Dear Friends,
The Overwhelming Love of God
There are some things in life that are difficult to put into words: a beautiful sunset, the birth of a child, an unexpected act of kindness, the love we feel for someone very dear to us. We can describe them, but somehow our words never quite seem enough. The Bible suggests that God’s love is like that – only infinitely greater.
The apostle Paul prayed that Christians might grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” and might “know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3 v 18–19). It is a wonderful contradiction: Paul wants us to know something that is beyond our knowing! Perhaps that is because we sometimes make God’s love too small. We imagine that God loves us when we are good, when our faith is strong, when we pray regularly or when life is going well. But when we fail, doubt, struggle or wander away, we wonder whether God might love us a little less. The extraordinary message of Christianity is that God’s love does not depend upon our performance.
Jesus shows us what the love of God is really like. He welcomed people others rejected. He touched those others avoided. He forgave those who had failed. He noticed people whom everyone else overlooked. And ultimately, he went to the cross. As Paul writes: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5 v 8). Notice those words: while we were still sinners. God did not wait for us to become worthy of his love. He loved us first. And perhaps that is something many of us need to hear.
Whatever our past, whatever mistakes we have made, whatever burdens we carry, we are loved by God more deeply than we can imagine. Christian faith begins not with trying harder to earn God’s approval, but with opening our hands and receiving a love that is already being offered.
The apostle John puts it beautifully: “We love because he first loved us.” God’s love is wider than our failures, deeper than our fears, stronger than our doubts and greater than anything we face. We may spend a lifetime discovering its depths – and still only have begun.
God bless you, David
