God loves you very much

We may not be keen on loving God, but we should know that he loves us very much. His love is of immense, eternal proportions! There was love in the heart of God before he began creation: Jesus prays to his Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). That is mind-blowing!

Before creation began, God had foreseen his plan of action, to create persons able to love each other and to love him, and one day he would reveal to them the greatness of his love for them. His love is all the more powerful in that he allowed us humans to live in potential rebellion against him, and indeed, we humans are not, in general, passionate about loving God. But despite our indifference, going our own way instead of His, he has persisted in drawing people out of their inner reticence into his arms of love.

So he demonstrated his immense love in a mind-boggling manifestation. He came into the world like an ‘undercover boss’ by sending his Son, Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,” says the Bible, but Jesus came as the Good Shepherd, seeking the sheep that was lost.

Let’s face it, we’ve all wandered far from God in thoughtless disinterest in doing his will, and so by our disobedience we have incurred his displeasure. He would be quite entitled to cast us away, to pay no attention to us, even to visit righteous judgment upon us. But when he came in Jesus, he did not come to demand we pay for our sins – no! the marvel is that he came to pay for our sins! That’s what Jesus’ death on the cross was all about. The Good Shepherd gave his life for us, the wayward sheep!

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this” – says the Bible – “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. We didn’t have to clean up our act before God loved us – we were, in his verdict, “sinners”. We were guilty, we deserved righteous judgment; but Jesus – who never ever sinned – interposed and bore our sin in his body on the cross, suffering the horror of punishment that should have fallen on the guilty. “He died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “This is how God showed his love to us”, says the Bible (1 John 4.9-10) “He sent his only Son into the world… not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. 

It’s maybe hard to grasp, but an atonement was needed because of the demands of justice. Since God is absolutely just, he cannot grant pardon to all the guilty people in the world – that would be a supreme injustice. Yet he desires to forgive and receive us into a warm loving relationship. How could he do it while yet upholding the demands of his justice? By himself providing the atoning sacrifice, whereby his Son, truly man but also truly divine, accepted out of love to come and bear – on the Cross – the full penalty of our many sins. His death for us is the most loving event ever, in the entire history of the world. 

And he did it for you, because he loves you that much.

Clive Every-Clayton