As a parent of three teenagers, I sometimes wonder what would happen if my children knew how much I loved them. They say they do when I ask them. However, I am aware they don’t really grasp the depth of this love, that my love for them is so tremendous it cannot be measured. There are many times I feel they would respond differently to me if they possessed a real knowledge of this love, that they would have a clearer understanding of why I am urging them to make certain decisions and encouraging them to take different paths in their lives. During the times when they decide otherwise, I am usually left to wonder if they might have chosen differently had their knowledge of my love been an accurate one, if they had been able to understand how powerful this love is, even for a few brief seconds.
I can’t help but believe that God feels the same way so many times in his dealings with us. If we only knew how much he loves us. We say we do. We point to Bible verses that tell us he does. And yet, do our actions convey that we believe this? Do we make decisions that are based upon his love for us? Do we choose the sometimes-hard road of discipleship because we understand the love that is behind the prompting of us to do so? Do we say “no” to what we know is wrong and sinful because love would have us pursue a different way, because love understands the harm that sinful choices can bring to our lives? What if we really could grasp how much God loves us? How would it affect the way we related to him? How would it influence the way we related to others around us?
The common theme of the New Testament is the theme of surrender. The various authors of Scripture continually urge believers to surrender to Christ each day, to the leadership of his Holy Spirit. We are told to “walk in step” with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25), to be “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). We are to surrender and allow the Lord to lead us in all we do. Yet, what is easily missed by many believers is the motivation behind such exhortations, in other words, why we should have the desire to live our lives in this way. And again, it is love, the love God has for us, the love that sent Jesus to the cross. “We love because he first loved us,” John says (1 John 4:19). Paul makes it clear that it is the “kindness of God” that leads us to “repentance” (Rom. 2:4). Which means that discipleship, taking up one’s cross and following, should really be viewed relationally. It is choosing to respond to God’s love for us each day. It is choosing the intimacy of a relationship with him that results in his Spirit controlling us, intimacy that is based upon his love for us.
Does God want us to understand how much he loves us? According to the Bible he does, as Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 is that we might have “power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” so that we “may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” It sounds kind of like a contradiction, in a way. God wants us to know of a love we cannot ever fully know, to know of a love that “surpasses knowledge.” What this tells me is that even a brief and passing glimpse of such a love is enough to profoundly affect us, to cause us to fall on our knees and surrender in gratitude to such a God who loves us this way, to allow the presence of his Spirit to fill, lead, control, and display life through us each day, the life Jesus died and rose again to give us.
Yet, it all goes back to love, to taking the time to at least try to understand the way God feels about us each day. We may not comprehend where he is taking us, what may be right around the corner, or why we find ourselves in certain valleys, but we can know and be convinced of the deep love God has for us, that because of his love he has promised that he will “never leave us nor forsake us” (Heb. 13:5) and that nothing can “snatch us out of his hand” (John 10:28). We can live with the daily assurance that God is “for us” and not “against us” (Rom. 8:31) and because this is the case there is nothing in this vast universe powerful enough to “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). Have you thought about God’s love for you yet today? Have you thought about it long enough?