Weekly Devotional 20th of December 2024
by Bruce Billington
Advent Devotional – Week 4 Love
This week we will continue with the Advent – the coming of Christ, or the Incarnation. This is the final Advent session and is looking at the most amazing gift of the Advent which is love.
When we come to God’s love it is almost impossible to describe but let’s understand that God loves us with all His heart, but He expresses this love through His actions. Christ coming to the world is the greatest act of love because it puts our needs as His priority. In John, we are told why God did this.
John 3:16 – “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
This tells us that He loved us first and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
The whole Christmas story happened at a personal cost to God that went far beyond what any person has ever done for someone else. God signed himself up for a painful sacrifice before Christ was born. He knew our sin would separate us from eternal life with Him, and He knew we couldn’t help ourselves. The fix was going to be painful for God, but motivated by His love, He chose it anyway. We can be sure He knew exactly what he was choosing because of scriptures like this written about the Messiah to came over 700 years before Jesus was born. Isaiah says,
Isaiah 53:3-5 – “3 He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.”
God planned the first Christmas at the very foundations of the world. Obviously, He knew it would cost him terribly, but He had a much bigger objective than Himself. His objective was to make sure you and I understood that we are seen, known, and wanted in the family of God.
God made the first move to say, “I love you.” He saw what we needed, and He did it even though it hurt him. This is the very definition of love—valuing another so much that we are willing to cost ourselves something to communicate that value.
1 John 4:10 – “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
He was willing to watch his Son be born to suffer and die to get His point across to us. He knew what we needed most – it was a Saviour, and we could not provide one for ourselves. As a matter of fact, that was announced by the angel on the very night of His birth:
Today, in the town of David, a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:11).
God willingly sent Jesus that first Christmas and it was the greatest act of love our world has ever or will ever see, and it was done for us.
I am sure, in his great prayer recorded in Ephesians 3 the Apostle Paul was thinking about this. He prays that we would really be able to understand and receive the unbelievable love of the God of Christmas. He prayed that we would be,
…rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19).
What an amazing event Advent is, what an incredible God we have. His heart desires that we would be filled and overflowing with the fullness of Him. Let me encourage you to end this series by repeating Paul’s prayer above.
God bless you.
Bruce Billington