I want to read from 2 Thessalonians
chapter 3 with you. There's so much that can be said
about the love of God. The Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians
chapter 3 is addressing the Church, in particular the Church of Thessalonica,
but in general all of the Church, because it was the Spirit of
God who wrote this in Scripture for his people. Never underestimate
the comfort that the Spirit of God, who is the comforter to
us, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, calming by his own Spirit, that
He is to us and has recorded these words in Scripture for
us now, and now taking them by His own Spirit, His own self,
and applying them to our hearts. This is the way that He works,
and we will see this not only here, but throughout our reading
of Scripture. So let's look at this together.
2 Thessalonians 3, verse 1. Paul says to them, Finally, brethren,
pray for us. So the Apostle had been addressing
a concern that many of them had, was that the Lord had already
come. And he tells them, no, he hasn't
yet come. And he gives them several signs
to show that he will not come until these signs be fulfilled.
But here he exhorts them to pray. to pray for him and he gives
them really an indication of what they are to pray. He says,
finally brethren pray for us, and this is the prayer they ought
to pray, that the word of the Lord may have free course and
be glorified even as it is with you. The word of the Lord he
is speaking of here is the gospel. 1 Peter 1.25 it says, and this
is the word which by the gospel is preached to you. So the word
of the Lord that the Apostle Paul carried with him as an ambassador
of Jesus Christ was how God was from eternity taking the initiative
and in time reconciling by the death of his own son his people
to himself. And that's the gospel, that's
the glad tidings that's described not only in the New Testament
but throughout scripture. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so Paul asked the Thessalonians to pray for him and to pray that
God's word in the gospel would be glorified. And it would be
glorified when it had the same effect in others as it had on
the Thessalonians, that they would be convinced of it and
persuaded and converted by it and live upon it. In verse 2,
he also asked them to pray this, that we may be delivered from
unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith. This
is the same need we have today, not only as preachers of the
Word, but as believers. Each one of us need to be delivered
from unreasonable and wicked men who would oppose the Gospel,
oppose Christ, and oppose His people and their salvation in
so many ways, not just overtly as we We see in the world through
obvious ways such as evolution in schools and political nonsense,
but also in particular in the church where the gospel is preached,
we don't want a perversion to sneak in. We don't want wolves
to come in as dressed in sheep's clothing pretending to be sheep
and to lead astray God's flock. And so he prays for this. And
we need to pray these things. We pray that God's gospel of
Christ and our salvation in Him would have free course and be
glorified in this world, in His saints and in us. And that He
would protect us and keep us from evil and wicked men, because
not all men have faith. Not all men do, but God's elect
do. He gives them faith. So he says
in verse 3, he goes on and he gives them an assurance. He's
comforting them with this assurance. He says, he directs them to the
Lord. He says, but the Lord is faithful
who shall establish you and keep you from evil. You see how the
apostle expertly directs the saints to look to the Lord and
not to their own strength. He says, the Lord is faithful.
He will establish you. He will keep you from evil. And
that's what all of God's people do. They look to Christ. And
then in verse four he says he has confidence that they will
be obedient in all things because of God's grace to them. Verse
four says, and we have confidence in the Lord touching you that
you both do and will do the things which we command you. And in
order for them to do this, and by the confidence the apostle
had in them to be obedient in all things, he says what he says
in verse five. Look at this together with me.
