LOVE'S SACRIFICE

"In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:10, NKJV)

Behind the life Christ lived on earth, the nature of the death He died on the Cross and His resurrection, we are confronted with the unfailing, unconditional love that He and God the Father has for humanity – a love that gives, and gives sacrificially!

“In this is love...”! This is how we must perceive our responsibility and the debt we owe to love one another; to love the next person purely because God loved us first, and not because they can love us in return or deserving of our kindness.

Furthermore, the nature and extent of our love should also be based on the capacity that we have received from God and the nature of the love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts (Rom 5:5). God the Father sending “His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” speaks to the sacrificial nature of God's love for us. It was neither easy nor comfortable for Jesus to do what He did for us, but it was needful for us to have such a saviour. He denied Himself to love us as He did. The God-kind of love identifies with the other person’s need. “In this is love...”

 Sacrifice is not a very popular word. Indeed, secular society is consumed with a kind of individual freedom which encourages self-centeredness and will view aspects of Christian care that God’s love inspires as wholly unacceptable intrusion. But we are not of this world even though we are in it (John 17:15-16), and we have the capacity and the grace to love selflessly and unconditionally.

We must resist the tendency to deny who we are. Self-giving is the peculiar nature of the God-kind of love; it is our nature. By faith we can obey God and live as Christ lived even when our labour of love is not appreciated.

It must be by faith, therefore, that we receive the challenge: “...if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another”. Love one another as God has loved you! As you yield to this divine challenge, you can expect your influence for God to grow deeper and wider. In this is God’s name glorified!

Live within the constraints placed on you by the love of Christ (2 Cor 5:14); let love be the central motive for the good that you do; and refuse to shrink from doing the right thing at the right time for the good of another when it is in your power to do so, even when such action demands that you make certain personal sacrifices. “In this is love...” 
We are not diminished by love, rather we are affirmed by it - "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God"! (1 John 4:7)

Pastor Victor Ubani