10/01/2026
Read today's devotion, Big Words in the Bible: Love, from "His Word Our Delight," a collection of chapel devotions that instruct and encourage the reader that the servant’s work is joyful.
Ephesians 2:1-8—As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins . . . . But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.
We are considering the BIG WORDS IN THE BIBLE. We noted yesterday that the word LOVE when applied to God is always connected to Christ, and therefore, before all else, it proclaims how serious God is about all of his Word. For if he did not take the law so seriously, it would not have been necessary for Christ to struggle as he did to keep it, for example, in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, and, most of all, on the cross. And if he did not take his gospel so seriously, so great a price as his Son’s death on the cross would not have been needed to win our salvation.
Now think about this for a moment: If God is that serious about his Word and his love for us is so great that in order to keep it he had to send his Son to become a man, suffer hell, and die, then is it conceivable that God does not care what you do with his Word? Having purchased and won you at so great a price, could the love of God in Christ now ignore your attitude toward his Word by which you are saved? Imagine that you just bought your first car. It cost everything you had. Will you park it on a salt heap so that you can watch it become a hunk of junk and perish? Hardly! If you couldn’t do that with your car, how much less can God do that with you? He bought you at a price that cost him everything he had. And now he watches over you with the greatest care so that you finally reach the goal of heaven. Not a minute, not a moment passes without his giving you the undivided attention of that love that brought him down from the glory of heaven in order to win you.
Again, his expression of that love is inseparably connected to his Word, to his seriousness about the law and the gospel. In love God has blessed you with time and friends, with health and a measure of wealth, with intelligence and opportunities to use it. What must God do if you decide to put all those things in the service of self alone so that you become greedy and self-centered, lazy and indifferent—even towards him and his Word? What must he do in love? He must begin to take his abused gifts away. For they have become hindrances to your faith, ultimately destructive of that faith, by which alone we reach the goal he has set before us. What must he do if we cannot be bothered with the joy of heaven because we are so busy with the pleasures of earth? In order to be true to his love, to his Word, yes, to his Son by whom he showed his love to us, he must find a way to bring us to sorrow and suffering. What must he do if the church and her servants are so busy with this and that program and project that they no longer have time to be bothered with purity of doctrine, no longer tremble before the Word, no longer live to sigh “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening”—what must God do in love? If he allows that to continue, the church and her servants will ultimately cease to proclaim the only saving gospel. In love therefore, yes, in love for us, for his Son, for his Word, he must, yes, he must allow heresy, coldness, division, and dissension to enter the church in order to drive her servants again to their knees and then back to the Scriptures.
How should we then live, we who know that God’s love for us is great and that his love cannot be separated from Christ and from the Scriptures? How should we then live to whom he has come one by one with the blessings of time, of health, of wealth, of intelligence? Will you perhaps declare: I have been saved so that I can sin all the more boldly? What a disaster! Such a one has already died again in his sins and trampled underfoot the blood of Christ. We can but pray for you that God in love sends you now such suffering that you repent and by his gospel promises again be brought to life. Or will you say: My life is my own, so too my health, my wealth, my time; I will return to God only what suits me, what is convenient, what costs no effort and interferes with none of the things my flesh would rather do? Oh, how tragic. You are at death’s door, critically ill.
We can but pray that God in love will take away your time, your health, your wealth, your enjoyment of it, so that you again become strong in the knowledge that in possessing Christ you possess everything and apart from him everything else is burden and a heartache. Will you say: I am trying to do the right thing, but it’s so hard that I have decided that a little lust isn’t a sin and a little laziness isn’t so bad, and a little cheating can’t really hurt. Oh, may God’s love, which cannot be separated from Christ and the Word, see to it that you are caught in your compromises and suffer painfully their consequences; for if you are not, one compromise will give birth to another until nothing is left of honor or virtue, still less of love or loyalty to the pure Word. For those who do not want to suffer in the struggle against their flesh will not suffer much either in loyalty to the Word; they will gladly give it up in the end for the broad and easy road on which the world perishes.
Think of Paul’s description of God’s love in our text: “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” So great is his love revealed in Christ and in the Word that he will not carelessly or easily let you miss the glory purchased at so great a price.
Oh, may that big word LOVE inspire a love like his, a love inseparably connected to Christ and the Scriptures. May the love of God in Christ and in the Word move us to love him and his Word more than pleasure, more than convenience, more than health, wealth, time, friends—more than life itself. May the love of Christ who for us embraced the nails bring us to embrace the cross—the cross of struggle against the flesh, the cross of loyalty to the Word that would suffer all, even death, rather than depart a hairsbreadth from it. May the love of God in Christ move us to know that Word better each day and walk each day in closer harmony with it.
For then living on grace, supported by mercy, redeemed in love, we will become a blessing to one another, to our church, and to a perishing world. And what more could you ever want from life than that?
From His Word Our Delight © 1998 Northwestern Publishing House. All rights reserved.