And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into
the patient waiting for Christ. These two things the Apostle
addresses here. He wants the Lord to direct their
hearts into the love of God and into the patient waiting for
Christ. And I want to focus especially
on this first part, the love of God, today. Because this is
what we've been looking at in John 3.16, where we just quoted
at the outset, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. And I want to direct your hearts
from Scripture. I want to direct your hearts
into the love of God. I want to show you from Scripture
the nature of God's love. And having considered the nature
of God's love, I want to see how the Lord directs our hearts
into this love. Because I have one question here
that I want you to consider. I want you to consider this,
each one of you. I think that this is the question that each
one of us have deep within our conscience. And even though we
live most of our time not really considering it in detail, yet
this is always in the background of our conscience. From our youth,
the Lord impresses this upon us and he brings it out. And the question is this, and
it's answered from scripture, does God love me? Have you ever
asked that question? Does God love me? To know the
love of God according to Psalm 63 verse 3, his loving kindness
is better than life. To know the love of God exceeds
all of our life in its necessity and in its delight to us. So
this question is very important. Is his love, God's love, towards
me? Does he love me? How would we
answer that from Scripture? Because my name is not in Scripture,
is it? God doesn't put our names in
Scripture and says, see, God has loved you. And many would
say, well, God loves me because He loves everybody. But I want
you to consider, if that's the case, what the love of God means. If God loves everybody, and if
He therefore, as John 3.16 says, gave His Son, if He loves everybody in the
world and gave His Son for everybody in the world. And the Spirit
of God calls everybody in the world to faith in Christ. And yet only some are saved,
only some believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. only some are given
life, then what really made the difference? If God loves everybody
the same and Christ died for everybody the same, and the Spirit
of God calls everybody the same, then what could have made the
difference? And, of course, the common interpretation of John
3.16 is that it is true that God does love everybody, and
Jesus died for everybody, and that the Spirit of God is going
to call everybody, but only some meet the condition. of believing,
and therefore God's love to everybody doesn't do any good for them,
and Christ's death for everybody doesn't do any good for them,
and the Spirit's call to everybody doesn't do any good for them,
but only for those who by their own faith or whatever that is
that we consider to be faith, they actually exercise that and
make God's love for them work, Christ's work for them work,
and the Spirit's call effective. And so you see with that view,
that universal view of God's love and of Christ's atoning
work and the call of the Spirit of God, we come up with a very
unreasonable, unscriptural view of God and His love. It's unreasonable
to assume that men make the difference in their salvation, because God
says, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the rich man
glory in his riches, or the strong man glory in his strength, but
let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
knoweth me, that I'm the Lord. We have to glory in the Lord.
The Lord won't share His glory with anybody. So any conclusion
that brings us to the result that we make the difference in
our salvation must be false. But not only is it false on that
consideration of what this text of scripture is saying in the
context of John 3 and in the rest of the Bible, but it's inconsistent
with the nature of God's love which is revealed in all of scripture. And so that's why I want to talk
about this with you today, the nature of God's love, and how
through the nature of God's love the Lord directs our hearts into
the love of Christ, the love of God. And in doing so, He makes
us obedient in all things. Not just obedient as the people
under the law try to be outwardly, but obedient with a heart that
wants to serve Christ because of His great love for us. Remember
that woman who came to Jesus behind him and brought a huge
amount of ointment and she shed her tears and with her tears
washed Jesus' feet with her hair and poured the ointment on him.
And the man who was watching, the man who had invited Jesus,
who was a Pharisee, and he objected to this woman's treatment of
Jesus. And he asked Jesus, don't you
know what kind of woman this is? She's a sinner. And so we
see in this woman's love for Christ, that it was the knowledge
of her sin and the knowledge of Christ's love to her and His
forgiveness of her that brought her love to Him and caused her
to do this. And that's what God's love, when
properly understood, does for us. Not just understood in the
head, but understood in a way which by the Spirit of God is
applied to our hearts and causes us to know the love of God and
directs our hearts into that love. So I want to consider this
love of God, the nature of God's love to us, but I want to consider
it with this question in view. Does God love me? John 3.16 really
answers that question, and I want to get to that question right
out of the chute here. But as we look at it, I want
to caution you that when we try to answer this question quickly,
that we actually bypass the proper method by which God causes us
to know that His love is towards us. The method that God uses
to tell us the love of God is ours in Christ is that He presents
to us the nature of His love in Scripture. And in presenting
the nature of His love to us in Scripture, Without us making
a conscious effort on our part, the Spirit of God takes that
truth and He convinces us of it and persuades us of it and
we come to recognize by that God-given persuasion. that my
hope as a sinner is in God's love for me and Christ, and we
take refuge in Him. And so we find the testimony
of Scripture that describes God's love for those He loves fulfilled
in us. But we don't start there, because
what we do when we start there is we begin to look at ourselves. We try to see if we can find
those evidences in ourselves that God's love is in us. But
that's just not the way God does it. That's not the way it works.
Even here in John 3.16, He doesn't do that. The Lord Jesus Christ
As we've seen so many times before in these messages of the last
few weeks, he first humbles Nicodemus to a point where, according to
the way it really was, he had no strength and he was entirely
dependent upon the work of God in his salvation, which Jesus
directs him to in his own work as our Savior. And so I want
to ask this question, though, and then we're going to develop
the nature of God's love and pray that God would use the scripture
in laying that out for us to convince us of His great love
for us. But the question is, does God
love me? And in John chapter 3 we find this verse, "...for
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." When we say that these words apply to everybody, we
have to immediately consider that it also says, "...whosoever
believeth in Christ, the Son of God." So we know that this
is specific to those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, don't
we? If God loved the world and gave
his Son for the world, and he did that in order that those
who believe on him not perish, then we see God's objective,
God's intent, we see God's will. It's that He gave His Son in
love that those who believe on Him not perish. So the answer
to the question, does God love me, ultimately comes down to
this. And I want you to think about
this, each one of you, not just the parents, but the children
too. And I'm going to ask you this question because I ask it
of myself all the time. Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? That's the question. Do you believe
in the Son of God as God has given testimony of Him from Scripture? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ as God has declared Him from Scripture? Because this
is the test This is the test. If we do not believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, then we have no basis, no scriptural basis for
saying, yes, God loves me. But if we, on the other hand,
do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we don't have to
answer that question. We don't have to start with that
question. We start with God's love for us, because we see it
in this God-given faith in Christ, and we can conclude from scripture
that we believe because God gave His Son. And because He gave
His Son, He gave His Spirit to us to give us this grace of faith
to look to Him only. And so this is the work of God.
