I have given God a million ‘plus one’ reasons not to love me and not one of them has ever changed His mind. As I journey through my Christian walk, I am learning that there is nothing I could ever do to make God love me any more or any less.
Fact is, nothing will ever separate us from God’s love for us! In light of this discovery, Paul substantiates and qualifies this irrevocable claim in Romans 8:38-39: “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Here’s the skinny, God’s grace is big enough to forgive all of our past, present, and future sins.
Perhaps, this message is reaching a skeptic and you may be wandering why and how can God love people like that? In order to answer that question in it’s full light, we have to travel back to the beginning of creation.
Through the fall, all mankind was polluted with sin and became evil. We were altogether not loveable. Yet God’s heart was full of love for us, not contempt. He would not leave us in our fallen state, separated from Him for all eternity. Because He loved us, He did something. God gave His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be our substitute on the cross for our redemption. Christ died there to remove the obstacle of sin between God and us. God in His love did this for us.
To really understand the depths of this love, we should ask, “What kind of people did God do this for?”
Ephesians 2:1-3 gives us a full description of what we were before we were saved: “And you, though dead in your offenses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit which is now operating in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also all conducted ourselves once in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
In such a pitiful and desperate state, we deserved nothing but judgment. But thankfully Ephesians 2:4-6 continues with more confirmation of God’s unstoppable love for His people: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in offenses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) and raised us up together with Him and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.”
God’s love worked out such a rich salvation in Christ for us who had fallen so low, even raising us dead ones together with Christ.
How great is God’s love?
Great enough that when you fall, He’ll lift you up, when you fail, He’ll forgive you, when you’re weak, His strong, when you’re lost, His the way, when you’re afraid, His your courage, when you stumble, He’ll stand you up, when you’re hunger, He’ll feed you, when you face trials, He’s stands with you, when you face persecution, He’ll shield you, and when you feel lonely, He’ll throw His arms around you! And the list goes on…..
Like I said, “I have given God a million ‘plus one’ reasons not to love me and not one of them has ever changed His mind.”
4GIVEN 