For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.
Did you know that everything in the Bible, from the deep expansive darkness of Genesis to the new heaven and new earth of Revelation, are wrapped up in a singular intention: for God to display his love for us. These often-quoted (and sung) verses in Ecclesiastes give us a glimpse into the kind of deeply entrenched purposes that God had planned for our lives. One may ask: if God loved us so much, why do we see in the Old Testament thousands of years of disobedience from the God’s people and subsequent discipline from God? Why did God wait so long to address the problem of sin? Why did Adam and Eve have to fall at all?
Further, why did God create us in the first place, knowing full it wouldn’t take us long to muck it up?
Volumes could be written attempting to answer any of these questions, but the point is that in the Bible, there is a season for everything. For whatever reason, God allowed the Israelites to wander around in disobedience for ages before, at last, writing a new law around the hope and love that Christ would bring. He allowed sin to enter the world; he gave us a free will to follow him, or not. He wrote history knowing that Christ’s life and supreme love for us would be foreshadowed again and again in Old Testament. So, in the Bible, we have a perfectly pieced together puzzle that now gives a clear picture of a creator and his beloved.
And the unbelievable part: we are his beloved.
How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He would give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure…
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished …”“How Deep the Father’s Love For Us,” hymn
When Christ said, “It is finished,” and allowed his life to slip away to save the very ones who were mocking and spitting on him, he wasn’t talking about his temporal existence on Earth. In those three words, Christ referenced all 39 books of the Old Testament and all unwritten books of the New. Even in death, scripture was being fulfilled.
In John 19, after the soldiers customarily broke the legs of the other two criminals crucified with Christ, they did not break Jesus’ legs: “For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken (KJV).” This references Psalms 34:20, which says, “He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken (KJV).”
This supplies more proof that the love displayed in the Bible, and the entire plot from beginning to end, moves forward with focus and intention. God, then, created us with a purpose and a vision. Christ died for us because he loved us with a kind of love that is unending and everlasting.
Humans, oftentimes, aren’t very easy to love. We’re sometimes arrogant, selfish, self-loathing, greedy and prideful. But amazingly, it is at our worst when Christ loves us the most. It’s a love known as agape love. Father’s love their sons and daughters more than they love and value their own lives. But God’s kind of love is even greater than that. It’s a love that defies logic. A love that knows no bounds. A love that washes over us and leaves us changed forever.
What would happen in the world if folks who said they believed in Christ displayed just a fraction of his kind of love to, not just family members and friends, for that’s easy, but to strangers. Estimates say that there are 2.1 billion Christians on the planet. That’s 1/3 of the world’s total population. Can one imagine 2.1 billion people, every single day, sacrificing themselves for those around them. There’s no doubt whatsoever about it — the world would be radically and irrevocably changed. In fact, those who did not believe would be eager seek to know more about the Christ that we know.
This week, make it a point to love intentionally. Don’t worry about the people you already like to be around; your love for them is an automatic response. Seek out folks to love who don’t look like you, don’t talk like you or don’t think like you. Step out of the box, out of the boat with Christ, and bring part of what keeps you going every day to a dying and unbelieving world. Make them wonder what’s inside you that is so unbelievable.
Prayer
Father, your miraculous love for me is hard for me to comprehend. I love my kids more than myself, but I know even that doesn’t compare to how much you love me, even when I’m at my worst. I desire to display Christ’s love all around me. Soldiers tortured and crucified him, yet he loved them too. I don’t understand that, but I want to. Please bring more of Christ’s love for others into my heart. Constantly remind me this week to be more loving even to those I don’t like to be around. Thank you for your undying love and sacrifice. In Christ’s name…