The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
When a Portfolio Manager Saw the Real Cost
James, a senior investment manager who calculated millions in value daily, sat staring at his calendar. He’d just been asked to mentor a struggling young professional—but it would mean sacrificing his Friday mornings, the only time he had for himself in a grueling schedule. “I calculate ROI all day,” he said quietly. “But here I am paralyzed, unwilling to give up three hours a week when Christ gave… everything.” That moment exposed the gap between knowing God’s costly love intellectually and actually mirroring it back.
The Gospel Pattern: Extravagant Love Demands Extravagant Response
Here’s what transforms everything: The woman with the alabaster jar understood something most miss—Jesus was about to give the most expensive thing He had (His life), so she gave the most expensive thing she had (her perfume, likely her dowry) as a comparatively small token of gratitude. This wasn’t reckless emotion—it was proportional worship. She recognized the costliness of His love and responded with her own costly offering.gotquestions+3
Scripture reveals distinct characteristics of God’s extravagant love through specific Gospel accounts:
1. God’s Love is Sacrificial—He Gave What Cost Him Most
The Pattern: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16)ccu+1
The Account: Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood, praying “Let this cup pass from me”—yet choosing the cross anyway (Matthew 26:39). The cost wasn’t just physical death—it was bearing the full weight of God’s wrath against sin, experiencing separation from the Father, and enduring public humiliation. As Piper notes: “The cost of his love was himself—his life. It was not just money or time or energy or inconvenience or even suffering; it was the full extent of sacrifice”.desiringgod+2
Our Response: The widow giving her last two mites (Mark 12:42-44)—not her excess, but what cost her security. Sacrificial love gives what’s most valuable, not what’s most convenient.
2. God’s Love is Extravagant—He Held Nothing Back
The Pattern: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
The Account: The woman with the alabaster jar poured out perfume worth a year’s wages—300 denarii—on Jesus’s head and feet. When the disciples called it “waste,” Jesus defended her extravagance as “beautiful”. She understood that encountering Jesus’s extravagant love toward her demanded an extravagant response that others would call excessive.reviveourhearts+2
Our Response: Like Mary’s “wasteful” worship, extravagant love looks foolish to those who calculate cost-benefit ratios. It mentors when the ROI isn’t clear. It forgives the unforgivable. It gives time that could be “better used.”reviveourhearts
3. God’s Love is Costly—He Paid the Price We Couldn’t
The Pattern: “…Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2)billmuehlenberg+1
The Account: The cross—where Jesus absorbed divine wrath, bore our sin, and cried “It is finished” (John 19:30). God the Father was pleased with this costly sacrifice as “a fragrant aroma”—the same language used for the woman’s ointment filling the room with fragrance (John 12:3).bible+3
Our Response: The paralytic’s friends who tore open a roof to bring him to Jesus (Mark 2:4). Costly love inconveniences itself, disrupts plans, and pays prices others won’t pay.
4. God’s Love is Preemptive—He Loved Us First, Before We Deserved It
The Pattern: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)instaencouragements+1
The Account: The prodigal son’s father, who ran to meet his returning son while he was still far off, before any apology (Luke 15:20). The father didn’t wait for the son to clean up—he ran to him covered in pig filth and embraced him anyway.ccu
Our Response: Loving people before they’ve earned it. Forgiving before the apology. Serving before acknowledgment. Preemptive love mirrors God’s initiative toward us.
5. God’s Love is Relational—He Pursued Connection, Not Transaction
The Pattern: “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23)
The Account: Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (John 13:5)—God Himself taking the position of the lowest servant to serve those who would betray, deny, and abandon Him. He pursued intimacy even with those who would fail Him hours later.
Our Response: Staying in difficult relationships. Pursuing reconciliation when it would be easier to walk away. Relational love doesn’t transact—it connects, even at personal cost.
CHEW On This™ in 3-5 Minutes (Precise, God-Focused)
Confess (C) to God:
“Father, here’s what I’m honestly feeling: I know You gave everything for me, but I hold back my most expensive gifts—my time, my pride, my convenience, my comfort. I calculate costs instead of mirroring Your extravagance.”
Hear (H) from God in Scripture:
“Father, what Scripture do You want me to wrestle with about costly, extravagant love?”
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)billmuehlenberg+1
“In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.” (Matthew 26:12)bible+1
(What is true about You or Your love in this? Your love didn’t calculate cost—it gave everything. You call my “wasteful” worship beautiful when others call it excessive.)
Exchange (E) with God:
- Option 1 (Beginner):
“If I really believed God loves me as much as He loves Jesus, what would change right now?” - Option 2 (Intermediate):
“If I really believed God loves me as much as He loves Jesus—giving the most expensive thing He had for me—how would that change what I’m willing to sacrifice for Him and others?” - Option 3 (Advanced):
“If I really believed God’s love is so extravagant that He considers my ‘wasteful’ worship beautiful—that He gave everything and calls me to give proportionally—how would that transform what I’m withholding from Him: my time, my pride, my comfort, my most expensive gifts?”
“Today, I give You my calculated, cost-benefit love and take hold of Your extravagant, costly love that transforms how I give.”
Walk (W) with the Holy Spirit:
“Holy Spirit, please guide me to one specific way to mirror God’s costly love this week.”
“Here’s the step I believe pleases You: Give the ‘most expensive thing’ I’ve been withholding—[name the specific sacrifice: Friday mornings, forgiveness, vulnerability, money, time]—recognizing it’s a small token compared to what Christ gave for me.”
“Holy Spirit, if there’s a better step, shift me!”
Worship: The God Whose Love Makes Our Sacrifices Look Small
Thank God today that even our most expensive gifts are small tokens compared to what He gave. Worship Him by giving something that costs you—not leftovers, but what feels like “waste” to others yet beautiful to Him. May we give our most expensive things and see them as tiny reflections of the Love that gave everything.
Community + Resources
Community:
Practice extravagant, costly love together with others who understand that God’s love transforms how we give. Join a community that mirrors His sacrifice.
Want More?
The Daily CHEW™ | Make CHEWing a daily rhythm
Select Resources:
- God’s Love: The Surprising Source of Sustainable Discipline
- From the Moment You Believe the Gospel: Unilateral Promises
- What Are Core Beliefs?
With you on the journey,
Ryan
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