Because HE first loved us

09.22.10

Because HE first loved us.

I'm taken back by the fact that I cannot earn God's love.  It's counter-intuitive and doesn't make sense to me... 

Perhaps it's my paradigm that I was raised with:  Do good in school, and we will celebrate your successes.  Treat others nicely, so that they will treat you nicely.  Give to the poor, and it will be given back to you.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Gravity pulls me into the theology of "exchange."  If I do ______, then you'll do ______.

But this isn't God's picture of love.

 

1 John 4:19 (New International Version)

 ¹⁹We love because he first loved us.

God loved us in a "one directional" way.  We did nothing to deserve it.  We did nothing to earn it.  We can do nothing to lose it.

Romans 8:38-39 (New International Version)

³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Nothing can separate us from that love.


So if god loved us first, unconditionally.... and we are to love others uncondtionally...


Then why don't we?