Pastor Scott Andrews | March 31, 2024
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Romans 5:6-11
Written by Frederick Lehman in 1917, the familiar words of the third verse of The Love of God, go like this:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
It’s a beautiful and amazing piece of poetry, attempting to describe the immensity and impenetrable depth of God’s love. And yet, maybe you’re here this Resurrection Sunday morning, and you’re not sure of the love of God. You look at the world and its chaos, or maybe even the pain and sorrow in your own life, and you wonder – not only is He a God of love, but is there a God at all? It’s what I want to talk to you about this morning – to remind all of you– regardless of circumstances, of the vastness, the immeasurable greatness of God’s love.
But, I suppose we should start with, how in the world would you define love? I can’t imagine any other single topic which has been the subject of more songs, movies, and greeting cards than love. But what is love? We are clearly confused. Is it what we hear in the songs – fleeting, here one day and gone the next? Is it what we see portrayed in movies all too often just a physical experience? You’ll be happy to know I did some research on the Internet, that bastion of wisdom and truth. I found the following thoughts about love:
- You know that tingly little feeling you get when you like someone? That’s your common sense leaving your body.
- Everyday, I fall in love with you more and more. Except yesterday… yesterday you were pretty annoying.
- Besides chocolate, you’re my favorite.
- A guy knows he’s in love when he loses interest in his car for a couple of days.
- Stop waiting for your prince on a white horse. Go and find him. The poor man might be lost.
- Ladies, if a man says he will fix it, he will. There is no need to remind him every 6 months about it.
I don’t know how that one made a list of love quotes, but it seemed rather appropriate – at least for me. I shared the following with you many years ago, but a group of young children were asked, what is love? Here are a few of their responses:
- Rebecca, age 8, “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So, my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That’s love.”
- Karl, age 5, “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne, and they go out and smell each other.”
- Chrissy, age 6, “Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”
- Danny, age 7, “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure it tastes okay.
- Emily, age 8, “Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and talk. My mommy and daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.”
- Noelle, age 7, “Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.”
- Finally, Jessica, age 8, “You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”
Seems like these kids were smarter than the Internet. In my responsibilities as a pastor, a couple of things I do is marry and bury people. As I have prepared couples for marriage through premarital counseling, we talk about love as a basis for marriage. Listen to some descriptions of love that some have given in that premarital workbook:
- “Love is a feeling you feel when you get a feeling that you’ve never felt before.” That’s deep – sounds like a country song.
- “Love is a perpetual state of anesthesia” – like you have to be on drugs to fall in love.
- How about this, “Love is a grave mental disease.” You’ve got to be out of your mind to be in love.
- Then, someone else wrote, “Love is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person.” That’s a pretty good one.
Well, I think we would all agree that defining love can be confusing, for at least a couple of reasons. First, we speak of love in such varying ways. We say we love apple pie, March Madness and Mom all at the same time. Is that to suggest I have the same feelings about apple pie as Mom? You see, it’s confusing because we’re not really sure who or what we love.
Second, it’s confusing because we’re not sure what causes us to love someone. What is it that evokes feelings of love? For many, it goes like this: “I love you, if…if you meet certain conditions.” But here’s my question: is true love, as that last definition suggests, unconditional? I would suggest much of love we see in the world today – much of the love you’ve experienced – is quite conditional. I’ll love you forever, if….I don’t know about this till-death-to-us-part thing. And frankly, it is much like we hear in the songs, here one day and gone the next. Because, let’s be honest, no one can possibly meet all the conditions, all the time.
It doesn’t matter who you are, I can say three things about you this morning. First, you need love, both to love and to be loved. It’s the way God created us – to experience community, relationship, love. Everyone needs to belong and you long for love.
The second thing I can say about you is this: you can’t possibly meet all the conditions of love someone lays down, all the time. You can’t do it. And so, you’ve felt the disappointment of failure, and as a consequence, you’ve felt the pain of losing love. It may have been in a friendship, in family relationship, or in a marriage. And if we were honest, we’d say there have been times we’ve withheld love, because at times, our love is conditional.
The third thing I can say about you is there is a love for you that is different than anything you’ve ever experienced. No matter where you find yourself this morning, there is an inexplicable love – God’s love for you.
Again, I want to talk to you about love this morning – more specifically, God’s love, and even more than that…what would cause God to send His beloved Son, to die for us? Again, that’s inexplicable. Our text is in Romans 5, but, let me briefly bring you up to speed in this chapter of the book of Romans. You see, Paul wrote almost half the letters in the NT, but Romans is his work that explains salvation – specifically through the gospel. That’s the theme of the book, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
From there, Paul spends the next three chapters demonstrating that we all need salvation, because, well, we’re all sinners. And there’s nothing we can do about; there’s none righteous. And so, the whole world is found guilty before God. But gloriously, Paul gets to the end of chapter 3 and says, there is a salvation for all who believe, that is, who have faith in the work of Christ.
