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Jan 07, 2023 06:00am

To Be Fully Known and Fully Loved

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Deep down, our root desire is really about longing for the experience of real love, that somebody would know us totally and at the same time love us completely. – Jared C. Wilson

What is the worst thing you have ever done? How many people have you told about it? The majority of us would say none, or maybe there’s that one friend who is “closer than a brother.” But the truth is, most of us are afraid to share the deepest parts of ourselves with someone because we think they won’t accept us. Our deepest desire is to be loved the way we are, but the way we are is messy. And so we don’t open up. We don’t let people in because that leaves the chance that they might reject us, and we don’t want to get hurt. If love is our deepest desire, then not being loved is our greatest fear.

But what if I told you there was someone who knew everything about you—your deepest anxieties, your dirty past, your present struggles with sin—and yet loved you anyway? That the vulnerability risk was zero? Would you let that person in?

The good news is that there is someone like that. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God saw all our messy parts, every shameful secret, every sin we would commit day in and day out, and yet he chose to give His life for us anyway. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
There is no greater love we could ever experience than the love of God.

Consider what Solomon says about human love—the love between a man and a woman:
Love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the LORD.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised. Song of Songs 8:6-7

Love is powerful—it is as strong as death, has flashes of fire, and many waters cannot quench it, nor floods drown it. Love is precious—even if a man offered everything he possessed in exchange for love, it would be a ludicrous offer and never enough.

While human love is a precious and divine gift to be highly valued and enjoyed, human love will disappoint. No man or woman is perfect; no friendship is flawless. You will have your ugly days, and so will the people you love. If you are waiting for a person to give you the perfect love of being fully known and yet fully loved, you will never be satisfied.

Now, let’s consider God’s love.
God’s love will never leave you or forsake you. God knows you most intimately and yet still says He’s not going anywhere. Human love flourishes and fades like the flowers, but God’s love is faithful and endures forever.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:35, 37–39

God’s love is better than life. There is nothing our hearts can crave, no human intimacy (physical, mental, or spiritual), no love in a relationship—there is nothing we can experience this side of heaven that can come close to comparing to the pleasure and satisfaction we can know in God’s love.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you. Psalms 63:3

God’s love is unchanging. It is not dependent on anything we do. God doesn’t love us less on our bad days, and He doesn’t love us more on our good days. His love emanates from the essence of who He is, and that will never change. When God set his love upon the Israelite people, it wasn’t because they were particularly lovable, but because God chose to love them. It is the same for us.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers. Deuteronomy 7:7–8

In God, all our fears of rejection fade away because “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18a). We are free to be messy, rough-around-the-edges kind of people. God sees every part of us—the roses and the thorns—and loves us anyway. But he doesn’t intend to leave us that way. In fact, God loved us so much He saw all our thorns and mess, had compassion on us, and determined to rescue us so we could experience the deepest intimacy imaginable—personal, everlasting fellowship with Love Himself (1 John 4:8b), the kind of relationship that comes with having faith in Jesus Christ.

Only the love of Christ can perfectly fulfill our longing for love and satisfy our deepest desire to be adored and belong to another—faults and all—with no fear of that love ever failing, waning, or giving up. In Christ, we can finally be fully known and yet fully loved.