A life of loving and being loved, in the final analysis, is why we were created.
If our primary purpose in life is to receive and to give love then everyone can be a huge success in life regardless of age, intellect, physical ability, wealth or status. The wonderful thing about the way God set things up is that you don’t need to have a great intellect. You don’t need to have great beauty. You don’t need to have outstanding energy or physical strength. You don’t really need good life chances at all.
To be a total success in life, in God’s eyes; to achieve your highest purpose as a human being created in the image of God, you just have to be somebody who has learned how to receive love and give love.
It has often been said that life is not fair – and that’s true – of course it’s not fair! No one gets an equal amount of anything. If ‘fairness’ means everyone is the same then life is certainly not fair. But the big equaliser is that you can be a huge success as a human being if you learn how to receive and give love. God created us out of love – for love. That’s the main point of life.
So, with that foundational truth in mind, let me ask a really important question, the answer to which will determine the whole future of the Christian Church. What is the main reason we should tell people about Jesus? What’s the primary motivation for sharing our faith? Why should we share the gospel, the good news with anyone?
Is it because God commanded us to do so? That may be true, but I suggest that’s not the main reason to share the gospel with people. Is it because we need more people to fill our empty seats on Sunday? That may be true, but I suggest that’s not the main reason to share the gospel with people. Is it because we’re afraid they’re going to hell if we don’t get them to wrap their minds around certain theological abstractions? That may be true, but I suggest that’s not the main reason to share the gospel with people either.
I believe the primary reason we should tell people about Jesus is because we care about them and don’t want them to miss out on the whole point of life by not experiencing the love of the God in Jesus Christ! They will miss the main reason they breathe if they don’t experience God’s love and return that love to God and to those around them.
That’s why we should want to share the good news with everyone on the planet – so they can be fully human and fully alive, as God intended; so they can experience the power, the wonder and the glory of the kingdom of heaven now as a present reality, not a distant hope beyond the grave! To miss out on receiving God’s love and letting that love flow through us to others – is to miss out on the very essence of being human.
1 John 4:7-9 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live (i.e. have life) through him.”
To live in Christ, through Christ and for Christ is to know God’s love and prove that love by being people who love.