Advent: Love

LOVE

Today as we celebrate love in the advent of Christ, consider the words to the song, O Come All Ye Faithful. O come let us adore Him. Joyful and triumphant, let us adore Him. The call is to the faithful to come and adore Christ. The call is to the faithful to regard Christ as more precious than all the world. To consider Christ alone as worthy of all praise, devotion, honor, and glory. The call is to remember that the Lord and Creator of all that we see condescended to this earth and was born in the flesh.

But why do we do this? Why do we come to adore him? Why do we love him? The beloved disciple answers these questions for us in 1 John 4:19 – We love because He first loved us. God loved us and so we are able to love.

Our concept of love has become so corrupt in our day and we are very far removed from a biblical definition of the love of God. So many would say that because God is love, he tolerates our mistakes and shortcomings. So many preach a gospel that describes God’s love as being centered on mankind. But the God of scripture is love because He gives to us that which is the most precious in all the universe, Himself. He gave His son. Why did He give His only Son? Because God, who is love, hates sin. He hates sin because sin belittles His love and wars against it. It is because God is love that He hates sin. He sent His son to die the death that we deserved because of our sin. He demonstrates His love in this - that while we were still in sin, Christ died for us.

Do not think this Christmas that God’s love is centered on you and your life. Instead look away from yourself and see the love of God in the manger and on the cross. Do not think that God’s love is so easily defined. Instead, let us know the love of Christ, it’s height and depth and breadth and width. And to know the love of God we must see the baby laid in the manger and we must see the man on the cross with our guilt upon His shoulders.