Matins Devotion: October 4, 2024
If you want to understand the love of God, go first to the Scriptures. Read them, study them, rejoice in them. And then, if you want to understand the love of God on a more personal level, become a father.
It’s a wild thing, becoming a father. Because when you hold your child in your arms for the first time, you can see that child’s entire life before you. And you know in that moment that things aren’t always going to go well. Your son is going to defy you, push back against you. He’s going to cast aside your warnings about sin and danger and plunge himself into sorrow. Your daughter is going to tell you that she hates you. She’s going to look your love square in the face and spit on it in rebellion. You will show them the path of righteousness. You know they won’t take it. And yet, you love them. You cherish them. You would give up everything to bring home these little ones that you know will one day stray from you.
And so it is with your God. God knows His children are going to stray from Him. He warns them not to devote themselves to idols, not to forget Him and His promises. And He says that knowing that they will, knowing that they will embrace destruction and sorrow, that they’ll spit in the face of His grace.
And yet, God loves them still. From the ashes of their destruction, from the stump of Jesse, He raises up a shoot, a Savior. He sends His Son into this world to become their brother, to live a perfect life, to be the promised sacrificial Lamb. When His children spit in His face, God responds by giving them everything, the blood from His Son’s veins, the life of His only begotten. That’s what the Father gave to the children of Israel and it’s what He’s given you. As Paul Gerhardt wrote, “O wondrous Love, what have You done! The Father offers up His Son, desiring our salvation. O Love, how strong You are to save! You lay the One into the grave who built the earth’s foundation.”
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