The Perfect Love We Long For
​
Picture the scene. The beautiful bride walks down the aisle dressed in gleaming white as the groom, smarter than he’s ever looked in his life, stands beaming as she approaches. In fact, everyone is beaming, because you can’t help smiling in that moment. The arrival of the bride at her wedding day is a moment that connects deeply with human emotions. We love that moment – because we long for that love. The seemingly unbounded, untarnished love of the wedding day captures the yearnings of all our hearts.
The problem though, is that the wedding day isn’t a true picture of human love. Human love doesn’t stay untarnished and unbounded for long because our nature is to love ourselves well and to love others badly. We’re not as loving or as lovable as we want to be. So, where do we go with our great longing for perfect love?
2,000 years ago, someone stepped into human history who would redefine the boundaries of love. This was God himself, born as a man called Jesus, and on a mission driven by true love. His great declaration of ‘I will’ was a promise to love each of us in all our unloveliness. This is the love that we long for. A perfect, unyielding love which doesn’t depend on our loveliness, but dependent only on the character of one who has promised to love. God is love.
So, what does this perfect love which we long for look like? It’s a love which led Jesus to a criminal’s cross, where he bled and died because of our unloveliness and unlovingness. By dying to forgive all who ask him, he covers up the mess of our lives and dresses us in gleaming white. The filth of our unloveliness is removed allowing us to step into this perfect love story. We can finally experience the true reality of love.
As he stands waiting for us the question is asked, ‘Will you love, comfort, honour and protect, and, forsaking all others, be faithful as long as you both shall live?’. Jesus’ reply is an unwavering ‘I will’. The question now is ‘How will we respond to his love?’
Why not download Knowing God Personally, to find out more about this perfect man. Every term we run courses to help people think through who Jesus is and what his death and resurrection means. Find out more here.
​
​