The Towering, Demonstrated Love of God

So far we’ve encountered the Father’s eternal love for His children, His predestination unto adoption and His awesome act of creation. Moving ahead on the timeline of the Father’s loving acts toward us, what comes next?

Here’s a hint. Number four of ten towers over the train wreck of human sin as the greatest act of all, the pinnacle of the Father’s glory. Number four is our Father sent and sacrificed His one and only Son for our redemption.

Think of it. He didn’t call out of the deserving dungeon one of His enemies to execute and so appease His wrath. Nor did He offer up one of His many, well-behaved adopted children like Abraham, Hannah or Isaiah.

No, none of these could qualify as Savior of sinners, so in demonstrated infinite love, our God gave up His eternally begotten, uncreated, infinitely good Son. He gave the one who had been at His side for all eternity in Father and Son mutual delight. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

The Father sent and offered up His pride and joy, His perfect reflection and quintessential image bearer, who pleased Him in every way possible. Some fathers can never be pleased. Not this one. He was, so His love for His Son could not have been greater.

The Father was never angry at Jesus for His own sins, for He had none. He was never even slightly disappointed in His performance, His grades, His development, speech, attitudes, responses … His anything.

But He sacrificed this perfect specimen of humanity, this precious jewel and the eternal apple of His eye and did so out of the greatest well house of love imaginable. “For God so loved the world”, Jesus said, “that He gave His only begotten Son.” The weight of gravity is on “so loved” and “gave.”

Jesus was the very best He could give and the most He could give. No one or no thing following Jesus could be given. What would be the point?

At the disturbing baptism of Christ, a voice spoke from the heavens and said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” At the shocking Mountain of Transfiguration, a voice spoke from the heavens and said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to Him!”

In Romans 5:8 Paul brings crystal clear clarity to that gift of Jesus upon Calvary’s cross. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Oh beloved, don’t ever think that only Jesus loves you or that Jesus is the ultimate reason for your salvation. The ultimate reason or first cause is the love of the Father who designed the plan of redemption and then sent His Son into the world to execute the plan.

It is to the glory of God the Father that He would give up so much and it is to the glory of God the Son that He would agree, freely and willingly coming on our behalf.

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). John makes two points here. One, you can’t think about the love of God apart from His sending His Son to the cross to appease the wrath of God and turn it to favor (propitiation). Two, we should never be impressed with our love for God but rather God’s love for us.

But sometimes life is extreme and full of peril. Sometimes we aren’t mindful of His love because trials are beating the snot out of us. So Paul asks, in light of the believer’s trials, and persecutions, “What then shall we say to these things?” What shall we say about poor health, loss of loved ones, broken bodies and severe persecution?

“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” That’s what we shall say! All of life viewed through the lens of Calvary.

If God was willing to give the purest, most valuable of all gifts when He did not spare His own Son, then we can rest assured He will also freely give us all that we need in time and all that is right and good in eternity. No good thing will He withhold from His own. Sometimes that includes trials.

Do you remember the response we are after with these thoughts? Three are fitting: worship, gratitude and obedience. Those three words capture the essence of the believer’s life-long response to the love of God lavished upon us through Jesus our Lord.

Pastor Chris McKnight
Kerrville Bible Church