Chapter Four - Embrace
by Dane C Ortlund
Make it stand out
Embrace
Job 42:5 - I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
What is the love of God?
That is the same as asking what is God? God is love (1 John 4:8,16)
He made me so he could love me. Even if I feel undeserving or numb.
My growth can only go as far as I enjoy his embrace of me.
The Unknowable Love of Christ
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians was that we would have the power to know how much Jesus loves them.
Not just to have the love of Christ. To know the love of Christ.
Know what cannot be known. The surpassing-knowledge love of Christ.
In the Bible knowing is not just cognitive but profoundly relational.
Truly knowing is like the difference of seeing a postcard and experiencing the real place.
Unflappable Affection
Christ’s love is as expansive as God himself.
It’s easy to underestimate that. It’s impossible to overestimate it.
Jonathon Edwards, “The love of Christ is a love next to which every human romance is the faintest whisper.”
Filled with the Fullness
I am weak, faltering, mixed with motives, yet God delights in having the fullness of him in me.
Knowing his love is the means, and being filled with his fullness is the purpose.
This is not attained. It is received.
It is not by getting to work but by opening our hands and eyes heavenward to receive his love to grow.
His Settled Heart, Our Settled Hearts.
My growth is limited to the acceptance that God loves me.
His love is not calculating or cautious like ours. God is unrestrained. My sins do not hinder his love. This love will sustain me in this fallen world, in my imperfections. Knowing his love is what draws me toward God in this life.
John Owen - “So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more. Every other discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul fly from him; but if the heart be once much taken up with this the eminence of the Father’s love, it cannot choose but be overpowered, conquered, and endeared unto him….If the love of a father will not make a child delight in him, what will?”
Experiencing Diving Love
How do I experience God’s love?
I can experience his love as I look at Jesus and God sends me (pours on me) the Holy Spirit in my felt life.
Through emotions and affection, I can experience God’s love.
Like the sun, it provides light and warmth. Jesus is the light and the Holy Spirit is the heat. It is this that uglifies sin and beautifies righteousness, it takes me deeper into communion with God and uproots my sin.
But love by its very nature is not dependent on the loveliness of the beloved.
It is my sinfulness, messiness that makes Christ’s love so surprising and transformative.
Blockages to Knowing His Love
It isn’t easy. I find his love elusive.
I’m looking at the wrong life for his love. Mine is the wrong place. His life proves it.
My suffering doesn’t define me, his does! My pain is involuntary, he chose to endure it for me. My pain should push me towards him where he endured what I actually deserve.
If Jesus himself was willing to journey down into the suffering of hell, you can bank everything on his love as you journey through your own suffering on your way up to heaven.
Whether I have ignored it, neglected it, squandered it, misunderstood it, or hardened myself to it—the Lord Jesus Christ approaches me today with arms open!