He leads us to this. In 1 John 5, verses 1 and 5,
it tells us that if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, it's
because we have been born of God. And in 1 John 3, verses
1 and 2, it says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has
bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. So
we are sons of God because of God's love and all who are born
as sons of God believe Christ. Therefore if we believe Christ
we can conclude it is because we're children born of God and
that birth is because of God's love to us and that is an unparalleled
love that he would call us his sons and make us his sons through
the redeeming work of Christ and through the the life-giving
birth of the Spirit of God. And so, as we think about what
faith is, it goes on in 1 John. I want to read this to you also
in 1 John chapter 4, when he talks about this faith we have
in the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 John chapter 4, in verse
16, he says, And we have known and believed
the love God has to us. We have known and believed the
love that God hath to us. God is love. And he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. You see this union
between God and His people? He, by His Spirit, dwells in
them, and they by the same Spirit are in Christ and this is because
of His eternal love for them in Christ that chose them and
put them in Christ even before the foundation of the world.
But it says here in verse 16, we have known and believed the
love that God has to us. How have we known it? Well, look
at verse 9. In this was manifested the love
of God toward us. Don't pass over the words quickly.
Manifested means it was made known. God's love for us didn't
begin here, but this is the way it was made known. In this was
manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his
only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. So, one of the things we see
here, two things we see God has done here. God's love gives. God's love gives. That's the
first quality of God's love. He gives. How do we know God's
love? Because of what He gave. What
did He give? His only begotten Son. His only begotten Son means
the one who is uniquely in relation to Him from eternity as His Son. and the One who has the Father
uniquely in relation to Him as His Eternal Father. God the Father
is Father to His Son, and God the Son is Son of His Eternal
Father, and this makes Him the only begotten Son of God. He
is from eternity co-equal. co-eternal, almighty, omnipotent,
omniscient, and everywhere present, just as His Father is. But here,
God the Father has given His Son. Therefore, there's no equal
to the love of God in the gift of His Son. All of creation was
made from God's Word. He just spoke and He brought
all things into existence. But what measure can be used
to measure the Son of God? There is no measure. He's infinite
both in time and His being. And God gave His Son. And here
He says He gave Him with a purpose that we might live through Him.
Does God's purpose ever fail? Does God ever want to do something
and fail to do it? Scripture says He does all of
His will. Isaiah 14.24 says the Lord will
do all of His pleasure. And so many other texts of Scripture
could be brought out. Psalm 33.11 says the same thing. The Lord does all of His thoughts.
All that God wants to do, He does, and no one can keep Him
from His will. So if it was God's will to give
us life by sending His Son, and you can bet on it, you can take
it to the bank, that God will give life to everyone for whom
He gave His Son. If God gave His Son, would He
give Him in vain? Would He give Him and fail to
achieve what He meant to do in the gift of His Son? Galatians
2.21 says that if we're justified by what we do, then Christ died
in vain. But Christ didn't die in vain.
