In this is Love

If I’m being completely honest, I always thought God loved his children more than everyone else. Growing up as a Christian I had been taught my value was directly linked to being a child of God. Without that status I was worthless. It is what I was literally taught: you are a worthless sinner.

Even so, I always knew at head level that God’s love came first and that God loves us in our sin. (Ephesians 2:4-5, Romans 5:8, John 3:16, 1 John 4:9-10, Galatians 2:20, 1 John 3:16.) I knew God loves sinners and paid the highest price to demonstrate that love: Christ’s death on the cross. I still knew God’s love preceded salvation:

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

But I never realised until more recently that those two positions can’t actually both be true. Nothing can be worthless and priceless at the same time. Sinners can’t be both worthless and worth the highest possible price God could pay. Which lead me to the realisation that my salvation has nothing to do with how much God loves me. And that means God loves me just as much as he loves my unsaved neighbour, and also as much as the drug dealer down the road and the murderer in prison. It means salvation didn’t gain me extra love from God.

I have sat through numerous sermons in which the preacher defines love as an action. But is that really what the Bible teaches?

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (1 John 3:16)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Each of these verses teach the same concept: God loved us before he sent Jesus. He sent Jesus because he loves us. Love came first. Love isn’t the action, love is the motive behind the action.

When we define love as an action it changes the way we interact with God and others: love becomes trans-action-al. And we end up believing that if we act in the right way we are loved but that love is removed when we do the wrong thing. Sadly, this is the kind of love many people have for each other. And many Christians also mistakenly believe it is how God’s love works: that our holiness or sinfulness affects how much God loves us.

It is a snare I previously fell into: thinking my relationship with God after salvation, was based on my good or bad behaviour.  And it left me with a constant nagging feeling. Like I was missing something in my Christian walk. That there was a barrier between me and God that constantly needed to be overcome. But really, any message that suggests I can do something to make God love me more is a kind of prosperity gospel, because it teaches I can earn more love and blessings. And any message that suggests I can make God love me less is just works based salvation, because it teaches that those love and blessings can be taken away.

But the Bible doesn’t teach this at all, it teaches the opposite. God sends the sun and causes it to rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). In context, Matthew 5:45 is a picture of God’s love: God’s love is unconditional, both before salvation and after. His love is unconditional because he forgives everything after salvation and because he freely offers salvation to everyone.

Nothing I do, can make God love me more, and nothing I do, can make God love me less. I can always come boldly to God as my heavenly Father (Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 10:19). Understanding that transformed my relationship with God. I can always boldly run to him. I don’t need to grovel when I stuff up. There is no barrier between us, even when I do sin, because that sin was paid for too. It’s paid for and forgotten (Hebrews 10:17).

But it gets even bigger, because God is love (1 John 4:8,16). That means his love preceded creation, the fall, and my very existence. God is love. It is who he is. Love is an innate part of his essential being and that means God defines love. God created the world knowing people would sin. Sending Christ into the world for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28) wasn’t plan B. Christ’s death was plan A, from before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20). Jesus didn’t die to make me good enough to receive God’s love. He died because God already loved me. God loves me in my sin not despite my sin. And there is a huge difference, because the latter suggests my sin makes me unlovable. It must be one of the biggest lies this world believes: that my sin makes me unlovable to a perfect God.

I didn’t become a parent with the idea that I would have the one and only child that never stuffed up. I had my children knowing they would sin, knowing they would repeatedly hurt me, and knowing one day they might even reject me. But even before I knew them, I loved them, and then ‘created’ them knowing it was possible that one day they might turn around and say, “But, I don’t love you.” And that still wouldn’t change my love for them. Nothing my children do, could make them unlovable to me. And if I can love like that, how much more can God?

Or, think about King David, a man after God’s own heart, and his son Absalom. Absalom had his brother killed, fled from the country, stole the heart of the people against his father, conspired against his father to take the throne from him, caused his father to flee with his family, behaved immorally with his father’s concubines, then gathered an army to pursue his father and kill him. (2 Samuel 13-17) But even after the Lord won the battle for David, his concern was only for his son (2 Samuel 18:29). Consider his words after he hears of Absalom’s death:

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! (2 Samuel 18:33)

Even after Absalom treated him so terribly, he would have died in his place. Isn’t that exactly a picture of God’s love. Even after I treated him so terribly he died in my place. So great is his love for me. God choose to create me knowing I would sin. God doesn’t love me despite my sin. He just loves me.

And when I sit in that perfect love, I have peace dwelling in my heart that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7), and all fear is driven away (1 John 4:18). If God loved me before the world was even made, what can indeed separate me from the love of God? (Romans 8:38-39)

And when I realise that is how he sees everyone in this entire world: the saved, the unsaved, the nice ones and the totally depraved; then it’s so much easier to love others like God asks us to. That’s true love. Looking at that person and knowing God loves them as much as he loves me. And it is what he calls us all to do (John 13:34-35).

As I have discussed this kind of love with others, I have sadly come across some Christians who are uncomfortable with this message of love. They have spent years performing their Christianity, believing their sinfulness or holiness impacts God's love for them. They have spent years judging their own performance and the performance of others. Believing God is judging them in the same way. I know because I used to be one of them.

Paul countered this kind of thinking numerous times (Romans 6:1-2, 15, Galatians 2:17, 1 Corinthians 9:21). And while, some Christians think living in love is giving people the freedom to sin, that isn’t real love. Living in God’s love isn’t freedom to sin, it’s freedom from sin. Because that is exactly what Christ did on the cross. He freed me from sin (Romans 6:6-7). He died so I might be able to truly comprehend what is the breadth, length, depth and height of God’s love for me (Ephesians 3:17-19).

All Glory to Him,