WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: ‘See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down’ (Isaac Watts, ‘When I survey’). Reflect prayerfully on this picture of sacrificial love for you. Robust love GOD IS LOVE. The words leap off the page (vs 8,16). John does not say, ‘God is loving.’ That would be wonderful enough, but what he actually says is that love defines the character of God. His whole being is love. His very nature is love. The love John speaks of is no soppy, sentimental love, but the far more robust agape love. Agape love is based on commitment, not feelings; it is love which wants the very best for others and nothing for itself. It is interested in what it can give, never in what it can get. It is constant and unchanging. God loves us not because we are particularly lovable, but because it is his nature to love. Costly love John spells out for us both the cost and the consequences of that love. The cost is that God sent his Son and made him our ‘atoning sacrifice’ (v 10), the one through whose sacrificial death we are put right with God. The consequences are far-reaching, too. Before you leave today’s passage, go over it once more, listing the demands God’s love makes on your life. Respond: To ponder: ‘Love so amazing, so divine, shall have my soul, my life, my all’ (Watts, altered). http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-10-01