Many people long to be loved. It is how God designed us — to love and be loved. God is love and has created us for relationship with Him, a loving relationship.
When we love someone deeply, we invest in them wholeheartedly. We consider them in everything and give way to their needs. We sacrifice personal gains or achievements to lift them up, because when we love deeply, we become one with them. Lifting them up feels like we are both being elevated, as if we are on this journey together.
A Sad Reality
When someone receives deep love, they are initially overwhelmed by it. Often, they are grateful, but over time they become accustomed to it. The benefits, favor, and access they gained through the relationship now feel stable, and they begin to stand on their own without much, if any, help. They start to look beyond the relationship that once nurtured them, feeling as though it no longer offers them anything new. They begin to search elsewhere for someone to ‘love them,’ claiming they no longer feel loved, though nothing has changed except that they have become familiar to the love they had been receiving and the person(s) loving them.
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The moment someone new shows up and gives them a bit of attention, they run off, leaving behind the ones who loved them deeply. Those who remain are left broken, forgotten, and shelved. As they look back over their shoulder, they say with a glance or a brief expression, “You know this is what’s best for me; I’ll stay in touch.”
A Call to Love Despite the Risk
God Himself took the chance to love us deeply, even knowing the risk of rejection, being used, and ultimately abandoned. Just as we often experience in human relationships, where deep love can lead to betrayal, God faced this with His own people time and again.
In Jeremiah 2:2-5, He remembers the devotion of Israel, likening their love to that of a bride following Him through the wilderness. Yet, despite His care and provision, His people turned away, following worthless idols. God’s heart is heavy, asking, “What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far?” He loved them deeply, but they abandoned Him.
This pattern is starkly depicted in Ezekiel 16:8-15, where God speaks of Israel as an unfaithful bride. He clothed her, provided for her, and lavished His love upon her, only for her to chase after other lovers. “You trusted in your beauty,” He says, and instead of remaining faithful, she gave herself to others, forgetting the deep love He had bestowed upon her.
In Hosea 2:5-8, God describes His people as chasing after other gods, falsely attributing their blessings to these idols, even though it was He who provided their food, drink, and wealth. Yet, they proclaimed, “I will go after my lovers,” failing to recognize that all they had came from God’s hand.
Perhaps most tenderly, in Hosea 11:1-4, God recalls how He raised Israel as a child, teaching them to walk and caring for them like a father. Yet, the more He called them, the more they turned away. “They did not realize it was I who healed them.” Despite His nurturing love, they continually rejected Him.
Most of all, the greatest and deepest love ever shown is God’s love toward each of us.
In John 3:16, we see the ultimate expression of this love:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
God loved us so deeply that He gave His Son, Jesus, to cover all our debts and remove every obstacle we have acquired in our lives that kept us from having a relationship with Him. Through Jesus, God made it possible for us to experience an intimate, deep, and eternal loving relationship with Him — not by our own efforts, but by trusting and believing in what He has already done. He has made the perfect loving relationship with Him within our reach.
All we have to do is believe in Him, turn away from all other lovers, and love Him deeply, just as He loves us.
God’s experience is a reflection of our own.
We invest deeply in love, only to sometimes face rejection and often abandonment. But if God, who loves perfectly, faces rejection and abandonment—even after giving us the world and everything in it, along with His very own Son—who are we to shy away from loving others deeply, even at the risk of eventually suffering because of that love?
“If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” 1 Peter 2:2-21
In His unfailing love, God sets the ultimate example. Even when we turn away, He continues to pursue us, offering His love over and over again. Just as God took the chance to love us deeply, knowing we might abandon Him for other “lovers,” we are called to love deeply, without fear of rejection.
After all, true love—the kind God has for us—is worth the risk. Why? Because in loving deeply, even when we are used, rejected, and abandoned, we somehow, in an unexplainable way, experience what Paul wrote to the church in Philippians: ‘I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death’ (Philippians 3:10). When we love like Christ, we also suffer like Christ. It is in this brokenness, this woundedness, this rejection and abandonment—when all we did was love deeply—that our intimacy with Jesus deepens. For He led the way in the greatest and most passionate act of love toward others ever known in the universe though He was rejected by His very own.
Though He loved, and loves mankind, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem.” Isaiah 53:3 (NIV)
Don’t Waste This Opportunity for Deeper Love for Jesus
I want to encourage you, now that you know—or are being reminded of—the reality and often the cost of deep love toward others, not to waste their rejection of you. Instead, lift up your eyes to where your help comes from (Psalm 121:1-2), knowing, like Stephen (Acts 7:54-60), who was also rejected for his love, that you will see Jesus standing and looking into your face, just as you look into His. Know that you and He have gained something very special, a bond that only the two of you share and will continue to share in eternity.