Love: is defined as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties;
warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion; and the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration.
– Webster’s Dictionary
It seems fitting that our final word in Advent is LOVE! Love is the very heart of Christmas. Jesus is the love of God that took on flesh and bone. Love that gave up everything to be born with nothing.
God is love! It is something that we may have heard a thousand times before, whether in church or on the street corner, from a friend or a perfect stranger – God is love.
John, the Beloved disciple, wrote, “My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. (1 John 4:7-10)
It is God who initiates love and we reciprocate it. We love because God first loved us. God’s love for us began before we were ever aware. God loved us first! Can you fully grasp that truth? Because of God’s amazing love for us, Jesus was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice so that we could have a loving relationship with God.
John continues, “My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!” (1 John 4:11-12)
Love continues to shine as God is revealed in our love toward others. The way in which we live out Love is the expression of God’s love we have towards others. When God first loved us, we were unlovely and unloving, unworthy to be loved by a holy love. The truth is, by loving us, God makes us worthy of love. Love itself transforms us. Because we are loved by God, we become children of God – the beloved. When the love of God flows through us, it transforms another life, changing that unloving person into someone who also has been born anew of love, then we truly know God.
Love is the overflow of God’s delight that issues in creation. Love is the outreach of God’s mercy that enters as a baby and redeems the lost with a cry of agony. Love is the outpouring of the transforming Spirit that permeates all things, quickening them and making them holy. God’s love is first and last and utterly constant throughout the long, unmarked middle. Friends, may this be the love in which we daily abide, and the love that we extend to others.
A prayer for us today: Lord, as we celebrate Christmas may we continue to be filled with the wonder of Advent and all that it holds. May we seek to live a life of love in all we do. May we be filled with Your love as we celebrate the Christ Child. May we emulate love throughout this season and into the year ahead. May we abide in love, joy, peace and hope with every breath we breathe. Amen.
Happy Christmas!
Pastor Jenni
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God
1 John 4:7