Perfect Lovefeatured

It’s week two of Advent which means this past Sunday the Love candle was lit in Advent Wreaths all over world.  Love is a word that gets tossed around liberally.  I love guacamole and I love a warm shower and I love my husband.  All of those loves are great, but they aren’t really the love we celebrate during Advent.  During Advent we reflect on the perfect and holy love of God, which is a bit different than my love of guacamole!

1 John 4:8 tells us, “. . .God is love.”  Love is His essence and His motivation and intention for all creation.  Since He is perfect, His love is perfect.  During this season, we celebrate God’s greatest act of love, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).  Scripture gives us multiple insights into His perfect love, so I thought we’d take a peek to catch a glimpse of perfect love. 

Caution!  These insights aren’t in His Word just to instruct us on the nature of God, they are also models for us to follow. 

Genesis 22 recounts the story of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his long-awaited son, Isaac.  In this familiar story, Abraham’s faith in a loving God, propelled Him to obey what must have seemed like a hideous request from God, to kill his son as a sacrificial offering.  When Isaac asked his father where the lamb was for their offering, Abraham told Isaac that God would provide the lamb for the sacrifice. And indeed He did – with a ram stuck in a bush.

A few thousand years later, God himself was in the position of sacrificing His only Son.  His love for us was so perfect that He sent His only son as the sacrifice for all my sins and all of yours!  This time there was no last-minute ram trapped in a bush to save Jesus from death on the cross.  Now, I have grandsons and I cannot even fathom the pain of sending one of them off to a certain death.  Yet God loved you and me enough to do that.

These Biblical accounts show me that perfect love is sacrificial.  Because He sacrificed His son, I am not required to sacrifice one of my grandsons, but I am called to sacrificial living.   In Psalm 51, David says, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”  God wants our sacrifice in the act of surrendering our stubborn, self-focused will to Him.  When I sacrifice my highly imperfect wants and will, and submit to Him, I am moving a bit closer to modeling His perfect love.

Jesus showed us another aspect of perfect love – it is difficult and painful (for a time).  He showed us how hard it is when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemene (Matthew 26:36-46).  Three times Jesus prayed that if it was possible, He would like God to take this cup (His death on the cross) away from Him.  With each of those requests He also submitted this desire to His Father’s will.  I take comfort in the knowledge that Jesus knows how hard it is for me to sacrifice my own will and desires.  He can relate to my ongoing struggles to submit to God’s plan for me.  Unlike Jesus, I don’t always submit after the third request! 

He also knows that I may suffer some short-term pain.  Like most of us, I hate pain and try to avoid it if at all possible.   This passage is a helpful reminder that any temporary pain that I may suffer, doesn’t compare with His excruciating death on the cross.  He comforts me with His promise to be with me in the difficulty and pain – “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Although I will never reach perfection in my love while here on earth, I do know that perfect love ultimately waits for me with God – in His heaven and for eternity.  I am blessed!!  May you be blessed with a fresh sense of gratitude for His perfect love this week. [jetpack_subscription_form]