God Loves Us

When God created man He had a goal – He had a vision – He had hopes and dreams for us!

He created us, formed us, nurtured us – He loved us, and still does.

In Psalm 106:1: we read:

¹Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever

In certain translations the word mercy is translated as love – God’s love endures forever.

In Hebrews 1:10-12: we read about the eternal and unchanging nature of God. We have also read that God is love – that is to say that if God endures forever – that if He stays the same for ever, if He is eternal and unchanging – then the same must apply to His character.

God loved us even before the foundations of the Earth, for we read that Christ was foreordained before the foundations of the Earth to be our High Priest, the Lamb slaughtered for our transgressions.

This also indicates that the blueprint of salvation has been in place long before anything we know came to be.

In the Psalms David asks – who is man that You are mindful of Him?

To think that God, who is rich in mercy and grace – who is rich in ever enduring love, loved us so much that He would offer Himself, that He would endure our infirmities and iniquity to free us from the bondage that we’ve embraced.

We often sing – How great is our God! Not as a question, but rather a declaration.

We don’t stop to think about those words – about how great and wonderful He truly is, that He died for the sins of the world while we were still His enemies, while we hated Him and His ways He chose to show us love and compassion, He chose to show us mercy in a cold and merciless world.

Our sins have separated us from God

God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He interacted with them. They spent time together.

Isaiah 59:2:

But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

In Hebrews the Holy Spirit encourages us not to harden our hearts, that if we hear His voice – that we should listen – unlike the Israelites in the day of provocation.

Our sins had become a separation between us and God, but God loves us, and because of His great love wherewith He loved us, even while we were still dead in our trespasses, He came to call us home – to draw near to us, and draw us near to His heart.

Through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, God asks, even petitions us – asking – to whom would you liken me? Who would you want to compare me to?

We need God – we don’t always realize it, but we need Him. We’ve known Him since we were first created, but today we have become estranged, we have become strangers to God, although, deep down in our innermost we know He is there.

For this reason many worshipped trees and rocks, for this reason many have searched for objects of worship – because of a need within to glorify God, but because of our separation from Him, many have turned to the idle practice of idol worship.

God says unto Moses – no-one can see me and live.

We do not know God. We know that there is a God, but the majority of the world doesn’t know Him for who He is in reality.

Because of our sins we cannot know God – because of our sins we have become blind and deaf.

The Lord says – I knock on the door of your heart, if you open the door I will come in and will eat with you – in other words – open the door and we will spend time together, quality time.

Our sins have separated us from God, but He wants us back.

Jesus died for our sins

II Corinthians 5:18:

And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

Christ is the solution to our problem.

Our sins have become a separation between God and ourselves, and therefore we live a life without God.

God says – It is not good for man to be alone.

Therefore, to bridge the gap that rests between God and ourselves, He comes to Earth and intercedes for us as High Priest, as the Holy Lamb of God.

He sacrifices Himself, tasting death for all men so that we can all gain from His reward – life everlasting, but more importantly, to reconcile man to God.

For this purpose the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, hung on the cross – to save mankind from its own foolishness, to free us from our sin, to free us from disease, to free us from the burdens of our own mistakes and failures – to save us.

Christ’s ministry here on Earth was to act as mediator between us and God – to act on our behalf in things pertaining to God.

Through His sacrifice we are saved

Through His intercession all our sins have been washed away – we are cleansed of all sin and iniquity, cleansed of all our transgressions. All our trespasses have been erased.

He bore our curse, and our disease, and through His intercession we are saved.

Peter states that there is no other name in Heaven or on Earth by which we can attain salvation – only through the name of Christ, only through the blood of Jesus.

Only through His Spirit can we be called children of God.

We were lost but now we’re found, we were blind but now we can see. Man can once again know God – we can once again spend time with Him.

Glory to the one who saved us from our sins and the burden of death.

The new and living way

Romans 2:14-15:

¹⁴For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: ¹⁵Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

When we accept Christ as our Savior and allow His Spirit to do its work in our everyday lives, then His law will be written on our hearts – we will love our neighbors and we will love God with all that we have.

God gives us a new and living way, a clean slate – it doesn’t matter who you were or where you’ve been – for all our sins, all of our past is washed away to be replaced by His joy and His mercy and grace.

This requires true repentance from all the things you used to do and used to be, it takes a choice made in your heart.

Repentance is the door for change – once we lay down all our sins and all our burdens, once we lay down our hindrances and our mountains before God, only then can He renew us. When we let go of the trivial things that keep us bound to the old man, only then can we be renewed totally and completely through His word and His Spirit.

It is time that we open our hearts, that we pray as the psalmist did, that the eyes of our hearts be enlightened, that He will reveal His will and His ways unto us and lead us in all righteousness.

He has saved us from our old ways, from our old lives, and given us a new page, He has written our names in the book of life – He has erased all our records – all the transgressions and sins.

Through Christ Jesus we are renewed and established in righteousness, for righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. He has taken us out of the kingdom of darkness – under His hand have we been delivered from the principalities and powers of darkness – and has placed us in His kingdom. He has made us a Holy Nation, a Royal Priesthood – and thus we shouldn’t forsake our new found profession, but live it. We should reach out to the broken world that surrounds us, we should reach out to this sick and dying world.