So understand [now we’re in chapter 4], salvation is not something you earn, that is, by being good. Paul already told us – there is none good. Why, even Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was not justified or declared righteous by his works, being good. No, it was by his faith in which he believed the promises of God. So we get to the end of chapter 4 and read these words – being declared justified, righteous will be for all those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. You see, He was delivered over because of our transgressions/sin, and was raised because of our justification.
So then, Paul starts chapter 5 with these words, therefore, having been justified/declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the midst of the chaos of this world, or chaos in your own soul – you can know peace. But we still haven’t answered the question – what would cause God to send His beloved Son Jesus to die on the cross for sinners, so that by faith, we could be saved? Let’s read our text today, Romans 5:6-11, for the answer.
Again, lots of Christian words, but there it is: God’s amazing love. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. You see, the cross of Jesus proves God’s immense love for us. Listen, we spend the first three chapters of this book being soundly condemned. It takes to the end of chapter 3 to get to the wonderful news of the gospel. But here, Paul gives us the why to this incredible truth. God’s great love was demonstrated at the cross. It takes till chapter 5 for Paul to even mention the word love. Yes, the cross demonstrate our unrighteousness – that the Son of God would have to die for sinners. But the cross also shows His great love for you.
There are three significant things we see about God’s love from this passage:
- His Love is Unconditional
- His Love is Demonstrated
- His Love is Sacrificial
First, His really is an unconditional love – He doesn’t love us because, He doesn’t love us if. He loves us because He loves us – and as we see, it is certainly not because we were lovable or adorable. In no way have we earned His love.
You see, notice Paul uses four meaningful words to describe the objects of His love: we were helpless, we were ungodly, we were sinners, and we were enemies. That’s what we were when God loved us. By the way, if that is true, why are you trying to earn God’s love now? As if what you do merits God’s attention, dare I say, God’s affection. But you may say, you don’t understand what I’ve done. It doesn’t matter. God loved you when you were a helpless, ungodly, sinful, rebellious enemy – and He still does.
Look at those – He loved us while we were still helpless. Meaning, you didn’t do anything to earn God’s love. The word actually speaks of a total incapacity for good; of our moral frailty. Meaning, there was nothing we could do about our deplorable condition. There was nothing we could bring to the table. Nothing. The old saying, “God helps those who help themselves” is not even in the Bible – it comes from Poor Richard’s Almanac. And the truth is, not only is that idea not in the Bible – it’s bad – it’s not true. God helped us when there was nothing we could do to help ourselves. It’s not like God said, here, you go as far as you can go, and I’ll meet you halfway. No – He did it all because we could do nothing.
Try as we might, there is nothing we can do to improve our situations – there was nothing we could do to make ourselves acceptable to God. There are a lot of people today who mean well – they understand we’re sinners and need to be made right – so they’ve come up with all kinds of things to do to make them right. That’s the false truth of every world religion, by the way. You know, do so many good things to counteract your bad things, give so much money, say so many prayers, go to this or that church – but Paul says we were helpless/powerless to do anything about our condition. The truth is, we couldn’t go to enough church services, say enough prayers or give enough money to take care of our problem. So stop trying to earn God’s love. Listen, He loves you.
Not only were we helpless, we were ungodly. Ungodly is a pejorative or derogatory term. We did things in opposition to the character of God. While created in His image to be His image-bearers, we were ungodly – not God-like – not image bearers. We were not like God. It is every action that is not like God in thought, word or deed.
Not only that, third we were sinners. To be a sinner is to fall short of the standard of righteousness or rightness that God expects from His creation. You see, God’s standard of righteousness is perfection. And we know in our heart of hearts everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory – His perfect standard – there is no one who is perfectly righteous.
I know I don’t have to convince you of that truth. You know, as hard as you try, there have been many times in your life – much of the time even daily, that you have sinned. That’s not to say you haven’t done some good things, but in the midst of the good things, there are the sinful things, which keep us from meeting God’s standard of perfection.
And so fourth, verse 10 tells us because of sin, we were enemies of God. Now, I know we don’t like to hear that, but it’s true. Our sin separated us from God – every time we sinned, we sinned against a holy God – making us enemies. And here’s something else for you to think about: not only are we enemies of God – but the reverse is also true. He was an enemy of us. He stood in active opposition to our sin. His wrath was against us because of our rebellion. One said it this way, “There is not only a wicked opposition of the sinner to God, but a holy opposition of God to the sinner.” That’s tough to hear.
