The love God has for us

I said yesterday that I wanted to get back to some verses from chapter 4 that I skipped a couple of days ago. And they are absolutely vital because it goes back to something I said yesterday.

I said yesterday that as we come to drink more deeply of the love, our whole perspective on ourselves and others change.

Let’s take a deeper drink of that love today.

John writes,

This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10)

Think about these verses for a minute.

God could have let us all go to hell. He would have been perfectly within his rights to do so. He didn’t have to save anyone.

He certainly didn’t send Jesus to save any of the angels that sinned against him.

And when he sent his Son into the world, he could have sent him in judgment. To destroy all of us who had rebelled against him. But that’s not why he sent Jesus. He sent him that we might have life.

The amazing thing is, it’s not like we were looking to be saved. It’s not that we said, “God I really messed up. But I truly do love you. Please save me.”

Rather, we were perfectly content living in our sin. We had no intention whatsoever of turning our eyes toward him.

But God’s eyes were already turned on us. Not to judge us. But to save us.

And so he sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for us.

I’ve mentioned before that atoning sacrifices were usually made by people to appease an angry God. But God didn’t even wait for us to do that. The truth is, we didn’t care enough to make one, nor could we make any sacrifice that could appease him even if we wanted to.

But God made that sacrifice for us. John’s words here echo Paul’s when the latter said,

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

As I write this, Good Friday and Easter are coming up soon. And it would be so easy to just take for granted all that God has done for us.

Don’t do that. Memorize these verses in I John and Romans. Meditate on them. Drink them in.

And they will transform you forever.