God's love: unfathomable not perverse

Hogmanay Message at Greenview EC 

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Romans 5

Insecurity

2014, like every year before it, proved again that the only certainty in this world is that life is fragile. Whether Ebola, terrorism, war, getting on a plane, playing cricket or just going Christmas shopping in Glasgow – in a moment, out of nowhere, lives can be turned upside down. Hopes, dreams and plans snatched away.

We hate uncertainty – it’s debilitating, at worst paralysing. It’s why as individuals and as a society we invest hugely in order to eradicate it and guard against it. Some of those efforts are good and constructive – Health & Safety, Insurance. Some are just futile and wasteful – checking a horoscope or buying a Lottery ticket. Either way underpinning all such attempts is the deep human desire to find security, and to base our lives on something dependable.

This is no less true spiritually – although for most people that is a ‘hole’ the try to fill with all the wrong stuff. A deep spiritual emptiness won’t be filled with material possessions any more than a sieve will be filled with water. However, even for the Christian the reassurance of spiritual security (i.e. the deep confidence of being at peace with God, forgiven and under His loving care) can be lacking. Sadly, all too often the experience of Christians is one of doubt, worry and fear in their sense of spiritual well-being.

Rolling back the years

You see when a person becomes a Christian – that is, recognises their sin and need to be forgiven, recognises that Jesus is the Son of God who on the Cross made forgiveness possible, recognises that they need to say sorry to God and put their life back where it should always have been, under God’s rule – it is typically an experience of joy. There is the excitement of being a friend of God now. There is relief that a fresh start in life has been granted - a chance to do things God’s way and leave the floundering of the past behind.

But the years pass and some of the old sinful traits and behaviours can seem hard to shake off. Faith inevitably begins to feel familiar rather than fresh. A strange thing happens: you start to become even more sensitive and aware of your sinful inadequacies – so rather than receding over time your failures seem all the more inexcusable and damming. Subtly and stealthily joy gets replaced with anxiety, confidence with introspection, and hope with fear. The Christian walk once so invigorating, morphs into the uneasy sensation of straining God’s goodwill and tiptoeing along the edge of His rejection.  

Non-deductible love

It is the scenario for which Romans 5 was written. The reminder of God’s non-deductible love. It is the reminder that God knows every one of your sins and failures even better than you do. He even knows about the sins you haven’t yet clocked onto – those attitudes and perceptions that you are think are fine and normal but actually leave much to be desired. He knows you fall far short of the person he saved you in Christ to be. He knows all your nonsense – all of it.

But you know what, even when it was far worse than that, far worse than it is now – He loved you. He loved you when you cared not to give God any great honour in your life. He loved you when you had no real care or concern about Jesus.  He loved you when sin was easy and failure and faithfulness caused you no great worry. You see, while we were still sinners (that is, not saints – not Christians) Christ died for us (v6).

This is remarkable – we might put ourselves on the line for a friend or a nice guy. But Jesus gave up His life for the intransigent, the hard-hearted and the utterly ungrateful. He didn’t wait for signs of improvement, for a bit of appreciation or even to be asked. He loved them so much He sacrificed Himself for them when none of the above were ‘on the table’.

This great assurance of these verses is this: now you’ve been saved, now you are a follower of Jesus Christ – albeit an ever so imperfect one; now that sin does bother you; now you are grateful to God and thankful for His grace; now that you at least try and make an effort to please him some of the time and wish you were someone who did all of the time – do you think that God will now love you less?

Unfathomable not perverse

God’s love for us is unfathomable – but it’s not perverse. He isn’t going to love you less for caring a bit as opposed to not caring at all!

If Jesus died to open up the way for you to be forgiven, changed and saved – do you think having gone through that, and having begun His work in you, there is any chance that He will now get fed up with you and turn frosty?

The Cross is the great historical and tangible proof that you can never be too much of a failure, too much of a loser, or too great a sinner for God to love you. Because the hope of the Gospel is not in us now – but in Jesus then, now and forever. Whatever happens in 2015, God’s love in Jesus, for those trusting in Him, is certain. This truth about God’s love is the ultimate security – the bond and relationship that nothing can sever.

It is a reality to give us confidence – to allow us to enjoy our blessings, use our gifts and celebrate our faith. It tells us to leave our sins and failures where they belong – at the Cross. It is the invitation to live as free men & women – liberated, hopeful and confident that God is for us and will be with us no matter what.  

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

‘For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8 (NIV)