A Present Help — Love
God’s help and care is motivated by His great love. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on God’s unchanging character and nature. His grace and mercy preserves our lives and keeps us from stumbling. When we call upon Him, God shows His almighty power by delivering us from adversity and lifting us from the pit of destruction. We trust in His faithfulness and integrity. Of all of the things that we can say about the characteristics of God’s nature, His love is the basis for our life, hope and salvation. Pay attention to the depth of God’s love for us.
1 John 4:16 NIV84 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
God’s great love is revealed to us in several ways.
One expression of the love of God is found in His personal attention when He made man. Of the millions of things that He created, only man was made in God’s image and likeness. One of the highest compliments that anyone could give is to imitate someone else.
God demonstrated His love for us to the highest level when He made us in His image and likeness.
Our moral and spiritual nature was developed on that model. God made us so that we could enjoy intimate and cherished personal fellowship with Him. As a result of His great love, God continued providing tender mercy, abundant grace, and perpetual care. Jesus said, “Your Father in heaven knows what you need.”
Several of the relationships we enjoy in life demonstrate the possibilities of God’s love.
- We enjoy parent and child relationships.
1 John 3:2 tells us, “Now we are children of God.” God is our heavenly Father, (Matthew 6:14, 32). You have a heavenly Father who watches over you.
- We have friend to friend relationships.
Jesus said, “I have called you friends.” (John 15:15; James 4:4) You are a friend of God. Proverbs 18:24 tells us “there is a real friend who sticks closer than a brother.” This Friend loves at all times.
- We can enjoy a husband and wife relationship.
Genesis 2:24 tells us “a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This is one of the closest relationships that we may enjoy in life. We are instructed in the Bible that believers are being prepared and adorned as the bride of Christ. (Revelation 21:9; 2 Corinthians 11:2) One of these days, the bride of Christ will be lifted out of this world and all of its relationships into the presence of Christ forevermore.
The depth of love that we experience in personal relationships finds full expression in the love God has for us.
The depth and intense love that God has for us was most perfectly demonstrated when He gave His Son.
Romans 5:8 NLT But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
The incarnation of Christ was a vital and integral part of the manifestation of God’s love.
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. You should know that God’s love for His Son is infinite and incomprehensible. It is impossible to measure the width, length, depth and height of that love.
God’s love for His Son is much greater than your love for your children.
Do you love your children? I mean, do you really love your children? You don’t just tolerate them, you really love them. What would you do to protect and defend them? What would you sacrifice for them?
Try to measure the love of God for His Son.
God is so much greater than we are and the measure of His love is greater than our ability to tell. When God was looking down from heaven upon His Son, He said: “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.”
The depth of God’s love for us is revealed through the birth, life, sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
We are familiar with Jesus’ birth and how the Son of God came down from heaven and lived in a human body. Jesus came down because God loves you. The incarnation of Christ is the unmistakable full expression of the love of God. We should not miss the fact that God loved us so much that He anointed and chose His Son to provide for our salvation. Jesus was anointed and chosen to pay the ultimate price so that we may be saved from our sins.
Jesus is the public and open display of the depth of God’s love.
We cannot personally know the measure of God’s love without Jesus Christ.
God has been extravagant in gifts of love.
God’s love was demonstrated in His creation.
The beauty and diversity of creation revealed the depth of the wisdom and love of God. Out of love, God created a habitable earth. Think about the extensive preparations that God took to make the earth ready for man. We are constantly blessed and comforted by God’s thoughtful preparations. God did not create the heavens and the earth for Himself. The Bible tells us “heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God,” (1 Kings 8:27). Out of His very nature, God created. Of all of the things that can be said about the nature of God, “God is love,” (1 John 4:16). After He intentionality created everything with tender care, God stooped down and formed man with His own hands.
Man was the product of God’s loving touch.
God looked on the man that He formed with great love.
Then out of a heart of love and compassion, God gave man a wife.
God said, “It is not good for man to live alone.” Man, your good wife is a sign of God’s love for you. Woman, God was thinking of you when He gave you a godly husband.
God loved Adam and Eve that He created.
In the cool of the day, God would come down and visit with them. His daily fellowship was a manifestation of His love. When Adam and Eve sinned, they moved out of the place they belonged. When God came down looking for them, He said, “Adam where are you?” Their sin and transgression was against God, Who loved them.