So that’s who we were – helpless, ungodly, sinful enemies of God. Meaning, we didn’t deserve His forgiveness, we didn’t deserve His attention, and we certainly didn’t deserve His love. But the good news is God loved us while we were still sinners. This passage should be most meaningful to us. He loves us in spite of ourselves. We didn’t meet any conditions for Him to love us at all. We don’t deserve His love – but He gave it to us anyway, and that’s called grace – getting what we don’t deserve.
Paul gives us a little contrast in verse 7. He says, if you look hard enough, you might be able to find someone to die for a righteous or a good person. The idea is, they’ve earned it. They were good, so maybe someone would die for them. Maybe…but it would still be difficult to find someone to do that. God, on the other hand, died for us when we were neither good nor righteous – we were sinners. One said the depth of love can be seen in the costliness of the gift and the unworthiness of the recipient. Think about it – what greater cost was there than the gift of God’s Son? And who was less worthy of His love than we? His was an unconditional love.
Listen to this excerpt from The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner:
“The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
“The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
“The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing – to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is the love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.”
Even in our sin, even while enemies of God, He loves us, and did something to conquer our hearts. He wants to reconcile the sinner to Himself. And if you have never been reconciled to God, I want to say, today can be the day when you make peace with God, and you are no longer His enemy. In fact, you can become His child.
The second thing we see about God’s love is that it is a demonstrated love. Notice, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us…” He demonstrated it – that means He proved it. God said, “I love you, and I’ll prove it by giving my most valued possession – my Son.” For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
You may be wondering, with all you’re going through, whether God really loves you. Speak this truth to your heart – He gave His Son for you. We’ve all been in relationships where we’ve wondered about the other person’s commitment. It started in grade school or junior high. You sent that love note to someone with the words, “I like you. Do you like me? Check yes or no.” Whether we know it or not, it continued to high school, college and beyond. You’ve laid awake at night wondering if the next day the love of your life was going to break up with you. You’ve tried to interpret the signs – does the fact he hasn’t called in a week mean anything? Does the fact she’s ghosted me for a month mean anything? Some of you have even felt that anxiety in your marriage – you’ve laid awake trying to interpret the signs, wondering whether the next day you’d get back your wedding ring. And some of you have.
You never have to wonder whether God loves you. The Scripture tells us He has eternally demonstrated His love for you. You don’t have to worry, you don’t have to question. His love is eternal. And just how did God demonstrate this love? The end of the verse says, “Christ died for us.” You’ve perhaps seen the truth illustrated this way: “I once asked Jesus how much He loved me. He spread His arms open wide and said, ‘This much.’ And He died.”
You see, the third significant thing we see about God’s love is that it is a sacrificial love. Even though we were sinners, enemies of God, and powerless to do anything about it, God loved us and sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us.
During this Passion Week in which we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, we must actually speak this truth to ourselves every day. We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day. What did His death accomplish? Paul tells us by doing so, He justified us by His blood. We understand Jesus was the perfect Son of God – He never sinned when He lived on this earth. Which means, He didn’t deserve to die – we die because we sin. But, He took our sins in His body on the cross to pay the penalty of our sin. And in dying for us, we can be justified – that is, our sin can be removed and we can receive the righteousness of Christ.
This is an amazing love. It is an unconditional love – He loves you, sin and all. You don’t have to clean up your act to come to Him – you come to Him just as you are, and He will change your life. It is a demonstrated love. You never have to doubt God’s love for you. You never have to wonder whether or not He still loves you. He does. And, it’s a sacrificial love. God sacrificed His own Son for you. Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no man than this, than one lay down his life for his friends.” And that’s exactly what He did.
I close with this thought. It is true, our chaotic world is a mess. And it is possibly true your own world/life is a mess. Broken. Painful. You know that song written by Frederick Lehman, the Love of God, I mentioned at the beginning? Maybe as we sang it, you couldn’t. Or you wondered. I told you Lehman wrote the song in 1917. Anyone know what was going on in 1917? World War I, and the year the US entered the war. In fact, while German-born, Lehman emigrated to the US with his family, when he was four years old. If anyone understood the pain of a broken world, it was Lehman in 1917. Chaotic? Broken? Painful? You bet, but Lehman knew Jesus, and wrote, the depth of God’s love cannot be told, though stretched from sky to sky.
Can I say to you, God loves you, and did something about your mess. God’s love for sinners is what sent His Son Jesus to die on a cross some 2,000 years ago. And God’s power raised Him from the dead. But He didn’t stay dead – that’s what Resurrection Sunday is all about. And you may believe those facts, you may even be impressed by those truths. But it is not enough to know them. You must receive them by faith. I would encourage you this morning, to receive God’s love for you, by faith. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, turn from your sin, surrender to His Lordship, because He loves you, and you can be saved.