“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die .  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.“ –Romans 5:7-8

We find it easy to love people who are easy to love. In reality, we tend to like people who are like us. Furthermore, we assume that God’s love is bound by the same standards. If He loves us, we assume it must mean that we are not all that bad. Not only is this view false in every way, it destroys a deep appreciation for the amazing beauty of God’s love—that He loved the unlovely, and died for the unloving.

D. A. Carson illustrated the difference between our vision of love and God’s:

Charles and Susan are walking down the beach, hand in hand. They’ve kicked off their shoes and the wet sand squishes between their toes. Charles turns to Susan, gazes deeply into her large hazel eyes and says, “Susan, I love you; I really do.” What does he mean? If we assume he has decency and Christian virtue, the least he could mean is something like, “Susan, you mean everything to me. I can’t live without you. Your smile paralyzes me from fifty yards; your sparkling good humor, your beautiful eyes, the scent of your hair—everything about you transfixes me . . . I really love you.” 

Or do his words I love you mean something like, “Susan, in spite of the fact that your nose is so large it belongs in cartoons, your hair has enough grease to lubricate an eighteen-wheeler, your knees make a camel look elegant, and your personality would scare Attila the Hun, I really love you.”

I’m guessing Charles meant the first one! Yet this is how human love differs from God’s love. When Romans 5 tells us that God “loved us,” it doesn’t mean that God looked down on us and said, “You mean everything to me. I can’t live without you: your personality, your witty conversation, your beauty, your smile— everything about you.”

Not a chance!  When God says, “I love you,” He is saying, “Listen—your nose and greasy hair, your disjointed knees and selfish personality, your wretched sinfulness—all make you disgustingly unattractive to Me. But I love you because I have chosen to love you, through My Son, your Savior.”

My friend, if you think you deserve God’s love, even to the smallest degree, you will never feel totally secure in Him. You will live in perpetual fear that you might do something undeserving of His love and, if that is the case, then you definitely will!

Don’t be afraid. This is the amazing beauty of God’s love toward us, that “while we were still sinners, He died for us.” The truth is, there isn’t anything you can do that will ever change His mind. His love for you is the same yesterday, today . . . and forever!…

Thank the Lord for loving you so much that He not only chose to die for you while you were still in your sins, but He chooses to love you every day in spite of your sin. Pray that He will give you strength to obey His command to love others in the same way He has loved you.– Stephen Davey

“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed , came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,“– Luke 10:33

“O Lord, advertise your love through us!” was the prayer of an earnest Christian. A young Christian, when asked if she loved Jesus, was moved to tears, saying in her heart, “What a dim light mine must be, if others are not sure that I love Jesus!” A Christian writer has recently said, that the deadliest heresy is to be unloving.

God advertised his love through the good Samaritan. Others needed not to ask him if he loved God. He was not guilty of the deadly heresy of being unloving. He had true compassion. He was not content merely to say a few pitying words. His sympathy took the practical form of doing something. He bound up the man’s wounds—that was help of the best kind. He stopped the bleeding away of the sufferer’s life. He rested not until he had him safe in a warm shelter.

He did not even content himself with getting the man into an inn, then throwing off further responsibility. He might have said, “I have done my share; let some other one look after him now.” But he was in no hurry to get the case off his hands. He took care of the man for a time, and then provided for the continuation of the care as long as it would be needed. The good Samaritan is Christ’s own picture of what Christian love should be in everyone of his disciples.– J R Miller

“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:”–Romans 9:1–3

Every one of the more than seven billion people living on the face of the Earth will spend eternity either in Heaven or in Hell. Over a billion people were born in the fifteen-year period between 1999 and 2014. Each of them must either choose Christ as Saviour or die in their sins—and yet many, many of them have never even heard the gospel. Charles Spurgeon said, “If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.”

The reality is that the mission field is not just far off places where the customs and language are different from our own. The mission field is also our jobs, our neighborhoods, our restaurants, and our families. The people you meet today are headed toward eternity. Our society is obsessed with avoiding the reality that life will end. People spend large amounts of money trying to look and feel young. Companies sell “life” insurance that doesn’t keep you alive and doesn’t pay you if you live. Cemeteries used to be located right by the church so people saw them every Sunday. But no matter how much we try to avoid or deny it, “…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). If we keep this inescapable truth in our minds, we will not find it hard to witness to those we meet.–Dr. Paul Chappell