All of the law and prophets are contained in the two great commandments: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And the second is like unto it, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). To love the Lord with every fiber of our being is the great privilege and joy of every true believer in Christ. It is the primary motivation for our worship, service, obedience, and daily life with each other. As our brother John Piper says, “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.” That is genuine biblical love in action.
Love, though, is such a watered down and misunderstood word today–even in the church. We use the word love in such a casual way, even when referring to inanimate objects, that it seems to lose its very meaning if we fail to understand it biblically. Simply put, biblical love is not an emotion or feeling; it is not conditioned upon anothers response. True love, agape love–the love of God as demonstrated through Christ Jesus our Lord on the cross is five things: it is unmerited, undeserved, unfailing, self-sacrificial, and unreciprocated.
His love is unmerited,because we cannot earn it… it is His grace gift to us in Christ Jesus on the cross.
His love is undeserving, because in and of ourselves we are worthy only of His justice, emnity and wrath; worthy only to be sentenced to an eternal hell, a perditious suffering that knows no end, because of the sinfulness of our sin that has rendered all mankind by nature as “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-2).
His love for us is unfailing, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 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 8:35-39).
His love is self-sacrificial, for Christ gave His life as a ransom for many by paying once for all the ultimate price for our redemption from our sin. Think of it beloved, if Jesus had not fully satisfied God on the cross as a “propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17) it would be impossible for God to love me or you.
Lastly, His love is unreciprocated, for even an eternity of praise and worship to Him can never repay Him for His unfailing love.
Paul tells us that this love is grandeur than we could ever think: what is the breadth, the length, the length,the height and the depth of His love. It’s breadth speaks of the universality of the gospel – to all the elect from the four corners of the world from all ages, all times, all places, and all nations. It’s length refers from eternity to another – throughout all the ages. It’s depth means it reaches down to the very lowest station of life and saves us there. Our finite sin, though worth eternal condemnation, is no match for the fathomless depths of God’s love in Christ to us. And lastly, the Apostle speaks of its height. This is undoubtedly referring to the exalted state in glory we look for with unshakable hope. His love saves us from the depth of our depravity and lifts us to the heavenlies with Christ in glory.
