Advent: Love Looks Like Something
- By Jason Brown
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What a journey it’s been as we’ve travelled through these Advent weeks! We’re approaching the crescendo, but just wait… let’s savour what we’ve looked at so far.
We’ve talked about how Jesus’ first coming declares the certainty of His second coming… what a hope this is!
We’ve remembered that the Prince of Peace meets our troubled hearts and turns them into burning hearts… when we handle and touch His wounds, we receive peace!
And we’ve considered the joy of knowing that Jesus does all things well—every single detail of His coming declares the greatest joyful announcement ever to be made!
Let all of those truths sink deep and fill you with such hope, such peace, such joy… It almost sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? That’s our beautiful Gospel—it DOES sound too good to be true, and THAT’S what’s so incredible.
This final week of Advent, we light the Candle of Love, and LOVE is indeed the culminating crescendo of this Advent story.
Why love?
You and I exist because of love! God the Father loved His Son Jesus so much that He made the world—made us—as a gift for His Son. And when we rejected Him and made a mess of things, He patiently had a plan to bring us back to Him. Loving us the whole time. And one day, every last broken thing will be erased, so that Unhindered, Uninterrupted Love can be enjoyed Forever.
You see, Love is everything. Love is God Himself.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:16 NIV
So God doesn’t just “have” or “show” love. He is the literal embodiment of love itself. He and love can’t be separated. Love is God. God is love.
Which means, love looks like something. More accurately, love looks like Someone.
The Christmas story is the story of God sending Someone to us to show us what He’s like. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the express image of [God’s] person” (Heb. 1:3 NKJV), so if God is love, then Jesus is the perfect representation of love.
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father…”
John 14:9 NKJV
He came so we would know what our loving Father was like. But we missed it. We didn’t see Him rightly.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
John 1:10-11 NIV
And though this world did not receive Him, He declared perfectly and ultimately just what Love looks like… He laid down His life to forgive us and purchase us back to Himself, even while we were pulling out His beard and spitting in His face.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10 NIV
“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.”
John 3:16 NKJV
When John writes that God “so” loved the world, he’s not just saying that God loved the world so much (quantitatively), he’s also describing the way by which He showed that love. In other words, “God showed His love to the world in this way: He gave us His Son.”
What a gift. Jesus forever chose to become human, and the wounds He endured to purchase us with His blood are forever upon His body. Still today!
Our great hope is that the Messiah who came as a baby, fulfilling thousands of years of prophecy, will come again as He promised.
Our peace is found in a Man with wounds, who tells us that He completely purchased our peace with the Father—our hearts no longer need to be troubled.
Our joy is full as we listen to the angelic message: “Good news! For the whole world! God has come! He cares for us! He has made a way back to Himself!”
And who is this God who has done it all? He is Love. He loves us so fully and completely that it should demolish every last shred of insecurity and doubt in us. His best righteous robe He has thrown around us, ring on our finger, crown on our head. He has prepared a place for us, at His table, seated by His throne. Oh, what love is this!!!
Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb… Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!
Rev. 7:10,12 NIV
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