BEFORE TIME: Day 6
Day 6 — God’s Love Revealed Through Sacrificial Love
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
— John 15:12 (NKJV)
God’s Love Revealed Through Sacrificial Love
Jesus does not ask us to love based on how others treat us. He asks us to love as He has loved us, and that phrase sets the measure. His love moved first. It remained present. It stayed committed—even when it was costly. Long before betrayal, denial, and abandonment ever unfolded, Jesus had already chosen love. Before the earth was created and before we were born, God had already settled how He would love humanity—sacrificially, generously, and without conditions.
Sacrificial love often feels costly because it asks us to release something we naturally want to hold onto. Sometimes it costs us pride—the need to be right or to justify ourselves. Sometimes it costs us control—the desire to wait for an apology, an explanation, or changed behavior before we soften our hearts. At other times, it costs us the familiar comfort of offense, resentment, or emotional distance. Love invites us to lay these things down, not because they are easy to carry, but because they are too heavy to keep.
This is where God’s love reveals its power. What costs us something also frees us completely. The moment we choose love over self-protection, we release ourselves from the grip of bitterness. We stop replaying the offense. We stop carrying the emotional weight of what someone did or failed to do. Love does not free the other person first—it frees us. And freedom is one of love’s greatest gifts.
This is why sacrificial love sustains pre-forgiveness. It keeps forgiving even when feelings fluctuate and situations remain unresolved. It chooses humility over pride, grace over judgment, and relationship over being right. Love stops asking, “Do they deserve this?” and starts asking, “What does love look like here?”
When Christ lives in you, this kind of love is not something you must manufacture—it is something you allow to flow. You are no longer driven by reaction or ruled by offense. You live from security rather than self-protection. Love becomes your posture, not just your response, and grace becomes your way of being, not merely your way of coping.
Today, you are invited to live from this settled love. You do not have to wait for people to change before you remain loving, and you do not have to withdraw to stay safe. You are already secure in God’s love, and that security allows His love to move through you in real, everyday situations. God’s love often asks us to release what we are holding onto, and in doing so, it gives us back our freedom.
Prayer
Father, thank You for loving me sacrificially through Christ. Thank You that this love was settled before time began and revealed through Jesus. Today, I choose to love as You have loved me. I release pride, offense, and the need to be right. Let Your love free my heart and flow through my life to others. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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Promise 1468
God’s purpose for us is salvation and eternal life through Jesus.
“For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9)
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