THURSDAY 23rd
1 John 3:1
‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.’
We come to the third chapter in this epistle today, now I know that originally this would have been one large letter, and that the chapters and verses have been added later to enable us to navigate through the word of God, but what a good point to start a new chapter with. The first sentence from the KJV which I was brought up on and remember so easily reads, ‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God.’
‘Behold, what manner of love’, KJV, ‘See what kind of love’, ESV, ‘See what great love’, NIV, CSB, the Amplified Bible says, ‘See what an incredible quality of love the Father has shown to us’.
The various versions call us to stop and think, consider, ponder, mediate on the love that God the Father has given or bestowed upon us.
It is a love that we most certainly do not deserve, it is a love that reaches beyond anything that we can consider in the natural, it is a love that goes beyond all and any human boundary we may put up, it is a love that is eternal and true. A few days earlier we read the great chapter of love, 1 Corinthians 13, and it closes with the words ‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’
Think about how undeserving we were of anything that God so graciously gives to us, as sinners we fell short of his standard, and even as those who have been saved we still so often still fall short and yet he loved us and still loves us with a love that is almost beyond our comprehension. A couple of verses I often refer to because it says so much to me and to each one of us, ‘but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ (Romans 5:8) and in 1 John 4:10 ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ God loved us even though there was nothing in us worthy to receive that love! This amazes me, and therefore in the words of the various translations, stop, behold, see, look, and spend some time thinking of the manner of love, the incredible love which God has bestowed or given to you today and give him thanks.