But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 8:5
It is so easy to take love and trivialize it to the point of making it all about self and very little about anyone else. We throw out the word and give an expression here or there, but when life boils down, we rarely make decisions, behave, and more often than not, forget to respond out of love. Instead it looks a great deal like self.
My love for you is optional. At least that’s how I’ve justified it in my own mind and mainly because I have a choice to love you or not. Some would argue that, as a Christ-follower, I am “required” to love you. And while there may be some truth to that, it is still very much a choice. We become examples for each other on giving answers to some of life’s most challenging questions such as: “What about when I get hurt?” or “How can I love her, look what she did?” or “That man just stabbed me in the back, forget him!” And these examples serve as reference, defense in our own behavior to justify how we treat others. So we choose, without much thought, to make love optional.
But God’s love for me has NEVER been optional. The difference between the measure of God’s love for me and the optional love I give others is unmistakenably different. Because, when I am in the depth of sin, the darkness of self-consciousness, the option of love is dry and unmerited. And yet, at that moment, weathering the storms of life, the very action of Christ on the cross became the ultimate demonstration of the depth of His love for me — His unwavering love!
My hearts desire is to love as Christ loved! To see others, regardless of sin, as Christ sees them. To shed my self-contiousness and live in the brightness and fullness of Christ-consciousness that my love for others will have no options, but instead reflect what can only be a small, tiny demonstration of God’s love. Wow — what would that look like?