The Love of God
Many of us wonder about God’s love for us and just how much he loves us. We have had rough upbringings. Whether it be growing up in a single parent home, a home where physical or psychological abuse had run rampant. Some of us have had to deal with drug or alcohol abusive parents. In many of these cases, love was very elusive, maybe even nonexistent. So when the subject of love, and in particular God’s love comes up we have a tendency to think that he is the same as those we were parented by. The good news is, that the scriptures paint a totally different picture of him than that.
When we talk about God’s love, we are not talking about a love that a friend has for another friend, or even the love that a man has for a woman, or a woman for a man. These types of love are conditional, and their basis comes from an earthly perspective. Natural love is very limited. We base love upon our understanding of what love is. God’s love comes from his nature. He is love, so God’s love is not based upon a perspective. He is the totality of love and all its manifestations. 1 John 4:7-8. If we want to know what love really is, then we need only look at God and how he interacts with his creation.
God showed his love toward us in a very special way. It was the ultimate act of love. He was willing to give up his Son as a redeeming sacrifice for our sinful nature and acts of sin. He did this even while we were still sinners living a sinful and rebellious life. Jesus chose to bear the punishment and wrath of God that was due us upon himself, instead of letting us bear it ourselves. Romans 5:6-10 . Why is that act that he committed so important? We as human beings have a sinful and rebellious nature that is opposed to God, his character and his ways. Romans 8:6-8. The nature of sin, is to fall short of the holy character and nature of God. Because of sin in our lives, we fall short of the character and holy nature of God. Romans 3:23. Sin has a wage that it earns from God. The wage of sin is death ie. (spiritual death, or separation from God), and the wrath of God. Romans 1:18; Colossians 3:6; Ephesians 5:6; Romans 6:23. That means, that our sin has separated us from God, being able to have a relationship with him and being able to be in his presence. God created us for fellowship with him. Sin separates us from him. This means that we have no access to God because of our sinful nature and acts of sin. Our sin brings about the wrath of God in our lives.
God, in his love did not want us to receive his wrath, so he designed a plan before the foundations of the earth, to send his Son as sacrifice that would pay the wage that we owed God and to satisfy his wrath. Jesus lived a perfectly sinless and obedient life before God. Because sin requires the death of the one committing the sin, Christ Jesus chose to die on the cross to pay for sin’s wage on our behalf. He did this representing the human race. There must be the shedding of blood to satisfy sin’s wage. Jesus paid for sin’s wage with his blood shed on the cross. Hebrews 9:22
When Jesus was on the cross dying, he made the statement that “It is finished.” That meant that he had satisfied the debt and paid our ransom with his life, and that the wrath of God had been fully satisfied. Jesus bore the full weight of God’s wrath upon himself, so that we would not have to. This is the gospel ie. the good news! What Jesus did for us, we could never pay back. He paid the ultimate price for our sins, by dying on the cross for us, and rising from the dead. That is the ultimate demonstration of love. His love was sacrificial. His life for ours. By this exchange, we get to have eternal life, or God’s very own life. We have the opportunity to know God and Jesus intimately. If we receive him, then we become his children, born of God. There is no love that can compare to his love.
I hope that you can appreciate the love of God, and if you haven’t already received his love, I ask you to do so right now. All you have to do is confess that you are a sinner, repent of your sins, and ask for his forgiveness, confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God the Father has raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.
