A love until the end
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
SUMMARY: God loves us simply because we are His. We often forget that love already lives within us as Christians, and we shouldn't see the Christian life as a heap of precepts to earn God's love. Nothing can separate us from God's love, and even though the world can bring us down, the Spirit of God dwells in us. We are a new creation in Christ, and our past is on the Cross that liberated us. We must abide in Him and let Him transform us, so that we produce spiritual fruit and overflow with love. The love that God has for us is immense and we must believe and know it.
God loves us because we are simply "his". In our human condition it is unlikely that we can obtain a satisfactory knowledge of God's love. What we can be sure of is that He loves us to the end. What a comfort to know! God has told us that although we are in the world, we are not of this world. The prophet Isaiah tells us of his love in an incredible way: "Behold, I have sculpted you in the palms of my hands." (Is 49:16). Can you imagine yourself in the palm of God's hand?
The driving force behind all our activity as Christians should be the love of God, our relationship with him, but unfortunately we usually live on the defensive, spreading attempts, almost always unsuccessful, to please him, to seek his love.
The truth is that love already "lives" within us and we forget it. Doesn't the Bible say that God is love? Doesn't it also say that when we come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us? So why do we walk around like it's not like that? Why do we see the Christian life as a heap of precepts to "earn" God's love? In the letter to the Romans, Paul declares: "For this reason I am sure that neither death nor life, neither angels, nor principalities nor powers, neither the present nor the future, nor the height, nor the depth, nor any another created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. " (Rom 8: 38-39). Have you pondered, my sisters and brothers, the depth and affirmation of this incredible statement? He says that nothing that God himself has created can separate us from his love. A couple of verses earlier, the Word also says that neither tribulation, nor anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword (Rom 8:35) would serve for us to be snatched out of the Lord's hand.
Christians are in the world and no matter how much we try to avoid it and no matter how much holiness we reflect, pollution sometimes touches us and can even bring us down. When Jesus asked Peter three times, do you love me ?, the Lord already knew that Peter was going to deny him three times also despite the answers the disciple gave. He knows our weaknesses, our empty niches of purity and heartbreak. Yet He loves us to the end. Although the approach may seem ridiculous and exaggerated, the Son of God lives in us, all his holiness, his deity, his fullness was emptied on the Cross so that a new man, a new creature, “his workmanship” would emerge from each one of us , of a new spiritual clay kneaded with stardust. We cannot take lightly the fact that we are children of God. This is still a cruel world where generations of snakes worse than those of the first century continue to inhabit. But the Spirit of the most high dwells in us, we are - although we deny it with our attitudes - deposit of the love of God, our old man, our old nature was crucified together with Christ and is definitely dead. We are a new creation, a new creation, a new creature and our past is now on the Cross that liberated us 2000 years ago.
Jesus loves us to the end (John 13: 1) because He knows that we live in this world and we need Him and also because not all Christians have learned to "abide in Him" and that apart from Him, we can achieve nothing. Living and being in Christ means letting him act in us in such a way that that relationship transforms us, enlivens us, encourages us to produce spiritual fruit for the benefit of others and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) in our being. Our inner being, being in Christ, must overflow with love remaining in Him. In a certain moment of spiritual crisis, I looked for refuge in the Word and I found this immense revelation: And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love; and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 Jn 4:16). I hope it impacts you like me and gives you today the confirmation of love until the end that the Lord has promised us.
God bless you!
The driving force behind all our activity as Christians should be the love of God, our relationship with him, but unfortunately we usually live on the defensive, spreading attempts, almost always unsuccessful, to please him, to seek his love.
The truth is that love already "lives" within us and we forget it. Doesn't the Bible say that God is love? Doesn't it also say that when we come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us? So why do we walk around like it's not like that? Why do we see the Christian life as a heap of precepts to "earn" God's love? In the letter to the Romans, Paul declares: "For this reason I am sure that neither death nor life, neither angels, nor principalities nor powers, neither the present nor the future, nor the height, nor the depth, nor any another created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. " (Rom 8: 38-39). Have you pondered, my sisters and brothers, the depth and affirmation of this incredible statement? He says that nothing that God himself has created can separate us from his love. A couple of verses earlier, the Word also says that neither tribulation, nor anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword (Rom 8:35) would serve for us to be snatched out of the Lord's hand.
Christians are in the world and no matter how much we try to avoid it and no matter how much holiness we reflect, pollution sometimes touches us and can even bring us down. When Jesus asked Peter three times, do you love me ?, the Lord already knew that Peter was going to deny him three times also despite the answers the disciple gave. He knows our weaknesses, our empty niches of purity and heartbreak. Yet He loves us to the end. Although the approach may seem ridiculous and exaggerated, the Son of God lives in us, all his holiness, his deity, his fullness was emptied on the Cross so that a new man, a new creature, “his workmanship” would emerge from each one of us , of a new spiritual clay kneaded with stardust. We cannot take lightly the fact that we are children of God. This is still a cruel world where generations of snakes worse than those of the first century continue to inhabit. But the Spirit of the most high dwells in us, we are - although we deny it with our attitudes - deposit of the love of God, our old man, our old nature was crucified together with Christ and is definitely dead. We are a new creation, a new creation, a new creature and our past is now on the Cross that liberated us 2000 years ago.
Jesus loves us to the end (John 13: 1) because He knows that we live in this world and we need Him and also because not all Christians have learned to "abide in Him" and that apart from Him, we can achieve nothing. Living and being in Christ means letting him act in us in such a way that that relationship transforms us, enlivens us, encourages us to produce spiritual fruit for the benefit of others and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) in our being. Our inner being, being in Christ, must overflow with love remaining in Him. In a certain moment of spiritual crisis, I looked for refuge in the Word and I found this immense revelation: And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love; and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 Jn 4:16). I hope it impacts you like me and gives you today the confirmation of love until the end that the Lord has promised us.
God bless you!
