Love is something I believe we are always growing in. Our understanding of it, our capacity for it, how we experience it with others, and even how to receive it well is something we inherently long for. Yet the love we see, defined by our broken world, often falls short and often disappoints, leaving us wondering and questioning.
Thankfully, the Bible tells of a different kind of love. 1 John 4 tells us that God is love and that this love was revealed to us by sending his only Son into the world: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Should this feel incomprehensible to our minds, be reassured that we’re told this love is knowledge surpassing. Ephesians 3 reveals Paul’s prayer for the church — that we would be strengthened with power through His Spirit in our inner being, to ultimately know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Sometimes this feels far off and intangible. It will take a glorious eternity to fully know, but there is enough for us here. We’re told how love might look in our lives in 1 Corinthians 13 — that it issues out patience and kindness; that it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; that it rejoices with the truth; and that it never ends. It does not look like envy, boastfulness, arrogance, irritability, resentfulness, pride, or fear.
I think A.W. Tozer worded it well: “The love of God is one of the greatest realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end.”
This season, may our hearts truly know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ more. If we truly want to know and experience love, we need to know Christ. Then subsequently, we also ought to love one another, as God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. As we see glimpses of this love in our world, and even more evidently amongst our brothers and sisters in Christ, may our eyes be redirected to our Lord – our fountain and source of love eternal. We love because He first loved us.