“We love Him because He first loved us” (I John 4:19). My love for God can only be a response to His love for me. If I do not believe that God loves me, I cannot love Him. Charles Hodge says, “The great difficulty with many Christians is that they cannot persuade themselves that Christ (or God) loves them; and the reason why they cannot feel confident of the love of God, is, that they know they do not deserve His love, on the contrary, that they are in the highest degree unlovely. How can the infinitely pure God love those who are defiled with sin, who are proud, selfish, discontented, ungrateful, disobedient? This, indeed, is hard to believe.”
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4). “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
I must continually preach the gospel to myself and daily take those sins that my conscience accuses me of to the cross and allow the cleansing blood of Jesus to wash over me and purify me. It is only the blood of Christ that cleanses our consciences so that we may no longer feel guilty (Heb. 9:14; 10:2). When my sense of guilt or shame is taken away because of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, I am freed up to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Not only am I free to love Him but I am motivated in a positive way so that my love becomes a spontaneous outpouring of gratitude to Him and a fervent desire to obey and please Him.
“He who has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47). To the extent that I realize and acknowledge my own sinfulness and the extent to which I realize the total forgiveness of those sins and the unconditional love of my Savior, will determine the measure of my love to Him. Heb. 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. My love for God must arise out of my heart as I, in faith, lay hold of the great truths of the gospel. This faith in His great unfathomable love for me will in turn express itself in loving obedience to Him as I abide in and feed my soul on all that He is and it is this faith that acts as the very weapon used to battle against the deceitfulness and power of sin. I may not understand God’s perfect love for me but my lack of understanding does not make His love any less real or true. It is and will always be. He wants me to embrace His love, to enjoy it, and delight in Him knowing that no matter what I’ve done or what’s to come, His love remains and makes me worthy of love.
that last sentence really stuck out to me.
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