by God’s love.
"If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person (1Jn. 3:17)?"
“God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Ro. 5:5).”
III. The God of Great Love:
The God we serve is infinite in His emotional capacity and as we have been looking at He has chosen to aim His affections at us. He is said to have a love so great that we need unveiled revelation in order to understand it, a love so marvelous that it takes God revealing it to us for us to be able to perceive it rightly.
A. Abounding in Love:
The Lord declared about Himself that He was the God who abounds in love, whose love is powerful and all consuming.
“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness (Ex. 34:6)”
B. Nehemiah’s Observations:
Nehemiah saw this aspect about God and He had some significant insights into God’s emotional makeup. He knew the Word of God and had been greatly impacted by what the scriptures reveal about God. As a result his communication repeatedly displayed an unusual focus on God’s great love.
“But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love (Ne. 9:17).”
“He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel (Ne. 13:26).”
“Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments (Ne. 1:5).”
“Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love (Ne. 13:22).”
C. The Awe Striking Nature of His Great Love:
The psalmists speak about the heart inspiring nature of His great love; that knowing this love provokes wonder and tenderness. Passages like these call our attention to the mysteries and beautiful realties hidden in affections.
"show me the wonders of your great love (Ps. 17:7)."
“I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations (Ps. 89:1)."
D. His Heart’s Delight:
It is empowering for our soul to realize the extent of His affections; that repeatedly the Word declares that His heart takes delight in us as His people.
“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing (Zph. 3:17).”
“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me (Ps. 18:19).”
“make music to him with timbrel and harp. For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory. Let his faithful people rejoice (Ps. 149:3-5)”
IV. Characteristics of the Divine Romance:
The Father is wooing us as the Bride for His Son; we have been brought into the midst of a divine romance. It is a perfect one, one completely removed from any sexual connotations or sensuality but truer than any earthly relationship. The Bible testifies about God as the hero that we all are longing for whose love for us is powerful and unchangeable. We are told that the real mystery is that marriage on Earth is simply to be a shadow of the marriage, which God has planned from eternity past.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…to present her to himself as a radiant church…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies…a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church (Eph. 5:25-32)."
A. His Love is Unfailing:
The psalmists had great insight into the depths of God’s emotions, making it a premiere place to search for details about His love. They pressed the point that the love that God has for mankind is unfailing and readily available to any who would seek Him.
“How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings (Ps. 36:7).”
“Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love (Ps. 48:9).”
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever (Ps. 136:1).”
B. He Directs and Sends His Love:
His love is described as being directed at us, sent to us and poured out into us as into an empty vessel. His love is transferable.
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life (Ps. 42:7-8).”
“He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me— God sends forth his love and his faithfulness (Ps. 57:3).”
C. He Appoints His Love to Protect:
God has mustered up His unfailing love and appointed it to those whom He chooses. He sovereignly determines and assigns His affections to us as the those He delights in.
“Increase the days of the king’s life, his years for many generations. May he be enthroned in God’s presence forever; appoint your love and faithfulness to protect him (Ps. 61:6-7).”
V. Empowered to Feel His Love:
We have been given an inner ache that is meant to draw us closer to God all the days of our lives; it is a longing for God. But in this life we often experience roadblocks that limit our experience of God and cause our hearts to realize this ache.
A. Apostolic Prayer that We Might Enter In:
The Apostle Paul ministered out of the overflow of his understanding and experience of God’s love for him. No place is this more clear than in his prayer for the Ephesians where he casts a vision for them of greatness founded in understanding God’s love which surpasses human understanding.
“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:17-19).”
B. A Healthy Ache:
Passages like the above are intended to provoke some measure of agony within us as we face the bankruptcy of our current measure of revelation about the love of God.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life (Pr. 13:12).”
C. Reaching for More:
This is actually healthy to feel the distance because it causes our hearts to reach. In this sense we ought to pray that our hearts would be sick with love for Him that we might reach for Him and have those sweet moments and even seasons where we touch Him and our deepest longings are fulfilled. We are to reach for more and so find that longing fulfilled.
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