LOVE CHOSE YOU!

The greatest love story ever told is a page-turner. It grabs your attention and holds you breathless. You are a witness to pure, unconditional love, a love undeserved, but given without restraint. It is a love story of desire, not of sexual desire, but desire for relationship. As the story unfolds, you begin to understand the depth of caring as the Author uses words like “beloved” and explains the magnitude of love. The Author is laser-focused on helping you, the reader, understand the depth and complexity of this kind of love. This is a love that risks everything and is given without restraint. As you read, the Author's intention is to stimulate your hope, a hope that you may experience this marvelous love.  Then you realize, this story is about you! You are the recipient of Love’s desire! God Himself is love, and He desires you! Almighty God wants to be in relationship with you. “In His love, He chose you (actually picked you out for Himself as His own” (Amplified Ephesians 1:4) through Jesus Christ.

You are His beloved, His highly favored one (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Luke 1:28; Ephesians 1:6, same Greek word as “beloved” in Luke 1:28). From the beginning, He chose you for relationship, to experience His gift of salvation, the outpouring of His love (2 Thessalonians 2;13; Ephesians 1:4, 2:4). This required your sinful nature to be replaced by His nature. With the purest of unrestrained love, Jesus sacrificed His life for your sins and paid the price for you to be washed clean. By His action, you were set apart for God and made holy. The word for this is sanctification (1 Corinthians 6:11). Jesus made you just as if you had never sinned, that is, He justified you, declaring you free from all guilt and condemnation (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 8:1). His action provided a way for each believer to have restored relationship with the Father, and experience the fullness of His favor. Jesus is the Source of your new life and behavior (1 Corinthians 6:11). By the power of the Holy Spirit, you are forever changed. Your belief in these truths has led to your transformation into this holy state (2 Thessalonians 2:13).

The foundation of this miracle is love expressed through Jesus Christ. You who were once with a sin nature and condemned, now have the nature of Jesus (1 John 4:17). The Father destined you, because you believe in Jesus, to be molded into Christ’s image, the image of the Holy Son of God; you share inwardly His likeness (Amplified Romans 8:29). This allows you to have intimacy with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was the Father’s will and Jesus’ sacrifice that took your punishment for sinfulness, causing this transformation to occur. Now you and Jesus share the same Father; He is your Father because of your new birth (Romans 8:15,16). Jesus “stands first in line of humanity that He restored” (Message, Romans 8:29) as the result of His loving sacrifice. He is not ashamed to call you “brother” or “sister” (Hebrews 2:11). By the miracle of Love, you have been raised to a “heavenly condition” while living on earth (Amplified Romans 8:30). You now enjoy all the rights and privileges of the same inheritance with Jesus; you are a fellow heir (Romans 8:17). You are a child of God (Romans 8:16). Now you are holy before God, blameless in His presence, without fault or sin; you are no longer separated from Him (Ephesians 1:4). You are living in a position of love that is meant to be experienced as you understand the width, length, depth and height of His love for you (Ephesians 3:17-19). The Father wants you to “take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights!” (Message Ephesians 3:18); live in the fullness of His magnificent love for you!

This is your love story. God’s love came to you with boldness, despite your sinful nature. In mercy, God embraced you, taking your “sin-dead life and making you alive in Christ” (Message Ephesians 2:5). The force of His love so intense it had to manifest itself in this way! Glory to God for His persistence and desire! Glory to God for His extravagant love! Now live in expectation in the fullness of God, knowing that Jesus poured out His life so that you may experience this gift of grace, the abundance of His love. Praise be to God!