Just Because He Loves

January 24

“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love,” I John 4:8.

Every thought, every word, every act of God is an expression of His love for us. God is sovereign over all the earth, and He has the right to do whatever He wants, and everything He does, everything He allows, is motivated by love. Even our trials are evidence of His love as Hebrews 11:5-19 conveys:

Because of His love for us, He will allow us to face trials because we need them to conform us more fully to the image of the Christ we profess to love and serve. In his letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 11, Paul says the following:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: He could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, and he, in holy fear, built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

And by faith, Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered Him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death when God provided the ram for the sacrifice (see Genesis 22).

As we read of our forefathers in the faith, as we recognize the trust they placed in the God at whose feet they had laid their lives, as we see the degree to which they trusted His love, can we not do the same in our moment of trial? Can we not say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” Job 13:15, just because we know He loves us?