God Loves You!

God Loves You!

By Apostle Felix

8  The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.
9  The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his matchless Son into the world so that we might live through him.
10  This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins. 

1 John 4: 8, 9, 10

Love has been interpreted erroneously, especially by Hollywood and the music industry. Many songs have been sung about love, but the theme associated with love in those songs have been sex. The world has made many to misunderstand what love really is.  We can only understand what love really is when we know God. We cannot find the real meaning of love outside God. God is love. He does not have love. There is nothing else God can do apart from loving. Love is His nature. The love of God is not a reaction, or a response to some good deed. He loves independent of any external influence. Man, on the contrary responds to love. God is self existent and so is love.  This is the reason why God loves man unconditionally. His motivation for loving man is not external, but it is His nature.

8  But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly!

Romans 5: 8

He loved us while we were yet sinners. He chose to love man despite man’s condition. There is no man’s condition that can change God’s love for man. There is nothing man can do that can make God to change His state of being. He is in unchangeable state always and so is His love for  man. God loved Saul, who later became apostle Paul, before and while he was persecuting the church. Saul’s life was gripped in sin, and yet God loved Him. He never sought God or prayed to God for forgiveness but God reached out to him in love. God’s love has the power to accept and change a worst sinner.

Sin is a terrible thing and it has to be abhorred at all cost. However, it is the love of God in man’s heart that has the ability to change a man’s life. There are so many people who do not like the way of life they live. But they have found it difficult to quit the life of sin and this is due to the absence of the  love of God in their hearts. The first man, Adam’s sin did not change God, but it changed Adam. After Adam had sin, he ran and hid himself from God. It was not God who ran away from God, but man. Sin changed man’s location in God, while God did not change at all. He came looking for man, not because He did not know where man was. He knew what had happened to man, but the question was more to inform man about his fallen state. God was still loving and provided a solution to man’s problem.

5  And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!
6  For when the time was right, the Anointed One came and died to demonstrate his love for sinners who were entirely helpless, weak, and powerless to save themselves. 

Romans 5: 5, 6

The love of God in our hearts helps us not to lose hope and faith in God’s promises. When you know that God loves you, then it will be easier to trust Him for all He has already done for you. The love of God is compelling. Oftentimes, believers doubt God and His word because they lack the understanding of God’s love. The love of God was demonstrated in the birth, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. God loves man so much that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ. His generous giving was not an afterthought. He had already decided to sacrifice His Son way before man was created.

1Pe 1:19  but the precious blood of Christ—who like a spotless, unblemished lamb was sacrificed for us.
1Pe 1:20  This was part of God’s plan, for he was chosen and destined for this before the foundation of the earth was laid, but he has been made manifest in these last days for you. 

1 Peter 1: 19, 20

God loves you, regardless. His love for you is not depended on what you do. Our behavior and way of living does not affect His love. However, our behavior and way of living may affect the manner we respond to God’s love. The willingness to live in sin may negatively affect the way we respond to His love. But what we do does not affect His love, and He is not in the business of condemning anyone. He loves you.