Imagining God’s love
- Admin
- Mar 30
- 3 min read
March 30, 2025
"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness."
- Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)
We often describe love as that feeling or emotion that is stirred up within us when we have an affinity for someone or something. This affinity could be in the form of natural or instinctual affection, as is the one between children and their parents or between siblings. This kind of love, according to Greek philosophy is referred to as Storge or familial love.
Philia is the fondness that we show towards our friends, people, places or things that we have come to know over time and are comfortable with, while Eros is the passionate attraction between a man and a woman that is often demonstrated by the expression of physical acts of affection.
Agape is sacrificial, unconditional and selfless love. It is the kind of love that God has for humanity, and it is the ultimate kind of love. God has demonstrated this love in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”
The scale and magnitude of this love is unimaginable. That God Almighty, a perfect God, would be mindful of man, an imperfect being is beyond imagination. To consider him enough to visit him (Psalm 8:4). That despite man’s sinful nature, God, with His eternal and invincible attributes, became human, died for man’s sins so that man could be with Him in eternity. (Romans 5:8). What is more is that God calls those who know Him (and are recipients of His love) “His children” in 1 John 3:1.
The limitlessness of God’s love for us is just beginning.
There is no end to this love because it is everlasting (Jeremiah 31:3). Even when we err or go astray, God is upset “for a little while” because according to Isaiah 54:8 (NLT) God says that “In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer”.
As Christians, given the challenges that we face every now and then, we need to be assured and reminded of God’s love for us. We need to let our imaginations go wild from time to time about His love for us especially when we encounter situations of lovelessness around us either from people, members of our families, our colleagues at the workplace, our friends at school, people in church, our spouses or from life itself, through hardship, difficulty and challenges.
In Romans 8:35, Paul asks the question, ”What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” He answers reassuringly in verses 37 and 38 that not only are we more than conquerors over these situations through God (who has loved us), there is nothing of such nature that can separate us from this love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
Frederick Lehman in his popular hymn, “The love of God is greater far”, imagined that if we filled the oceans with ink, and the skies were made of parchment - a material used to write in the old days, and every tree was like a pen and the 7 billion humans were writers by trade, we would drain the oceans dry because the skies, though stretched from one end to the other would not contain all we have to write about the love of God.
In our tough and lonely moments, when we feel unloved, neglected and perhaps abandoned, crushed in spirit under the weight of life’s pressures, when we think we are at the boundaries of God’s love for us, we should remember that at such times as these, through the encouragement that scripture provides, the limitlessness of God’s love for us is just beginning.
Song of Worship
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end
They are new every morning, new every morning
Great is Thy faithfulness O Lord, great is Thy faithfulness
Prayer - Dear Lord, may the faithful, endless and everlasting love of God continue to manifest in my life, especially in those moments when I think I am at the limit of God’s love, let me feel God’s love ever so more in Jesus’ name. Amen.