Love that Transforms -- Love that Perfects

"God loves you, and there is nothing you can do about it."

I used to hear this phrase a lot. The same man who shared this every week in a meeting, though, did not seem to manifest this love fully in his life. The more that I thought about how much God loved me, the more burdened I felt, because this same God who loved me so much must have been unhappy with  me, since I was still sinning.

Then I looked again at the First Epistle of John:

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)

The same love that sent Jesus to die for our sins (1 John 4: 10), is the same love that gives us everlasting life (John 3: 16) and righteousness (2 Corinthians 5: 21).

The love of God does not  just cleanse us from sin, but this love transforms us from dead in our trespasses to everlasting life in which we reign:

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." (1 John 3: 1)

This love makes us "Accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1: 3)

For this post, I owe a heartfelt thanks to brother Bob George of "People to People" Ministries. "Love means absolutely nothing without acceptance." This revelation transformed my mind (Romans 12:2) to better appreciate God's love for me.

Because of God's great love for us, we have been perfected in our spirit man (Hebrews 10: 13), and thus we have boldness, because God the Father sees us, and He sees His own Son! Now that's a perfect love!