God still loves the world
Looking at our world today you may wonder does God still love the world.
The simple truth is yes He does and He has gone to great lengths to demonstrate His love to all humanity.
He did this by living among us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Through Jesus we were given a new perspective on our relationship with God and with one another.
The message of Jesus was counter-culture it went against the thinking of the day and it challenged the established religion of the time with new concepts like “Grace and Love”.
John 3:16 -17 lays it out plainly for us to see and understand the extent of God’s love for the whole world.
John 3:16-17 King James Version (KJV)
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.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
The word “so” allows us to get a glimpse of the enormity of God’s love for those He has created. This word “so” is tied to the next important word “gave”. God loved us so much that He gave us Jesus His only begotten Son. God in effect gave us a part of Himself when He gave us His son. There was nothing more precious to God than His Son.
Giving us Jesus was an act of selfless love on God’s part. We did not deserve such a wonderful gift nor could we earn such a wonderful gift. God so loved us that He gave Jesus to us knowing that that kind of a gift would cause us to love God without measure.
God gave us His son with a purpose. That we might believe in him.
That we might believe who he is and what he says and that this belief would result in our being saved to everlasting life which is a very different kind of life than what we have now so that we should not perish.
Have you ever had something perish? My wife is always telling me not to buy bananas because they always go uneaten and perish.
Slowly they turn from being healthy and alive and become shriveled and black. If they are left too long they even get fuzzy.
Jesus came so that we might not perish so that the healthy good part of us might be saved not just for the here and now but for all eternity. That good part is our soul.
Many people were drawn to these radical new ideas as these ideas were shown to support and more clearly define some of the old ideas that people had about God and about how we should live together as fellow human beings.
Jesus put it in a way that made it personal suggesting that to love our neighbour was to love ourselves. Then Jesus told us that our fellow man is more than just our neighbour but that he is also our brother and sister.
Jesus was all about identifying all of humanity as one family - God’s family.
He would often use the phrase “Children of God” as an inclusive expression of humanity.
Sadly we human beings do not see one another in this context and as a result we live in a world that is a divided family. You see the problem is that we fail to love one another as God loves us. Selflessly. Our problem is a collective one and yet it is also a personal one.
The problem is sin. Disobedience and rebellion towards the Living God.
Our rebellion is so pronounced that we have gone so far as to invent other gods to replace the Living God. By doing this some people suggest that they have a moral code that is equal to the one that the Living God gave us but in fact it is just a poor substitute. These things are man-made and not divine.
The Bible tells us everything we need to know about God but people refuse to recognize its authority and its truth. Instead people try again to replace it with something of their own invention. For these reasons we live in a world that has chosen to take sides concerning God. The results are a broken and fragmented world that will not and cannot agree on much of anything including how we should treat one another.
God is not a respecter of persons. That simply means that God sees you the same way He see’s anyone else. He sees you as a precious creation full of potential and promise. God’s desire is to see that potential and promise realized in every life but in order for that to happen we must come to God and acknowledge that He alone is our creator and that we are in need of His love and guidance and forgiveness in order to fulfil our potential and promise.
Matthew 5:44-45
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Jesus is telling us that our Heavenly Father loves all of us and blesses all of us regardless of whether we are good or bad. It is God’s nature to love those whom He has created. The only thing that is keeping us from achieving our full potential and promise is sin.
Only when we acknowledge and confess that we are sinners can God begin to free us from it.
Jesus is the means by which we are set free. In Jesus we see the full promise of God and the full potential of human beings realized.
He alone is the one who saves and for that reason He is called the Saviour. Jesus saves because He is without sin since He is God’s Son and Jesus is also fully man and He is the only man to have ever lived a perfect sinless life. Jesus let His perfect blood become for us a perfect sacrifice that is so powerful that it can cover our sins and wash them away forever. It is so powerful that it can wash away the sins of the world, the entire world, if only the world would let it.
God the Father extends to us a common grace – a free gift of love that is for everyone who will receive it.
Isaiah 43:11
11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
Acts 4:11-12
11 Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. 12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Ezekiel 18:32
32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!
We are the children of God – the Church of God we are born by the Spirit of God into the family of God by Jesus love and sacrifice. God still loves the world and we are the messengers of God to this world which He still loves.
Saints we must tell the world with our millions of voices and by our selfless acts of love that God still loves the world and wants the world to take Jesus into their hearts so that they might be saved and forever changed. God’s love will change the world.
Let us be the agent of God’s love in our time and let us love as Christ loved. Let us be selfless in our love so that the family of God might grow around the world.
The Bible says “Proverbs 11:30 King James Version (KJV)
30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise. Let’s win souls here and now and see our world change through the love of God. – Amen.
