LIving Loved

Here is an excerpt from a book I’m slowly working on about my journey in receiving God’s love.

“Spiritual maturity is not about how much you know, but about how comfortable you are with love.”

— Leif Hetland

For much of my life, I believed spiritual maturity was proven by how much you loved God and others, topped off with your knowledge of the Bible. It is true that love is the singular defining characteristic of spiritual maturity. What I failed to realize, however, was that I was working from the wrong end of the equation—wearing myself out and offering little of real substance to God or anyone else.

One of the most profound truths I’ve discovered is this: you cannot give what you haven’t received. I was trying to earn what God was offering free of charge. Religion is full of these kinds of futile attempts. And it's not just in our relationship with God. The way we are in one set of relationships often reflects how we are in most others. My relationship with God wasn’t the only one suffering under the weight of my broken paradigm of love and performance. What I eventually discovered is that receiving God’s love would be the key to living wholeheartedly.

I love the first three chapters of Genesis. These chapters form what may be the greatest myth of human history—myth, not because it’s untrue, but because it is the foundational story that informs all other stories.

In Genesis 1, we get the creation story. God is rightly enjoying His creation, calling everything He made “good.” Then, in the latter part of chapter 1 and into chapter 2, the focus shifts to humanity’s creation. God creates humans as eikons—image-bearers who reflect His own nature. The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—operates in perfect unity and community, preferring and deferring to one another. God didn’t create Adam out of a need to be loved or worshiped, but out of the overflow of love.

Adam was meant to be a recipient of that love. Interestingly, the first thing in creation God calls “not good” is that Adam is alone. But I don’t believe Adam was lonely. There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Adam lived in community with the Trinity. I don’t think he lacked love; rather, I think he had so much love poured into him that he had no outlet for it. He needed a counterpart—someone to share that love with.

This is God’s design: that we would first receive His love, and then reflect that love to the world. It may sound like an oversimplification, but this is the divine order—receive, then give. Our love for God and others is a response, an overflow, a reciprocation of the love we’ve already received from Him.

In fact, I would argue that the way you love others is a direct reflection of how you believe God loves you. Above all else, we are designed to live loved by God. If we don’t start there, we may never head in the right direction—and may even find ourselves completely lost.

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment in all the law was, He responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.” In a Hebrew mindset, loving the God you can’t see is validated by how you love the people you can see—those made in His image. For Jesus and other first-century Jewish teachers, these two commands were inseparable.

Most of us pick up there to summarize Christianity as “loving God and loving others.” But this isn’t exactly what Jesus taught. His answer about the greatest commandment was in response to a question about the Law of Moses. What Jesus taught was something that sounds similar but is, in reality, radically different.

Just hours before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His disciples a new command:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

It’s important to realize that giving a new command in Jesus’ time was incredibly rare - typically seen as blasphemy. A new command declared the old one obsolete—no longer the standard (see Hebrews 8:13). Though it sounds similar to “love God and love others,” Jesus is doing something entirely new. This is the law of the New Covenant. The phrase “as I have loved you” means that our capacity to love is rooted in the source of love.

1 John 3:10 reinforces this:
“Anyone who does not live in righteousness or love his fellow believer is not living with God as his source.”

Spiritual maturity, then, is being so grounded in God’s love that I love like God. In fact, it is His love in me loving others. This is the way of love—and this is why receiving must be our starting place.

The Christian life is not a lifelong attempt to earn God’s love. I’m not living for God’s love—I’m living loved. When I connect to the source—the headwaters—everything else flows naturally. The primary responsibility of every believer is not to love God first, but to live loved by God. My life becomes the overflow of what God is constantly pouring in.

This isn’t just a matter of semantics. It requires a complete reorientation of our faith and daily lives around receiving God’s love. The Apostle John understood this so deeply that he referred to himself as “the one Jesus loved.” For John, the love of Jesus wasn’t just a fact—it was the foundation of his identity.

Jesus continues this theme in what’s known as the Olivet Discourse. In John 15—my favorite chapter in all of Scripture—Jesus makes it clear: “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” If we don’t live with Him as our source, we will not bear fruit.

Let this sink in: What we can do for God is a distant second to living loved by God. The omnipotent God is not interested in having robots or slaves who work for Him; He is intent on having sons and daughters who live in a love relationship with Him (see Ephesians 1:5).

Here’s a simple analogy:
A lamp, no matter how beautiful or well-designed, cannot shine unless it is plugged in. The current doesn’t flow because of the lamp’s effort or charm—it flows because the lamp is connected to the source.

As Leif Hetland said, “Spiritual maturity is not about how much you know, but about how comfortable you are with love.” This concept has radically changed my life. I regularly remind myself: I am the one Jesus loves. One day, I look forward to standing face to face with John the Beloved and having a playful argument about who Jesus loved more.

If you’re wrestling with the concept of Jesus loving you in all your mess and dysfunction, consider this. The value of something is determined by the price someone is willing to pay. God decided to send His Son for you. Not some future, reformed and perfected version of you. Romans 5:8 says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That means He found value in you and loved you while you were at your worst, no performance or perfection required.

The response to that reality is that I’ve stopped trying to perform or transfrom in some attempt to earns God’s love. Instead, I let Him know me and love me, and that is the very thing that transforms and empowers me. I’ve surrendered my futile attempts to impress Him or earn anything from Him.

So, how comfortable are you with receiving God’s love? Are there ways you're still trying to earn it? Do you truly believe you're worthy of it?

One of the clearest indicators of your answers to those questions is this: How well do you love others?
If you struggle there, let me suggest the solution isn’t to try harder—it’s to receive more.