“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)

The knowledge of God, the loyalty to God, the love of God: What a progression! Never forget that our entire goal and purpose in life is to know God, for this will lead us to being loyal to Him and to love Him. If the greatest of all is love, then the greatest endeavor is to know Him who is love (“God is love.” 1 John 4:16). We were created to love God, to enjoy the fellowship of love God had within Himself as a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from eternity past.

God’s love for us is so great that He saved us from the interruption of sin and our creaturely self-love, to return us to the place of responding to, enjoying, and basking in His love. He did this by the greatest love action possible:

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8)

Therefore, our purpose in life is to understand this God of love more deeply on a very personal level, as the apostle Peter writes:

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18)

The apostle John, whom Scripture calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” writes that our Christian life is not energized by how much we love God but by how much He loves us:

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

Our love for our Lord is derivative; it does not come from within us. We love in response to His overwhelming, amazing, unceasing, infinite love for us: “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Where is the practicality in this? Think about it—we may come up short of the glory of God in this matter of loving Him and then loving others, but with eternity now set in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11), we long for the day when our response of love to His love will be made perfect. That day will come when we become fully like our Lord Jesus who loved us and gave the ultimate sacrifice of love for us. Our knowledge of God will become perfect when we meet Jesus in eternity, and our love for God will become perfect.

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. (1 John 3:2)