There could be nothing more impossible than that Christ would die in
vain. Therefore we are not justified by what we do, but we are justified
by what Christ did. Because God gave His Son and
Christ shed His blood in order to justify His people. But here
it's talking about life. He gave His Son that we might
have life. And this is the way God gave His Son. Herein is love,
not that we love God. We don't start to understand
love by our love, do we? In fact, the natural man not
only does not have love, but he himself hates God. Romans 1.30 says we're haters
of God. And the word there means not
just that we hate God, it means that we're hateful to God. So
in ourselves, as we are naturally, apart from what we are in Christ,
apart from the Spirit of God, In us, we're hateful. Hateful
to God, hateful to others, and we hate. We hate God and we hate
others. The natural mind, according to
Romans 8, 7, is itself enmity, hostility toward God. We not
only do not love God, we're opposed to Him. And so, herein is love. We don't start with our love
to God because there's nothing to start with there. Not even
if we're believers do we start with our love to God. But we
start with His love to us because we love Him because He first
loved us. Here in His love, not that we
love God. here's the love, here's love,
here's how you can understand it, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, to make complete
satisfaction to God for our sins, in order to bring us to God,
reconcile us who had offended God in all of His holiness, by
all that we are and all that we do, God took the initiative
He determined to take away our sin and remove His wrath from
us to appease His wrath in satisfaction to His justice. And He determined
to do this in the death of His own Son. That's love. That's
the definition. That's the way we know love. And so in verse 16 where we read,
and we have known and believed the love that God has to us,
we have believed on the Son of God, that God gave His Son to
take away our sins by He Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, bearing
our sins and suffering the penalty for our sins in Himself. bearing
the guilt of our own sins, that guilt that haunts us and makes
us ashamed before men and especially before God, and that will bring
us to judgment in the day of judgment. That sin Christ was
made to be, in all of its ugliness, in the guilt of it, in the shame
of it. And not only was He made sin, which is an unthinkable
thought, but He was also brought under the wrath of God against
our sins. And so He was made the propitiation
for our sins. He is Himself. Christ is Himself. The mercy seat. The satisfying, just as satisfying
sacrifice for our sins. His blood. His blood. Christ's
blood. You know the song that says there's
power in the blood? There is power in the blood.
You know how much power there is in the blood? The blood of
Jesus Christ. has cleansed us from all our
sins. The blood of Jesus Christ has taken away God's wrath. The blood of Jesus Christ justifies
us from all our sin and establishes all of our righteousness. The
blood of Jesus Christ has washed us from our sins and redeemed
us from all iniquity from this world and brought us to God.
There's power in the blood, isn't there? And so that's the way
we know the love of God, and we've known it. God has persuaded
us and convinced us of it. We know that if Christ shed his
blood and satisfied God, And he did this out of the love of
God for his people. We know that those people for
whom Christ shed his blood, they must be saved. They must have
their sins washed away. They must be justified before
God. Nothing shall separate them from
God's love that gave his son. So there's the first thing we
see in answer to the question, does God love me? We ask this
question because this is the burning question. And to know
the love of God in Christ is better than life. And we answer
this question from scripture by looking first of all at the
fact that God loves His children and He makes them His children
out of an incomparable, unparalleled love. And He does so by the redeeming
blood of Christ and by the gift of His Holy Spirit to them. And
all of this springs from His love and we have known and believed
it because God has convinced us of our sin. And He's convinced
us that all righteousness has been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus
Christ by His sin-atoning death. And He has judged all of our
enemies, and that's why He's seated in heaven, has defeated
them and rules over them for our salvation, our eternal salvation.
So that's the first thing we see, is that if God loves me,
It means that He has given me faith in Christ, and that faith
is the result of my birth by the Spirit of God, which is the
result of His redeeming love and shed blood, which is the
result of God's eternal will. And so we see the love of God
in Christ. We've known it. We've believed
it. And having seen God's love, we're not concerned so much with
our love, are we? We want to love God. I do. And
I want to love you because the Lord has given this same grace
to you. And this naturally springs from
the Spirit of God. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
But that's not where we start. We have to start here, as we
read in 2 Thessalonians 2. The Lord direct your hearts into
the love of God. And so I want to consider with
you now the nature of God's love. In contrast to the most popular
interpretation of John 3.16, that God loves everybody and
that Jesus died for everybody, and that God's Spirit calls and
wants everybody to be saved, but only those who meet a condition
somehow make the difference in their salvation. In contrast
to that error and that false doctrine, I want to take scripture
now and to show you that God's love is distinguishing. God's
love is sovereign. God's love is sovereign and it
is distinguishing, it is eternal, it is saving, it is unfailing. And it will accomplish all of
God's will. So, let's look at these things
together. First of all, to prove that this is God's love for His
people. The love of God for His people.
First of all, God's love is sovereign. Sovereign means God loves because
He loves. There's nothing outside of God
that influences Him. All that we are And all that
we do cannot change God. And that's hard for us to accept. We think, well, I have to do
certain things in order to make God love me and all these other
things. But that's not the case. God's
love is unchanging by all that is outside of Him. It doesn't
spring from anything that is in Him. It comes from He Himself. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, it's
put very simply here, in Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verse 7, the Lord
speaking to His Church, but in the context it's to the nation
of Israel, He says, The Lord did not set," Deuteronomy 7,
7, "...the Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you,
because you," and you could just stop right there, "...because
of anything in you," but let's go on, "...because you were more
in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all people."
