The Love of GodSample

Day 1 Devotional

The Love of God

The Apostle John, in several places in his Gospel, refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. By this phrase, John did not mean that the Lord loved him more than He loved the other disciples, as some Bible readers have mistakenly thought. Instead what he meant to convey with these words was his own overwhelming sense of God’s love for him personally that permeates all his NT writings. This explains why Bible scholars often refer to him as the Apostle of love.

John wrote the epistle of 1 John and his Gospel as an old man more than fifty years after the ascension of Christ but his overwhelming sense of God’s love still shines through all his writings.

This is what John wrote in 1 John 3:1 (KJV): Behold, what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us! This is how the Message Bible translates this: What marvellous love the Father has extended to us!

Over the course of this 5-Day Plan, from 1 John 4:7-21, we shall explore how first, the Apostle John gives us the gospel’s definition of God’s love. Second, how he reminds us that, through the gospel, God permanently displayed His love to us. Third, how the Apostle then reminds us of why and how we the gospel empowers us to demonstrate to God, and to others, this love of God in our own Christian lives.