What a beautiful way to join in that love by getting married during the Christmas holidays. As a bride-to-be or a groom you naturally understand that love was never meant to die. The whole point of committing your lives to each other is to always live, being that giving kind of covenant love for each other.
God is all about a forever romance. Although He did send His beloved Son to be born in order to live a life of perfect love and then die, that death was only the first part of the story. Jesus died For us; although perfectly pure and innocent, He lovingly volunteered to take sin (unlove) all into himself and then die, thereby also killing sin's power to separate us from an eternal love-relationship with God. Jesus died to kill the power of sin to ruin our hearts and lives -- so that real love could live free.
Jesus then overcame death itself and rose back to life, proved his resurrection to His disciples and then returned to heaven where, exactly like a bridegroom, he is preparing a place for those that love Him (believers are called his "bride') to live in this forever love. Jesus is returning to Earth to take us to live with himself where we will give and receive perfect love in unedning heaven. It is ALL ABOUT True Love.
This Christmas, remember that "We love because Jesus loved us First." (1 John 4:19) May Jesus the Messiah live in your hearts as we commemorate his birth.
Here is what John, the disciple who experienced Jesus firsthand for years, writes about God's love: 1 John 4:7 – 5:3
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son Jesus into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
This is how we know we're living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He's given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we've seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son Jesus as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. God loved us first.
If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is unmistakeable: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.
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