“The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder in the spiritual universe. When we see this love at work through the heart of Hosea we may wonder if God is really like that. But he is. Think about it: Many years later he would give man the trees of the forest and the iron in the ground…He gave them the ability to form that iron into nails, and to fashion those trees into a cross… Then he stretched out his hands upon that tree and allowed us to nail him there, and in so doing he took our sins upon himself. This is our God, and there is no one else like him.”
~Donald Grey Barnhouse
Love may be the most universally agreed-upon attribute of God in the United States today. Even people who doubt God’s existence say that if he did exist, he’d be loving. But I’m not sure people truly get it. Scripture paints a depiction of God’s love as so shocking, so scandalous, that the only proper response is, “Amazing love! How can it be?” Yet for most people in our churches, the response is probably more like, “Well, that’s nice.”
Some truths are so profound that they can’t just be explained. They have to be felt, experienced. The love of God is one of those. That’s why instead of merely saying, “Love your enemies,” God sends the prophet Jonah to his worst enemies, to show mercy on the most ruthless empire of his day. It’s why instead of just saying, “I’ll love you forever,” God calls Hosea to stay true to a wife that will repeatedly cheat on him. It’s why instead of saying, “God loves you,” Jesus tells of a Father who, when his son publicly shamed him and left him, still ran out to meet him at his return.
God’s love should make us all stop and ask three questions:
1. Do you believe in the steadfast love of the Father?
The stories of Jonah and Hosea and the prodigal son are about you and me. We are Nineveh, a people so wicked that God’s love for us defies comprehension. We are Gomer, who despite repeatedly running into the arms of other lovers, God still pursues, saying, “My bride! How can I give you up? I will not!” We are the prodigal son, for whom God stands daily on the porch of heaven, longing for us to come home. And for us he sacrifices not a fatted calf, but his very self, at the cross.
There are days when we can’t feel the love of God. I experience that just like everyone else. But when I can’t feel it, I choose to believe it because of what I saw at Calvary. My perception of the love of God is not based on my feelings at any one moment, or on how well my life is going. It is based on the glorious truth that God sought me and bought me and forgave me at the cross. Our lives may be chaotic and tumultuous. The love of God may feel a million miles away. But if we really believe in a God who loved us when we were literally killing him, that love will anchor our life through any storm.
2. Have you embraced his love for you?
God’s love is powerful, but it’s still love—which means he won’t force it on those who don’t want it. You have to choose to receive it.
But God’s love isn’t a one-time transaction that happens at salvation. It’s also the reality that should refresh our souls daily. As the Apostle Paul said, the Holy Spirit “sheds abroad” the love of God in our hearts (Rom 5:5). That literally means pours out. It’s the same word used for the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts. It’s a word of immense power. We’re not talking about a faint feeling of sentimentality, but a flood.
If we don’t sense God’s love and daily live in awareness of it, we aren’t ever going to feel close to God. Even if we are “performing” well for him, if we don’t have a tangible sense of his love for us, he’ll always seem just out of reach. If God is, for you, the Creator, the Judge, the Holy One (all true), but not a Father, Lover, and Savior, your love for God will always be strained. Knowing the love of God for us, in Christ, produces the love for God in us.
3. Have you sensed his love for others?
There is simply no way to experience mercy and love like God has shown us and not be changed. Those who believe the gospel become like the gospel—full of mercy and grace. This isn’t a matter of being told to, but of seeing our situation clearly. We love because he first loved us.
Imagine if I walked out in front of my congregation this weekend, five minutes after the sermon was supposed to start. “Sorry I’m late,” I explain. “But on my way here, I got a flat tire. And just as I went to change it, an 18-wheeler came barreling down the highway and ran me over. It was so annoying.” You would rightly respond, “I’m not buying it. There is no way you come into contact with that much force and leave unchanged. You’d look different. You’d be walking different. You’d be talking different. Shoot, you’d smell different. Everything about you would be different.”
That’s what it’s like to feel the weight of God’s love for us. We can’t come away from it unchanged. How could we know a love like this and keep it to ourselves? How could we know a love like this and still refuse to forgive? We couldn’t. So we pray, “God, as you have been to me, so I will be to others.”
For more, be sure to listen to the entire sermon here.
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