In this 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
Essentially everywhere we look, love is a response to a perceived worthiness of its object. Thus, we are tempted to think that God loves us because of something valuable in us, or simply in response to our love toward Him. Some even go so far as to say that the cross is actually the revealing of our value.
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Essentially everywhere we look, love is a response to a perceived worthiness of its object. Thus, we are tempted to think that God loves us because of something valuable in us, or simply in response to our love toward Him. Some even go so far as to say that the cross is actually the revealing of our value.
However, all John has to say about our part in the love relationship with God, is that we did not love God. Furthermore, we were sinners in need of propitiation—guilty, rebellious, undeserving. There was nothing attractive about us that generated God’s love toward us. Love was God’s initiative. And the ultimate, most wonderful, awe-inspiring expression of this love was the giving away of His only-begotten Son to die in place of sinners.
These truths, understood and embraced, leave no room for pride nor for despair. There is no room for pride because the love of God, expressed in the sacrificing of His Son, points not to the magnitude of our worth but to the magnitude of our sin. There is no room for despair because neither our failures nor our doubts, nor any other unloveliness in us, can destroy God’s love toward a believer. The love of God is not found in our loveliness. Its measure and certainty are not found in our feelings. It is found in the historic event, in which “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Apply this truth to your heart—may God’s love humble you and assure you this day.