The Only Response

I am still fixated on the truth about God’s furious love for me. I watched the movie and saw the lengths to which God will go to rescue us from our messed up situations and lives. From our sin. I don’t have any words to explain the love. Paul tried here.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19

His prayer is that we grasp it. My prayer is that I grasp it and you too. He tries to describe it more here and we glimpse the ferocity of God’s love, that nothing can separate us from it.

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

‘For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’^[a]

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[b] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39

The simple but profound truth is:

The more we grasp how much He loves us, the more we love Him.

The more we love Him the more we love our neighbour.

We have no human love that comes close to comparison with this divine love. We can try to compare it to the love a parent has for a child, or a man for his wife – and the bible does that – but we are flawed humans who cannot love perfectly and so such comparisons fail. We have to get to a place where the love of God overwhelms us daily. That love experienced through His mercy and grace and provision and forgiveness and through the power of His Holy Spirit moving within us. I wish I were more eloquent, that the feelings and knowledge I have bubbling inside me could be transmitted through this text.

He loves me. He has pursued me. He has cleaned me up. He has ransomed me at such a cost. He has called me His son. Think about that, we are not slaves, not servants, not courtiers, not relatives but we are sons and co-heirs. Have you ever thought what that means, what privilege, what honour? A member of a royal family is a representation of the kingdom to which they belong. Yes, as a citizen I represent my country but they, they embody the kingdom in a deeper more significant way. If I get drunk nobody cares how that reflects on the country but when the younger royals did, when Prince Harry misbehaved or Prince Charles had an affair it was a much bigger deal.

As an heir I carry the Kingdom of God wherever I go. Read that again. The Kingdom of God moves with me through my life because I am an heir. It’s not a fixed physical kingdom it is a spiritual kingdom so I carry it with me in my words, in my actions, in my attitudes.

If God has loved and continues to love me so fiercely, so ferociously, I ought to love others the same way because I am His heir, that love is my inheritance. Love not judgement. Love not criticism. Love not apathy. Love not disinterest. Love not injustice.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

That is life-changing. That is world-changing. That is me-changing.