There is no greater love than the love of God. In 1 John 4, we are told that this love is a powerful, living force that changes our hearts.
In the whimsical Christmas story about the Grinch, the Grinch’s heart is described as "2 sizes too small." He is grumpy, bitter, cynical, selfish and mean. He wants to be isolated from all others. As the story progresses, however, he responds to the pure love and genuine friendship of a young girl named Cindy Lou Who. Suddenly, he gains a new understanding of Christmas and realizes it’s about love extended to others. And then an amazing thing happens- “they say his heart grew 3 sizes that day”. We then see a new, changed Grinch who cares about others and wants to be with others. Although this is just a cute, feel-good fictional story, there are some parallels in our reading today about how God’s love changes our heart and our concern for others.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
1 John 4:7-12
“Perfected” in this passage means matured. This speaks to a process of change in our own hearts because the love of God abides or dwells within us. When we see the “unlovable” person...the mean person, the rude person, the bully, the critical and judgmental person...our natural reaction is to avoid, shun, dislike and perhaps even hate them. But, God’s Spirit can transform our natural love in to spiritual love that sees as God sees and loves as God loves.
“...God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:5-8
God didn’t wait for us to become “lovable”. He didn’t wait for us to show love toward Him. No, He loved us first and He loved us as we were- selfish, hateful, sinful, etc. If Cindy had not extended love to the Grinch, the story would have had no hope and the Grinch would have just become “ Grinchier”. If God had not loved us enough to send us a Savior, we would have no hope and we would have perished in the desolation of our sin and unrighteousness.
As the Grinch responded to love, he began to have concern and interest in the people of Whoville. He began to spend time with them and he no longer wanted to live in bitter isolation. We could tell that his heart had changed because of this. The world should be able to tell when Christ’s love changes our heart because they see it in the genuine interest that we extend to others...yes, even our enemies and the ones considered unlovable.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8
““But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
Luke 6:27-28
If someone knows Scripture, attends church, teaches Sunday school but does not extend love toward others, including the difficult to love, then they are not really understanding and yielding to the Spirit of God. A starting point is being grateful for the undeserved love God has shown to us. Do you find it hard to love as you think Christ would desire you to? Perhaps you even think that you don’t love God as much as you want to. Spurgeon offers some great advice:
“Yet we must not try to make ourselves love our Lord, but look to Christ’s love first, for his love to us will beget in us love to him. I know that some of you are greatly distressed because you cannot love Christ as much as you would like to do, and you keep on fretting because it is so. Now, just forget your own love to him, and think of his great love to you; and then, immediately, your love will come to something more like that which you would desire it to be.” (Spurgeon)
“We love because he first loved us.” There is great joy in heaven when God’s people gather together to grow in their knowledge of Him. We are not meant to be in isolation but to grow together and live life in harmony with each other. As our knowledge of God increases, our relationships with each other should grow closer as well.
From Enduring Word commentary about God’s transforming love:
“If we want to love one another more, we need to draw closer to God.
Every human relationship is like a triangle. The two people in the relationship are at the base of the triangle, and God is at the top. As the two people draw closer to the top of the triangle, closer to God, they will also draw closer to one another. Weak relationships are made strong when both people draw close to the Lord!”
As we celebrate the Christmas season, I hope you will not become lost in the hustle, bustle and stressful fuss but instead choose to focus on the love of God that Christmas embodies. There is no greater love, no greater gift than the gift of God’s love in the form of our Savior, Christ. There is no greater love and no greater gift that we can give than extending the love of God to others.
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
