Christofferson - "Abide in My Love" - October 2016

Elder Christofferson speaks of abiding in God's love.  He says that we sometimes call God's love unconditional but that term is not in the scriptures.  He gives us a deeper meaning of what God's love is and what it means to our lives.

• As President Thomas S. Monson has expressed: “God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there.”
  
• His love is described in scripture as “great and wonderful love,” “perfect love,” “redeeming love,” and “everlasting love.” These are better terms because the word unconditional can convey mistaken impressions about divine love, such as, God tolerates and excuses anything we do because His love is unconditional, or God makes no demands upon us because His love is unconditional, or all are saved in the heavenly kingdom of God because His love is unconditional. God’s love is infinite and it will endure forever, but what it means for each of us depends on how we respond to His love.
  

The term "abide in" has several meanings.  Elder Christofferson offers several ideas that help us understand what this means.

• To “continue in” or “abide in” the Savior’s love means to receive His grace and be perfected by it. To receive His grace, we must have faith in Jesus Christ and keep His commandments, including repenting of our sins, being baptized for the remission of sins, receiving the Holy Ghost, and continuing in the path of obedience.
  
• Abiding in His love will enable us to realize our full potential, to become even as He is
  
• To abide in God’s love in this sense means to submit fully to His will. It means to accept His correction when needed, “for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” It means to love and serve one another as Jesus has loved and served us. It means to learn “to abide the law of a celestial kingdom” so that we can “abide a celestial glory.” For Him to be able to make of us what we can become, our Heavenly Father pleads with us to yield “to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and [put] off the natural man and [become] a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and [become] as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
  

Elder Christofferson helps us understand the extent of God's love for us.  As we learn more about the love God has for us, it helps us understand the reason for life, the reason for God's plan of happiness, and the answers about life that we are all searching for.  God's motivation is to bring us eternal life with Him again.  No other purpose is more important to God than you and I returning to Him.  That is what God's love is.