God loves the whole world. He gave everything so that the world could be saved. Understanding the length and depth and height and width of God’s love for us gives us a better understanding of what we mean to Him.
Many people believe that God exists, but that He is the Judge of all, which is true, but He is far more than this. He is also the God of grace, mercy and forgiveness.
God is love
One day He will judge all things, and those who have not received Jesus as Lord and Saviour by the last day will be in serious jeopardy, but we have to understand this characteristic of His nature through the eyes of His love.
If God were only judging us today and finding us guilty of falling short of His will, as the Judge He could simply take us all out and end it all, start all over again and solve the sin problem through judgement. We would actually deserve it.
But He is also love. He isn’t just the God of Love. His nature is love. Because of this He has amazingly given everyone an opportunity to change their ways and come to Him through faith in His Son Jesus.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:15-16
Why Jesus? Because God chose this way to offer us redemption–His means of bringing us back to Him through His very powerful love. He is a loving Father who is giving opportunity to wayward children to return to Him. His is unconditional love.
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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
John 3:16-17
So, as it stands, God is not intending to condemn the world, but to save the world, even though all have sinned and not one is right before Him. No, He has sent His Son Jesus to give us the opportunity of receiving eternal life.
He loves anyway
That’s an incredible level of love. According to Paul’s letter to the Romans no one is qualified for salvation on their own merits. Our own righteousness was as filthy rags (Is.64:6).
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
Romans 3:10-12
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
So many people have rejected God altogether. They have claimed He doesn’t exist, even though the entire Universe sings of His creative wonder. People have sought substitutes to the One True God, created false gods, and made their own idols in their denial (Rom.1:22-23).
The fool has said in his heart,
Psalm 14:1
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt,
They have done abominable works,
There is none who does good.
Yet, despite all of this, God has send His own Son as our substitute to carry, on our behalf, the result of sin, which is death, and allowed Him to take our place at the cross, which the place of cursing (Rom.6:23).
God gave His own Son, who lived a sinless life, the only person to have been able to live this way, who took it upon Himself to pay the price we owed. He carried all our wrongs so that we could be made right.
That is an amazing amount of love. God doesn’t want us to perish (2Pet.3:9). He wants us to have everlasting life with Him. He has set it up so that we can respond to His offer and receive that love–the love that saves.
How much love
Yes, so how can you calculate the level of the love of God towards us all? The Apostle Paul in his prayers desires that we all come to that understanding.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-19
Paul wants us, like him, to know the width and length and depth and height of the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, that passes all knowledge.
It’s tangibly knowable and yet beyond human comprehension because it is the fulness of God expressed in His desire to redeem us from ourselves and from our own shortcomings. The expanse of God’s love is extraordinary. It’s supernatural. It’s almost beyond our level of understanding.
Perhaps we will never really know or understand the dimension of love that God has for us, that He expresses toward us. We can, however, enter into it and know it at a growing level. The more we learn to know Him the more we will know His love and what it means for us, and how it can be poured from us into others through His Word and Spirit.
When we repent and receive Christ as Lord we have already been judged. Yes, we were found wanting, but He saved us anyway when we confessed Jesus as Lord, and our judgement is done as long as we remain rooted and grounded in Him.
We have, by grace through faith, realised and acknowledged that we have need of Him and His love, mercy and grace.
He is the Judge and will judge all at the end of time, but we who are saved have examined ourselves and through Jesus have accepted His mercy–the mercy that triumphs over sin and judgment. We have been accepted in the Beloved.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
