“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!…”
1 John 3:1 (NKJV)

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!…”
1 John 3:1 (NIV)

Your heavenly Father loves you! You may feel unloved and lonely, but if you realized how much God loves you, your love-tank would be full and overflowing. God’s love for you isn’t just some kind of intellectual or theoretical love. It’s tangible and can be seen. That’s why the writer in this verse said “behold…” or “see…” the love Father God has for us. God’s love for us can be seen; it can be experienced. Often believers will feel like God tolerates them or loves them because He has to, but that’s not true. Your heavenly Father is crazy about you! The word “lavished” means to “bestow something in generous or extravagant quantities”. God doesn’t just tolerate you or love you a little bit; He has generously and extravagantly poured His love on you! It’s more love that you could ever imagine.

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.”
Ephesians 3:18 (NLT)

There are innumerable different dimensions to God’s love, and there is always more of God’s love for us to discover and experience. Like the old song says: “It’s so high, you can’t get over it; it’s so low (deep) you can’t get under it; it’s so wide, you can’t get around it; oh, wonderful love”.

“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Romans 5:8 (NLT)

This is the extravagance of God’s love for us! When we were sinners (unholy, with no goodness in us at all); when we were at our lowest of lows with nothing to offer God; that’s when He poured out His love on us in a generous and extravagant quantity. And He did it by sending Jesus to die for us (John 3:16) – to die in our place.

“9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
1 John 4:9-10 New English Translation (NET Bible)

The extravagance of the Father’s love for us is that He dealt with our sin problem – because we could not. Not only has God has shown us mercy in not giving us what we deserve (punishment for sin), but He has extended His grace towards us in giving us His blessing and favour, which we don’t deserve.

God loves you. Ask Him to help you to understand this love today!

“He paid a debt He did not owe; I owed a debt I could not pay; I needed someone to wash my sins away. And, now, I sing a brand new song, “Amazing Grace.” Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.” – Lyrics by Ellis J. Crum