A love relationship with God?

God’s purpose and desire in creating people in his likeness is that we experience a harmonious relationship with him; this is the real purpose of life, ignored or disregarded by so many.

And this harmonious relationship should be one of love! God is love, and he made persons in his likeness that he could love and that could love him in return. But loving God seems bizarre: so many people deny his existence, avoid him, or even hate him. But since loving God is our raison d’être, those who miss out on that harmonious relationship end up truly frustrated. Indeed, those who spurn God’s loving presence wander aimless, lost, and confused – and their bad relationship with God is the source of their inner distress.

The Bible says that God loved us first: he is the one who desires a good relationship with us. Human sinners don’t want God to get close and personal, for God is holy, and we feel his disapproval. Yet he is kind to the unworthy creatures that we are and comes looking for us. “God so loved the world [therefore, you] that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish [in an aimless existence here and hell hereafter] but have eternal life”. He loves us so much he sent his Son to save us – at the cost of his horrendous suffering on the Cross; and he warmly invites sinners to be reconciled to him. When we are converted and start to follow Jesus, doing what he taught us, then God loves us in a further way; for Jesus said, “He who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14.23). God is glad to find hearts that open to his love and respond in loving obedience to him. He is pleased to find people in tune with his heart and purposes.

Jesus radically laid down the first of all God’s commandments: to “love the Lord your God with all you heart and… soul and… mind and… strength” (Mark 12.30). This is his main command, because he loves us and wants us to love him in return. In fact, “we love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). He wins our love by granting us salvation by grace – undeserved love; our gratitude for being saved is the beginning of our love for God.

We are therefore called, by our conversion, to develop a love relationship with God, responding to his great love for us. To love God is to seek to please him. We find ways to show him we love him: we can cultivate closeness and intimacy with him in prayer, we can submit to his perfect will for our lives, we can depend on him for help, unite our hearts with his and seek to fulfil his purposes for our lives. It’s a whole new relationship to cultivate, with a loving Saviour who is ever close to us.

Then as we learn to love Jesus, we become more like him. Indeed, we learn to love our neighbour as well, showing others something of the love that has touched our hearts. Furthermore, Jesus even calls us to love those of our neighbours who we consider our enemies; loving them, says Jesus, will show them how God loves; for he loved us when we were either indifferent to him or rebellious against his will, living in sin. “As I have loved you,” said Jesus, “you are to love one another” (John 13.34).

Clive Every-Clayton