Written and Media by Jonathan Bremer.
God’s love is a tricky thing to explain. Yes, God’s love is perfect. Yes, God’s love is, in fact, patient, kind, unconditional, and never-ending. So? What does that mean? So often we forget to think about the spiritual weight that these statements and truths hold. This is a reason why so many of us (myself included) take these things for granted or take them at face value without fully processing them. But the Easter season, in particular, reminds us of the deep and perfect love we receive unconditionally from God.
A great, yet non-traditional passage for the Easter season, demonstrates God’s love perfectly. Luke 15 illustrates several parables of Jesus that are characterized by the love that God has for us. The first is the parable of the lost sheep. Luke 15:3-7 says,
Then Jesus told them this parable: ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.'”
God’s love for us is like the man who lost even one of his one-hundred sheep. He pursues us, even though we are just one of his many children. He seeks us out until we are found and brought back to Him.
The next parable in this chapter is found in Luke 15:11-32. It is the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son demands his inheritance from his father and decides to go on his own and live life the way he wants to. The son wastes all of his money and is reduced to working with the pigs and eating the slop that they ate. Realizing his wrongdoing, he goes back to his father and asks to be hired and treated like one of the servants of the household. But his father embraces him with joy and takes his son back in. He clothes him in his best robes, kills the fatted calf, and throws a huge celebration. He was ecstatic that his son who was lost, had returned. This is how God embraces his lost children. He embraces the wanderers and those who repent and return. He loves each and every one of his children. Both the lost and the found. A love like this is not something we have to comprehend. It is directly intertwined with God’s matchless grace.
In both of these parables, the man and the father both risked a lot with their love. They were willing to accept the cost of their love, whatever that might be. This seems a bit reckless. Dare I say that God’s love is reckless? I do not mean reckless in the sense that it is foolish. Rather, I mean reckless in the sense that He is willing to take on all the costs and risks attached to his love. He paid the ultimate price for us and in that, his love does not care about boundaries or limits. God’s love is reckless. It is evident in the scriptures and we can latch onto that promise. As the song below says so eloquently,
There’s no shadow you won’t light up, no mountain you won’t climb up. Coming after me.
There’s no wall you won’t kick down, lie you won’t tear down. Coming after me.”
God’s reckless love is for us. He pursues us and desires that we accept the love He offers. Let us meditate on this every day. It is something we focus on heavily during Easter, but we also should on all the other 364 days of the year.
