God holds nothing back in His love for us. His “agape” love is passionate, self-sacrificing; fully committed and all consuming, a deep, constant, unchanging love for us. His first commandment to His followers is to love Him with this same “agape” love - with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mk. 12:30; 22:37) - with everything! Some have tried to define loving God as obeying God. Obedience is surely a part of loving God, but we all know that you can obey someone without really loving that person. Love is not only obedience but it is also passion. Obedience without passion for God is not love; it is only discipline. And if discipline is all we have, in the end discipline will fail us. Webster’s unabridged dictionary defines “passion” as a “powerful, compelling and extravagant emotion”. This is why Christ’s willful sacrifice of Himself on the cross is called “The Passion of Christ”. This is more than what mere mortals call love - this is way over the top supernatural love! Another example of the passionate love of God is seen in the parable commonly called the “Prodigal Son” (Lk. 15:11-24). “Prodigal”, according to Webster’s, means “lavishly abundant, profuse, and wastefully extravagant”. Who is the real prodigal in this story? Not the boy although he is wasteful with his resources. But the Father is extravagantly “wasteful” with His love. The Father abundantly and profusely lavishes his love on the undeserving son. The Father (God) is the prodigal. Passionate love is not simply God’s choice - passionate love is His nature. He loves us with a perfect love - an everlasting love - a relentless, unquenchable, insatiable, immeasurable, inexhaustible, irrepressible, irrational, inescapable sacrificial love... a selfless love seeking nothing in return...
There is nothing we can do
To make Him love us more
And nothing we can do
To make Him love us less
He doesn’t love us for what we do
* Thank God *
He loves us for who we are
* His children *
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