In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

The love of God is the foundation of the entire spiritual life. Not our love for God. That’s very important since that’s the greatest commandment. But underneath our love for God is God’s love for us. More foundational than our love for God is God’s love for us. Our love for God is simply a response to God’s prior and initiating love for us.

We will not go higher, or deeper, or further, than our experience of God’s love for us.

Moreover, when it comes to God’s love, the greatest example of that love and the proof of that love is found in the cross of Christ. That God would send his own Son to the planet to become a man and then die on a cross, bearing our sin, is the greatest proof that God cares about us. God cares about us more than we could possibly fathom.

John White, a psychiatrist and writer, penned passionate words about the cross and God’s love:

“He welcomes you because his Son died for you. His breast has always yearned for you and his arms yearned to enfold you. Christ’s death has now made it possible for the Father to do what he wanted to do all along. So come boldly – sprinkled by blood. Let him enfold you to the warmth of his bosom while his hot tears wash over your body.

“Hot tears? Does the expression sound irreverent or sentimental? I have no words that do justice to the love that led to the death of God’s Son. The universe ought to have stopped in its tracks, and I, for one, am sorry it didn’t. No more heinous crime was ever committed against God nor greater act of love consummated on behalf of the criminal. Are you blasphemous enough to suppose that your dead works, your feeble efforts can add to the finished work of a dying Savior? ‘It is finished!’ he cried. Completed. Done. Forever ended. He crashed through the gates of hell, set prisoners free, abolished death and burst in new life from the tomb. All to set you free from sin and open the way for you to run into the loving arms of God.” ¹

¹ John White, The Fight, 88.