Let’s pause today and reflect on the amazing fact that John draws our attention to here in chapter 3 of his letter. We are the children of God. We did not earn this status, for that would contradict what this level of kinship involves. The kind of love relationship that a parent has with a child far transcends the conditional relationships that are earned by achievement. We are not God’s employees, we are his children. My children will never lose my love no matter what they do. I could not switch that love off even if I wanted to. My children have a permanent claim on my heart, and this will always be the case. Because of this though, they have the capacity to cause me either great joy or great pain. If I did not love them, I would not experience the pain that children can cause when they spurn their parents’ love, but then neither would I have the joy of the relationship. The joy of having children is incomparable to any cost that is involved. Consider this: so great is the claim you have on God’s heart that you can cause him either immeasurable joy or grief. God has made himself ‘vulnerable’, in a sense, by loving us. We can choose, either to return his love and walk beside him, or shut him out of our lives. God will not stop loving you. His love, as the psalmists say again and again, is an everlasting love (Psalm 136). How will you respond to his love for you?
Reflect on God’s love for you.
Read 1 John 3:1-3.
