The Love of God
Big Idea: God intentionally created you to be the object of his steadfast, unconditional, and pursuing love, which does not depend on your worthiness and will never give up on you, and he desires that you love him in return.
An accomplished theologian was once asked, "What is the most profound thing you've ever learned?" After giving it some thought, the theologian replied, "Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so." God's love for you is probably the most profound theological concept you will ever encounter.
I can understand God's justice and holiness. It makes sense to me that he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere. It's almost intuitive that God is good. But God loves me? That's nothing short of staggering.
1 John 4:8 tells us that "God is love." Love is a central attribute of God's character. I'm going to share some facts with you this evening that have amazed me. These facts about God's love will lead us, I think, by the end of this message to want to praise God for his great love. We're going to close this message with a time of praise, and we're going to enjoy some fellowship with the God who loves us.
Facts About God's Love
God created you for the purpose of loving you.
When God went to the drawing board and designed you, he did it with the express intent of loving you. God is the one who created you for this very purpose, that he could have a relationship with you. This is the purpose of your life – that you become the object of God's love.
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness." (Jeremiah 31:3)
Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. (Ephesians 1:4-5 NLT)
It's always been his plan to love you. I think I've told you before that my wife didn't really intend to love someone like me. She had a list of qualities she wouldn't want in a partner, and I matched nearly all of them. She kind of stumbled on loving me; it happened in spite of her intentions. But it's different with God. God always intended to love you. In fact, he created you for this very purpose.
If you want to discover your purpose in life, this is crucial. Many people think their purpose is to make lots of money, achieve success, become happy. I'll tell you what your purpose is: to be loved by God. That's why God created you. Before the world was created, God already loved you with divine perfection. You were the apple of God's eye before a single molecule of the universe came into being.
You might ask God, "How long have you loved me?" And God could reply, "Before I even made the world, I loved you." And his plans haven't changed. It's still his plan today. It's important to realize that God didn't have to create us in order to love someone. John 17:24 tells us that the Father loved Jesus even before the foundation of the world. Within the Trinity, there was perfect fellowship. God wasn't lonely; he didn't need to create us because he lacked anything. God was complete in himself, and yet he still chose to create us as objects of his love.
For some reason, God thought it best to create you so that he could love you. I don't know what you're living for, but if it's money – money won't buy what's really important. If it's power – someone else is going to always have more power than you do. If your main goal isn't to enjoy a loving relationship with God, you're missing your true purpose.
God took the initiative in loving you.
God always takes the initiative in this love relationship. The simple fact is that none of us, of ourselves, would ever seek God on our own initiative.
As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Romans 3:10-12)
Left to ourselves, we'd be looking for love in all the wrong places. We all desire to be loved. God created us with the need to be loved, because, as I said before, that is our purpose in life – to be loved by God. Love is the crying need of the human heart. But we find that human love never adequately fills the need in our heart to be loved. All the while, while we're looking for real love, God is actively pursuing a relationship with us. He is relentlessly chasing us down with a divine and perfect love. It's probably the last place we would have looked, but the only place we'll find what truly satisfies.
The love of a human being will never completely fill the void that is in your heart. Only God's love can do that. Jeremiah 31:3 says, "The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.'" In John 6:44, Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day."
Think about it: God came after Adam and Eve in the garden. He came to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. Jesus came to each of the disciples and chose them to be with him. He came to Paul on the Damascus road. And he comes to you in Etobicoke relentlessly seeking you out. God actively created you and sent Jesus Christ, and his love continues to seek you today. If you are running away from God, his love is still pursuing you.
If you ever want to be encouraged, read Luke 15. Jesus tells three stories with the same message so that we don't miss his point. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine safe sheep to search for one lost, ordinary sheep. The woman who misplaced a coin searched meticulously until she found it. The father of the prodigal son eagerly awaited his return and took the lead in welcoming him home.
Jesus emphasizes that God loves you deeply and actively seeks you out to show that love, not just once or twice, but three times. I love you so much that I'll leave ninety-nine others to come after you. If you ever get lost, I'll search until I find you. If you ever willingly wander away, I'll wait patiently until you return. And when you do come back, I'll throw my arms around you and throw you the biggest party you can imagine."
God created you to love you. He takes the initiative in pursuing a relationship with you. And here's the third fact:
God doesn't love you because you deserved it.
