“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, 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, NIV.
It is through God’s immense love for us that we have access to salvation and eternal life with Him through Jesus Christ. An essential part of our faith is understanding and trusting in His love for us, even when we don’t feel it. When God feels far away, when we are waiting on Him for a blessing, for healing, or for strength to overcome a difficult situation, in these waiting periods, it is easy to forget that God’s love for us never changes, never waxes nor wanes, but is consistent and greater than we can even imagine.
I have had to learn and am still learning not to allow current and temporary circumstances to change my perception of God’s love for me. Still, we can remind ourselves through meditating on scripture that His love for us is evident in the act of sacrificing His only begotten Son for all of us, in the fact that the very reason we were created is to be in fellowship with Him, and in the fact that we, being made in His image, are the same demonstration of love because God is love.
And so, because we are made in the image of love, we are called to embody it in our daily lives. And as creatures of free will, we have a choice of whether or not to reflect that in our actions and interactions with other people. When the Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, He said “the greatest is to love God, the Lord your God, with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and secondly, to love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31). So this is how we embody our image. To love God means to keep His commandments (John 14:15).
That entails stripping ourselves of our sins, fleeing from any appearance of evil and temptation, and striving toward righteousness every single day. Thankfully, we have the Holy Spirit to help us in doing this. To love others often requires sacrificing our comfort for the betterment of our neighbor. It means to be present for someone when it’s not convenient. It means to pray for those we love and for those we aren’t particularly fond of (Matthew 5:44). It means to not live only for ourselves, or for our glory, but to live for and with others, with Christ in the forefront.
It can be really easy to forget all of this when we are so immersed in the world and in the worries and stresses that come along with it. To remind ourselves of His love and for encouragement to embody it, we have to meditate on His love for us through scripture and also through spending time with Him, praying for a deeper understanding of His love, and allowing His love to fill our hearts. As we bear our hearts to Him, He hears us and offers comfort to us directly and through other people.
I pray that as our relationship with God grows, our understanding of His love for us grows as well. I pray that God blesses us with the grace to demonstrate and reflect the love He has imprinted on our hearts to those around us.
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us,” 1 John 11-12 (ESV).
