God's Love

"This is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
-1 John 4:10
Sorry this post is overdue but I was on a missions trip to Mexico recently which was a really great experience (recap post coming soon). A couple weeks ago I talked about God's holiness. Today I want to talk about the flip side of that, which is God's love. This is a very difficult topic to talk about because the love of God has so many aspects to it. I can't even begin to cover all of the love of God because it is so vast and deep. God's love is like no other love that exists on this earth. How? God's love is unconditional. What does that mean? This means that there are no requirements to receiving His love. Anyone can receive the love of God, it's given to all. Most love that we experience is conditional, meaning there are things we have to do to get love. For example, when a guy "loves" a girl, he usually has a couple conditions for continuing that love for her. For many guys it is that she is attractive, and if she loses that, the guy will no longer love her. God's love isn't like that. He loves us regardless of our condition. Another aspect of God's love is that it pursues after us. It's not a kind of love that is only received by us, but it is given to us by Him. What I mean is that we don't have to go to Him to receive His love, He goes to us and gives it to us. There are many instances in the Bible where people ran away from God but He chased after them. A great example is Jonah. There was a nation that had fallen in sin so much, but God wanted to redeem those people. God sent Jonah to be the prophet that would go to that nation and preach to them. However, Jonah refused, and ran away from God. Jonah went away from Nineveh to Tarshish. A storm arose on the ship, and Jonah realized that he had to get off the ship because he was the one causing the storm. After he was thrown off, a fish swallowed him up, and spat him up in 3 days. Jonah finally went to Nineveh and spoke the word of God to the people there. What can we learn from this? God showed His love to Jonah. Even when Jonah literally ran away from God, God still saved His life and allowed Jonah a second chance. God's love pursued after Jonah. But that isn't all. God also saved the people of Nineveh who sinned greatly against God. God didn't let Jonah's disobedience stop Him from loving the people of Nineveh or from loving Jonah. God's love is truly unconditional. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 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 8:38-39)
-Smart