God’s Amazing Love for Us
David W Palmer
(1 John 3:1 CJB) “See what love the Father has lavished on us in letting us be called God’s children! For that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it has not known him.”
God’s love is amazing; it is what the whole universe emanated from. Let’s continue our learning about his love by looking at his love for his family, for sinners, and for the world.
(1 John 4:19 NKJV) “We love Him because He first loved us.”
We see here that God not only loves us, but that he loved us first—well before we ever loved him. We learn from this that God’s love takes the initiative to reach out before there is any possibility of a loving response. Also, we see that he initiates love that is unreserved in the face of possible rejection. For us to love as he does may be very challenging, but God has made it possible by pouring his love into our hearts; and his “love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8 NKJV).
(Romans 5:5 BSB) And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.
Next, we look at a list of Scriptures in several categories that give greater detail of various other aspects of God’s amazing love:
1. God’s love for the world
(John 3:16 NKJV) “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
This of course, doesn’t mean that God loves “worldliness.” It does mean, however, that his love for people is so strong that it motivated him to reach out. By giving his son Jesus, he set up the plan of redemption so that everyone in the whole world could be reconciled to him. And through that reconciliation, he has made us eligible for life everlasting. Praise the Lord!
(1 John 4:9 NKJV) “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”
2. God’s love for sinners
(Romans 5:8 NKJV) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is a very amazing aspect of God’s love. He didn’t merely have feelings of love towards us as sinners, but he demonstrated his supreme love for us. And he demonstrated it in the most convincing way possible; Christ died for us when we were still estranged from God. This truly is a description of what real love is all about. What’s more, it is because of Jesus’s love-motivated death and resurrection that we are now accepted by God and reconciled to him.
(Ephesians 1:6 NKJV) “To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.”
What is to be our response to this amazing love? The apostle Paul said that his response was to live his life so fully submitted to the Lord Jesus that it was literally as if Christ was living in and through him. This should be our response too. Jesus expects us to live our lives in a way that is so “compelled” by love that it is indistinguishable from his life:
(Galatians 2:20 NKJV) “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
3. God’s love for his family
(1 John 3:1 NKJV) “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”
(Ephesians 2:4 NKJV) “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us …”
The overwhelming impact of these verses is that God loves us; he absolutely loves his family. He loved us enough to have Jesus die for us before we responded; how much more is his love assured to us now that we have responded. He has adopted us as his very own family members; and he loves each of us way beyond our natural comprehension. In fact, we need Holy Spirit revelation to grasp the e
