The Highest Motive

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 

John 3:16 

What is the highest motive for anything that anyone does?  We have some motivation for everything we do.  These motives may be simple to complex and they may be good or not so good.  When we do anything ourselves, we want to examine our own motives carefully.  When we begin to consider the summary statement which Christ made to Nicodemus regarding God’s gift of ‘His only begotten Son; we hear Christ identifying the Father’s motive when He says, ‘For God so loved the world.’  This is His declaration of what is the highest motive for anything that anyone can do.  Every other motive that anyone can have pales in contrast to this highest of motives.  Love as a motive brings to pass the greatest of sacrifices.  Love motivated God the Father to send Christ into the world.  Love motivated Christ to endure His life of humiliation, which culminated in His substitutionary sacrifice.  If we learn anything from God the Father, and from Christ, we should learn that if we would imitate them, we must consider love to be the highest motive for anything that we do.  Besides that, we ought also to continually marvel at the love which God has demonstrated in His sending of Christ into the world for us.  

Our Gracious Master and our God, 
we rejoice that You show us by Your own great example, 
what love is. 
We praise You that because You have loved us, 
we love You and grow in that love from day-to-day.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning