Our relationships and the love of God

I think most us have experienced relationship breakdown. But it doesn't need to be, most of the time.

When does a relationship begin to break down? The breakdown of relationships happens when we live to get rather than to give. When self-protection governs our relationships instead of self-giving and self-sacrifice, that's when relationships begin to break down. So the cause of relational breakdown is inordinate self-love.

But how can a person live to give rather than to get? How can we give ourselves and self-sacrifice instead of self-preserve and think less of one's self and think more of another?

That's not hard, actually, it's impossible. But...it's possible when we come to know the self-sacrificing love of God for the undeserving sinner like myself.

Such an amazing love and grace for us is revealed to us (when we read in the Holy Scriptures) about Christ Jesus' perfect living and dying on the cross both done in our place, and Jesus rising from the dead so we would receive the benefit of Christ's finished work for us, by receiving his Spirit and faith to live by an obedient faith to our Lord and our God.

This is the grace of God. This is how we are saved from our sin and self. And this is how even our relationships may be preserved from a breakdown, by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him." (1 John 4:9)