How can God expect us to love perfectly, when He knows we can’t?

God cannot lower the bar.  Perfection is the standard – anything less misses the mark and sets a course towards ruining the perfection of pure joy and love and bliss found in God.

But grace upon grace, God’s call is not to step up and love perfectly in order to be accepted.  It is because He knows our frame and knows we cannot that He Himself came in human flesh to show us perfect love.  Jesus came to live the life we could never live and died the death we should have died.  In this incredible exchange, Jesus puts His perfect love and righteousness to our account, and He takes care of our sin by putting it on His account.  There on the cross, Jesus was treated as guilty for every sin of everyone who would ever believe, so that we could be treated as righteous – as if we had loved and lived as perfectly as Jesus.  This is the good news message of the Gospel.  Jesus is our salvation.

It is when the truth of this really starts to take hold of our hearts, that we actually can begin to love, as He has loved us.