God's love is not tied to the worth of the person being loved. If God's love was dependent on us being deserving of that love, then none of us would be loved at all. If God's love depended on our goodness, we would be in a very tenuous position.
Romans 5:8 says: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." We know that God intensely hates all sin. It's therefore all the more amazing that God could love us so much that he could see past our sin and die for us. Romans 5:8 tells us that God loved us in spite of our status as sinners, and do you know how he demonstrated this love? "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
God has chosen to love mankind – not only people we would call good, but God has also chosen to love sinful men and women. 1 John 4:10 says, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
The Bible teaches us that Christ's death on the cross is the ultimate expression of his love. God loved sinners so much that he left heaven to live in a sin-contaminated, stench-filled environment. Recognizing God's strong hatred for sin helps us appreciate how difficult it was for Christ to leave heaven and enter a world of unrighteousness. He lived a perfect life, and submitted to, without exaggeration, the most awful death you could imagine. His back was scourged with whips of metal and bone that ripped his flesh right off. They drove spikes through his wrists and nailed him to a cross. They placed his feet one on top of the other, and a third spike was driven through the two feet and into the wood. He suffered unbearable pain.
As the saying goes, "I asked Jesus how much he loved me. He stretched out his arms and said, 'This much" – and died." That's how much Jesus loves you. The cross is the ultimate symbol of God's love for you and for me. Even when you were a sinner and had no interest in God, he loved you perfectly. You don't deserve it, but God loves you anyway.
A father was tucking in his six-year-old son for the night. The father asked him, "Son, when does Daddy love you the most? When you've been fighting with your sister and getting into a lot of trouble? Or when you're been really helpful to Mommy and real nice to everyone?" The son thought for a minute and said, "Both times!" "Right," the father said, "And do you know why?" "Cause I'm your special guy," replied the boy. That was his dad's pet name for him — "Daddy's Special Guy." The boy knew that his father loved him, no matter what, because he was "Daddy's Special Guy."
And friends, God loves us the same way. He loves us unconditionally because we're his "special guys." You might feel like you don't deserve God's love. I'll tell you something – you're right. You don't deserve God's love. But he has decided to love you anyway, with a love that doesn't depend on your goodness. God's love does not need to be earned. If it did, he would have stopped loving us long ago.
Fact number four about God's love:
God's love will never give up.
Have you ever invented a word because the right word just doesn't exist? When translators gathered in 1611, they had to invent a new word to translate one of the most beautiful words in Hebrew. The original word, hesed, had many meanings: not only love, kindness, mercy, and loyalty, although those are alright. The word has a sort of stubbornness about it. A love that will endure through good and bad; a covenant sort of love; a promise to remain loyal to a friend.
They created a word, "lovingkindness." Other translations have used the words "steadfast love" or "unfailing love." A love that never gives up. Psalm 63:3 (KJV) says, "Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee."In Exodus 34:6 (NLT), God says, "I am the LORD, I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness."
God's love is steadfast and enduring. It persists with divine determination. Through hesed, God maintains his faithfulness even when we've long since broken our part of the covenant. This is the unbreakable bond between God and his people - a love that refuses to let go. Such profound devotion inspired Paul to declare:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
God's love is a love that will not separate. God may discipline us, but he will never leave us. His love is so stubborn that it will never let us go.
One last fact about God's love:
God wants you to love him back.
A remarkable aspect of Scripture is that, just as God loves us, He wants us to return that love to him. Isaiah 62:5 says, "As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you."
The God of the universe, who created all things and needs nothing, actually rejoices when we love him back. What's more, God desires a relationship with us, not in a slave/master relationship, or an employee/employer relationship, but as friends! Jesus said:
You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:14-15)
In just nine verses in John 15, Jesus uses the word "love" in either noun or verb form nine times. That's the sort of relationship God desires with you. The command to love God and love others is the summary of all other commands in the Bible.
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40)
God wants you to love him. Friends, what an amazing doctrine! God takes the initiative to pursue a continuing relationship with you. More than anything else that you might do, God wants you to love him with your entire being. That's why you were created. He loves you with a stubborn, steadfast love that will never let you go.
Let's respond in the only way I can imagine: by responding to this amazing truth by worshipping God. Let's pray, and then join ourselves together in a period of worship to praise God for his great love.
