We talked
last week about how God offers us salvation as a gift, and all we need to do is
accept it. The question we did not talk
about last week, though is why? Why
does God offer us salvation? Why does
God want so much to save us and take us to heaven?
Well, the answer is pretty
simple. God loves us. As we continue our sermon series on “Who is
this God person, anyway”, that’s the aspect of God we’re going to talk
about: God is love. God loves each and every one of us. That’s why God wants to save us and take us
to heaven: because God loves us.
The answer is simple, but it can be
hard to accept. Most of us know we’re
not the people we should be. We
certainly know we’re not the people God wants us to be. Not that we’re such terrible, evil, horrible
people, but we all make our share of mistakes.
I often think I’m making someone else’s share, too. We all know there are plenty of times when
we don’t act in loving ways with others the way God wants us to.
Because of that, sometimes it can be
hard for us to accept that God loves us.
We don’t see any reason God should love us. We think we don’t deserve God’s love. We wonder, if God really knows everything about me, why would God
love me?
It’s an understandable
question. It’s understandable, but it’s
wrong. Not wrong in the sense of being
sinful or anything like that. Wrong in
the sense that it’s not a proper thing to ask.
See, love is not something that needs logical reasons to exist. In fact, logic often has nothing whatsoever
to do with love.
Those of you who are married, think
about this: why do you love your
spouse? Can you give me a list of
logical reasons? I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you could list
lots of things you like and admire about your spouse. You could list lots of things you appreciate about your
spouse.
Here’s what I mean, though. Your spouse may be very attractive—but
they’re not the most attractive person in the world. Your spouse may be very caring and sensitive—but they’re not the
most caring and sensitive person in the world.
Your spouse may work hard and be a really good person—but they’re not
the hardest worker or the best person in the world. No matter what good qualities you list about your spouse, there
are other people who are better. Yet,
somehow, your spouse is the one person in the whole world that you love enough
to have chosen to spend your life with.
Is that logical? Who knows? What difference does it make? You love that person, whether your love is
logical or not.
For those of you who have kids, it’s
the same thing. Are there logical
reasons why you love your kids? Do you
ever even think about it that way? Do
you ever try to come up with logical reasons to love your kids? What would be the point? I mean, you may be happier with them
sometimes than other times, but the bottom line is that you love your kids
because they’re your kids. You don’t
need any reasons other than that.
It’s the same for everyone we
love. We don’t decide whether to love
someone in the same way we decide whether to buy a new car. We don’t sit down and make out a list of
pros and cons and try to come to a logical conclusion. That’s not how love works. Love finds its own reasons to exist. In fact, love is its own reason.
So, if that’s the way it works for
us--if we can love people just because we love them, regardless of whether they
“deserve” our love or not--how much more can God do that? God has more ability to love than you or I
will ever have. As we read today, all
love comes from God. God is love. God loves everyone. God loves us no matter who we are. God loves us no matter where we live. God loves us no matter what we look
like. God loves us no matter what we’ve
done. In fact, God loves us whether we
like it or not. God is love.
That’s such an awesome, incredible,
really unbelievable thought--that there is nothing we can ever do that will
keep God from loving us. But it’s
true. We heard that in our reading from
Romans today. Here’s how Paul put it:
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.
That is one of the most amazing
statements in the Bible. It was totally
different from the way people thought of God at the time. Remember, back then people thought that if
bad things happened to you, it meant God was mad at you. It meant that you must’ve sinned and that
God was punishing you.
That’s why the Pharisees could not
understand why Jesus was spending so much time with the “tax collectors and
sinners”, the people society looked down on.
They thought God clearly did not love those people; that’s why they were
in the condition they were in. If God
did not love them, then no one else needed to love them, either. The idea that these people were not being
punished by God, that God actually loved those people and wanted to save them
and take them to heaven, made no sense whatsoever to most of the people in
Jesus’ time.
It still can be hard to
believe. It can be hard to believe
about ourselves, and it can be hard to believe about others. The idea that God loves absolutely
everybody, with no exceptions, is so amazing.
The idea that God wants to save absolutely everybody, with no
exceptions, is so incredible. It’s just
hard for us to believe it.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. When I say that God loves absolutely
everybody and wants to save absolutely everybody, I am not saying that our
beliefs and actions on earth don’t matter.
They do matter. God loves
everybody and wants to save everybody, but that does not mean that everybody
will be saved.
We talked last week about how God
offers us salvation as a gift, but we still need to accept it. We accept it by accepting and believing in
Jesus Christ as our Savior. That
acceptance and belief is something that happens inside us, but it is also
revealed by our actions. Again, we’re
still sinful people, and we’re still going to mess up a lot, but our acceptance
and belief in Jesus Christ as our Savior will change us in some way. That’s what John was talking about in his
letter that we read today:
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another. No one has ever seen God,
but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in
us...If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and
they live in God. And so we know and
rely on the love God has for us. God is
love. Whoever lives in love lives in
God, and God lives in them...We love because he first loved us.
When we accept Jesus Christ as our
savior, the Holy Spirit enters our hearts.
Having the Holy Spirit in our hearts makes us better people, more loving
people. We’ll be closer to the people
God created us to be. We won’t get
there, but we’ll be closer. We won’t be
more loving because we’re trying to earn our way to heaven. We’ll become more loving because our belief
in Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit will make us want to be that
way. The love of God will become a part
of us, and that love will show in our thoughts and words and actions.
John goes on to say that if we say
we love God and yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. When we believe in Jesus as our Savior, when
the power of the Holy Spirit enters our hearts, it forces hate out of our hearts. God does not hate anybody. God loves everybody. God may not like some of the things we
believe or say or do, but God still loves each one of us, no matter who we are,
no matter where we live, no matter what we look like, no matter what we’ve
done. God loves us whether we like it or
not. God is love.
Who is this God person? This God person is the one who loves
everyone, whether you deserve it or not.
God loves everyone else, too, whether we think they deserve it or not. And this God person is the one who wants us
to love everyone else, just like God does.
“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.” Let’s trust that and live lives that show we
believe it.
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