Out of the depths of God’s love, they were not destroyed when they sinned.
Out of wisdom, love and great compassion, God planned and provided salvation and redemption. Although sin was against Him, God made a way for our recovery and fellowship.
Ephesians 2:4–5 But God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He love us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
When we were cast off as dead in trespasses and sins, God knew the depth of our loss. He knew that we had sinned against Him and that we would never be able to restore what was broken. God also knew how much pain and sorrow it would cause Him because He loved us. Nothing quenched God’s love for us. Even when He knew the worst of us, from the beginning He loved us. He did not love us because we were fair to look upon, or because we were faithful and good, or because we were worthy of love. God just loved us. God was not willing that we should perish.
The Scripture says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His Son.”
Ephesians 1:5-6 tells us: “God’s grace and favor flows to us through the One He loves.”
Our heavenly Father has accepted and adopted us as sons through Christ. The love of God was not caused by Christ’s death. Christ died because God loves us. God loved us so much that He gave His Son to die.
1 John 4:9 NLT God showed how much He loved us by sending His One and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him.
When the apostle Paul saw this, he was amazed.
- In Romans 11:33, he was in awe of the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God and His unfathomable decisions and undiscoverable ways.
- In Galatians 2:20, he said, “He loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
The greatest revelation of God is found in the depth of His love.
Consider how great it is that God has loved you and wants you to personally experience the depth of His love.
God’s almighty strength and power are revealed in His love.
By His love we are filled with all of His goodness.
Ephesians 3:17 NKJV That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love…
“Dwell” literally means, “to settle down and feel at home.” The Apostle Paul wanted increased spiritual depth that can only be found in the love of God. Nowhere is the love of God more fully known than in Jesus Christ. God has revealed the depth of His love in His Son. When the church is told to be rooted and grounded in love, we are being instructed to be rooted and grounded in Christ.
Ephesians 3:17–19 NIV84 “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…”
Look at this.
God’s love that is revealed in Christ surpasses knowledge.
The love of God is greater than we can measure. We may get the meaning of it and enjoy the benefit of it, but we cannot exhaust the depth of it. We may enjoy it without realizing its extent. In all of eternity we can never exhaust it. It is as broad as the human race and claims all souls, the good and the bad. It is timeless and changeless, it is the same today as it was yesterday. It cannot be exhausted by our actions or by the demands of our need. There is no sin so profound and no misery so desperate but that the love of Christ is able to cover. His everlasting arms are always underneath. The more we consider God’s love, the more infinite it appears.
Consider the depth of God’s love for you.
Ephesians 1:4-6 says: “In love God adopted us as His sons through Jesus Christ…”
Ephesians 2:4–5 NIV84 “…because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
God’s love for us is so great that He has brought us to Himself.
Romans 8:35 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Then the text tells us: “None of these things shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God’s love is so extensive that neither life nor death can separate us from His love. Life and death encompass everything we know and experience down here. Life and death covers all history and all of the future.
The Lord our God shows us that He is a present help through His love.
This is why Isaiah 61 shows us that the Good News of the Messiah covers life and death.
Through God’s love for us, we are healed when we are broken hearted and released when we are captives. We are set free from bondage and comforted when we mourn. We are given a garment of praise for our heaviness and crowned with beauty instead of ashes. The heavy, burdened and failing spirit of our past is replaced with the strength of His righteousness.
Isaiah’s prophecy clearly shows a revelation of God’s love.
His love for us is so great that He was wounded for our sins and transgressions. He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities. He was chastised so we could have peace. He was whipped with many stripes so we could be healed. He was oppressed and treated harshly so we could be adopted. He was led to the cross and suffered and died so we could be saved.
Isaiah 53:10 says, “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.”
Why would anyone do that? The answer is love. God’s love is measureless. We were so unworthy of His giving, yet, He gave. The cost for our relief was great. His love is so great that we have not yet fully understood how much God loves us. Even if we could understood the crucifixion of Christ, we cannot comprehended the fullness of God’s love. Even if we have known and received His forgiveness and mercy, we have not comprehended the fullness of His love. Although we have enjoyed the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, His love is still greater. Throughout eternity, we will stand in amazement at the great love that God has shown us.
