What kind of love
The apostle of love
By the time John wrote his letters he was an old man — the last of the apostles, who had leaned on Jesus' chest at the supper, watched him die, and met him risen. He had had a lifetime to think about the love of God, and when he comes to write of it, he cannot keep the wonder out of his pen.
Behold, he writes — stop and look at this — what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God. The word he uses for what kind originally meant from what country, as if this love were so foreign to anything on earth that it must come from another world. It is not merely that God tolerates us, or helps us, or even loves us at a dignified distance. He calls us his own children.
And John adds the line that closes the gap entirely: and so we are. It is not wishful thinking or a legal fiction. The astonishing thing is simply true.
“Behold, how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
— John, the apostle — 1 John 3:1 (WEB)
Stop and behold the staggering kind of love that has made you, personally, a child of God.
“But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God's children, to those who believe in his name.”
We let children of God become a worn phrase and lose its scandal, and we believe God loves the world in general more easily than we believe he loves us in particular. The interior work is to recover John's wonder — to let the lavish, otherworldly quality of the Father's love land on you personally, until being his child is not a doctrine you affirm but an astonishment you live in.
Each day this week, slow down on one truth and say it personally: the Father has made me his own child. Sit with it until it moves from a phrase you know to a love you feel.
It is strangely easy to grant that God loves the world and quietly doubt that he delights in you by name; the heart hedges the love into something general and safe. But John's wonder is personal — this love has been lavished on us, now — and a person who knows himself beloved in particular is past the reach of shame.
We can grow so familiar with the phrase children of God that it loses its scandal. John never got over it, and neither should we. The Maker of galaxies, who needs nothing, has set his affection on you — not as a project or a servant but as a son, a daughter, a child he wanted. The love is not measured out; it is lavished.
Most of us believe God loves the world in general far more easily than we believe he loves us in particular. But John's wonder is personal: this love has been given to us, and we are, right now, called his children. When did you last simply stop and behold the kind of love that has made you God's own child?
- Do I believe God loves me in particular, or only the world in general?
- Has 'child of God' quietly lost its wonder for me?
- When did I last stop and behold the kind of love that made me his?
Father, behold what kind of love you have given me — that I should be called your child, and so I am. Let the wonder of it find me today. Amen.