2023-05-25 “We love him, because he first loved us.”

I John 4:19  “We love him, because he first loved us.

God’s First Love is the root and cause of our love for Him.  This “love” is that “love” which is both felt and exhibited.  The first recorded exhibition of God’s “love” for us is recorded in Ephesians 1:4 where Paul plainly tells us that He “hath chosen” His Particular People “in love” “before the foundation of the world”.  Then when Adam disobeyed God, causing him and all his posterity to fall in sin (Romans 5:12), God exhibited his “great love” (Ephesians 2:4) when he made clothing for Adam and Eve to cover the shame of their nakedness.  Then, perpetually, with untold material blessings and protections and provisions and consolations, God lets us know that He loves us with a “great love”.  His “love” is so “great” that He sent His “only begotten” and “beloved” Son to Redeem us from sin and sin’s penalty.  Paul tells us that “Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2)!  Now, we enjoy a daily diet of God’s “love”; for, our “Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace” (II Thessalonians 2:16).  So sure, and so enduring is God’s “love” for us; that absolutely nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).  Amazingly, there comes an instant in the life of every Child of God in which the Holy Spirit works within us to give us Spiritual Birth, and at the very moment of that Birth, we find that He has given us a strong and sure “love” for Him, which compels us to worship and serve Him.  Thus, “We love him, because he first loved us.”!