Grace tidings: God’s extravagant love

By The Southern Eye | May. 22, 2022

One of the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him, “Teacher which is the great commandment in the law?” (Matthew 22:36) Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22: 37 -40).

With Dr Doug Mamvura If we only had a true revelation of God’s love for us, the vast majority of us would live victorious lives. It is unfortunate that some of us have not yet had a full understanding and revelation of God’s love for us. Instead of allowing ourselves to enjoy God’s love for us we try to earn that love by “loving” Him through our own efforts.

This is a very fascinating portion of scripture which hasn’t been fully understood by most of us as believers. The vast majority of believers try to follow that commandment of “loving God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind”. However, they have discovered that this is an insurmountable task. There is no human being who has been able to do that on this planet. Why would Jesus give that commandment when He knew that none of us was capable of loving Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength? Does this mean that Jesus was unjust to ask people to do something that was impossible to perform?

It is very important for one to understand the context and background to this story.

We need to clearly examine the question from this Pharisee: “Which is the great commandment in the law?” The key word here is “law”. You and I are no longer living under the dispensation of law, but grace. I have dedicated acres of space in my previous articles about the difference between grace and law and regrettably, I will not be able to cover that again in this article.

Suffice to say that no one was able to keep the law during that dispensation despite the cosmetic gymnastics by the Pharisees and scribes. This is why you and I needed a Saviour.

Jesus’s definition of adultery and murder among other laws was something that none of these people could fulfil. Only Jesus managed to fulfil the law. The same applies to loving God with all our heart, with all our soul and all our mind”. None of us is capable of doing that. Our own love outside God’s love is incapable of loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind.

Some of us believers think we are able to fulfil that commandment under the law and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Keep Reading

We have a good example of one of the disciples of Jesus, Peter, who thought was capable of loving Jesus to the extent of even dying for Him. After Jesus had told him that he would deny Him three times before the cock crowed, he boasted and declared that “Even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble”. He went on to say “Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny You” (Matthew 26:35). We all know what eventually happened when the “brave” disciple was confronted by a young village girl and told that he was one of Jesus’ disciples. Peter failed the test dismally.

I know some of us are quick to criticise Peter and yet we all have let Jesus down in many ways. We have denied Him through our thoughts, behaviour or actions.

Apostle John knew this very well. He never boasted about his love for Jesus. Instead he boasted about Jesus’ love for him. We see him in his own Gospel talking about “the disciple whom Jesus loved” referring to himself (John 21:24).

Jesus knew very well that you and I were incapable of loving God through our own strength, heart, soul and mind, hence He gave us a new commandment in John 13:33. “I now give you a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you”. This means that we have to first of all discover how He loved us before we can love one another. You can only give what you have.

In this new commandment there is something different from the first commandment. In the first commandment we are to love God and love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Loving ourselves is going to be directly related to loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. We have already seen that this is very difficult.

On the other hand, with the new commandment we start by discovering how God loves us and then we extend the same love to others. The Bible says God’s love has been poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). It is this same love that we are supposed to extend to our neighbour.

The more we discover true love demonstrated by Jesus Himself and how God loved us through Jesus Christ, the easier it is going to get along with our neighbour, family and friends. The key thing is to discover how Jesus loved us. This is revealed through the scriptures. One of the scriptures that we discover this is in Ephesians 5:1-2 (Message Bible) “Watch what God does and then you do it. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of Himself to us. Love like that”.

God didn’t love in order to get something from us. He loved in order to give everything of Himself to us. Our love as human beings is usually conditional unlike God’s love. We can only give God’s kind of love if we have a revelation of it. This is why we need to discover this extravagant love God has for us.

Apostle John had this revelation of God’s love for us: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

It is not about us loving God but about God loving us. Without this revelation we can waste much time and effort trying to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength only to realise that it is impossible and this is why Jesus gave us this new commandment. It is very unfortunate that some of us try to live according to the first commandment no wonder we live frustrated lives.

Apostle John says love is of God, which means that love originates with God. Any love that doesn’t originate from God is perishable. We can only demonstrate this love as we experience it from God. The one who struggles to love is one who hasn’t experienced God’s love. We love Him because He first loved us even whilst we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).

We can’t earn God’s love. He loves us unconditionally. The moment we discover God’s extravagant love for us, we are empowered to live victorious lives because if God be for us who can be against us? Jesus had this abiding awareness of God’s love for Him, hence He had no sense of rejection, no sense of separation from the Father. He knew that the Father “always hear Him”. His prayer in John 17: 20 -22, clearly demonstrates His awareness of God’s love for Him and the unity that existed between Him and the Father. We are also part of that same unity because He made it clear that God loved us the same way He loved Jesus. This is perfect love which casts out fear and empowers us. Discover this extravagant love and your life will never be the same again.