September 23, 2022
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8
The very essence of God is pure, righteous, irreproachable love. His love is the core of His nature, the substance of His being, and the power behind every act He performs. Love is not created, for God has always been love and will always be love.
It is a shame in this fallen world that the word “love” is casually thrown around in shallowness and meaninglessness. At best, we associate it with sentimental human emotions. At worst, we apply it to inanimate objects. In comparison to the reality that the Creator desires to reveal to us, our use of the word is generally thin, colorless, and insipid.
We tend to deify our small idea of love, based on human emotions. At the same time, we trivialize the instructions of the God Who Is Love as arbitrary or optional.
But an essential part of maturing in faith calls for beholding, with our spiritual eyes, the depth and meaning behind all that God has instructed as well as the words and actions of Jesus as He dwelt upon the earth. The physical and the spiritual are so perfectly interwoven that even our everyday activities are imbued with purpose and meaning, provided we have surrendered all that we have and all that we are to Him. We have been given a perfect set of instructions, a perfect example for living them out, and a substitutionary sacrifice to cover our sins and failures. In addition, we are given—for the asking—the Holy Spirit of God to guide us into all truth—and by inference, away from all error (see John 16:13).
In the agricultural metaphor, Yahweh asks the penetrating question:
“Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?” Isaiah 5: 3b-4
In the end, at the execution of the final judgement, even the wicked and unrepentant will see and agree that there is nothing more that the LORD could have done to persuade people to choose Him over Satan. In that moment, God will be utterly vindicated by everyone who has ever lived from every accusation of unfairness, bribery, and cruelty that Satan has levied against Him.
For it is written: “As I live, says the LORD, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” Romans 14:11