And here's the statement of God's sovereign love, "...but because
the Lord loved you." We don't have to go any further than that.
God has given the reason, because the Lord loved you. Why did you
love me, Lord? Because the Lord loved you. Because He was sovereign in His
love. He goes on, not only because
it was out of His sovereign nature, but because of that love, He
also did something else. It's a covenant love. He says,
"...and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto
your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and
redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of
Pharaoh king of Egypt." Here's a summary of God's love for His
people. He loved them with a sovereign
love. He made a covenant with them, and that covenant was to
redeem them And the ones from whom He redeemed them held them
as captive slaves under this king who subjected them to that
slavery. And this is just pointing to
the Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed us by His blood out of sin and
from the captivity of Satan. And this is all because of God's
everlasting covenant. And that, because of His love,
His sovereign love. So God's love starts with His
sovereign nature. Because the Lord loved you. That's
the first thing we learn about God's love. Can God love whomever
He will? Well, we know that's the very
fact of scripture, isn't it? The Lord says, I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. and I will have compassion on
whom I will have compassion. And what is mercy and what is
compassion? well, is God's grace towards
us in the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? Isn't that the only
place God's mercy and compassion are, is in the Lord Jesus Christ?
And He says that His mercy and compassion is His sovereignty,
His sovereign choice. I will have mercy on whom? I
will have mercy Now, this is done to not only humble us, because
it ought to humble us to know that we can't influence God,
He's sovereign in His love, but it's also for our great comfort.
Because if God's love wasn't sovereign, and it somehow depended
upon us, then what hope would we have? Answer that as a sinner. What hope do you have if God's
love is not sovereign? If God's love is not free, if
it doesn't depend on something found in you, you have no hope.
If God were to stake His love on you, it would do several things. First of all, we would all be
lost. If the Lord had not reserved to Himself a very small remnant,
then we would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah. That's what Romans
9 around verse 27 and 28 says. So we know that if God hadn't
set His love, His sovereign love upon us, then we would have all
been destroyed under the wrath of God. But God did have love
upon us according to His sovereign character. And to think that
God's love or anything in God depends on something outside
of Him is to deny the all-sufficiency of God. God's love is sovereign
because He depends on no one. He Himself is all-sufficient
and self-sufficient and independent of all of His creation. He was
from eternity. Creation was called into existence
in time. God certainly cannot depend on
the creation that He called forth out of His almighty power. And
so God's love is sovereign. And that's a very comforting
thing, isn't it? It humbles us for sure. It makes
us utterly dependent upon God. But it's so comforting to know
that if God once loved us, He loved us out of motives found
in Himself. As we just read in 1 John 4.16,
God is love. God is love. Love, the love of
God, depends on who God is. And if God's love is not sovereign,
then God isn't sovereign. If God's love is not eternal,
then God is not eternal. If God's love depends on the
sinner, then God is not God. And so we see, first of all,
that God's love is sovereign, and this is for our comfort,
and this directs our hearts into the love of God for us. And then
the second thing we see is that, and this is perhaps the most
significant thing about God's love, God's love is in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, as we read here in Deuteronomy
7, when he says, because the Lord loved you, and then he goes
on to describe this covenant, this helps us understand what
it means that God's love is in the Lord Jesus Christ. First,
turn to Romans chapter 8, because I want you to see the words there.
that I'm using, that God's love is in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Romans chapter 8, I want to
read in verse 30. If you want to follow along in
Romans 8.31, what shall we say? What shall we then say to these
things? And the things he had just spoken of were that all
things according to God's will, His sovereign will and eternal
purpose work together for the good of those who love God, which
we know love Him because He first loved them, and that He loved
them before and therefore predestinated them to be conformed to the image
of His Son. He called them by an effectual
call by His Spirit to life and faith in Christ and justified
them. He showed them their justification
accomplished by Christ at the cross and convinced them that
in that faith they themselves were justified. And those He
justified, He glorified. So as we mentioned last week,
there's an unbroken chain between the end and the beginning with
God. There's nothing that happens
at the end that wasn't ordained from the beginning and there's
nothing that was ordained from the beginning that isn't brought
forth and carried forward to the end. So that all of God's
saving purpose is complete and perfect and that not one thing
fails. But in verse 31, where I was
going to begin to read, it says, What shall we then say to these
things? In consideration of this, are
minds real in in amazement, we're shocked at
the view set before us, and we're spellbound at the immensity and
the extent of God's purpose of love. And so he says in verse
31, what shall we then say to these things? Well, here's what
we're going to say. If God be for us, who can be
against us? Certainly not our sin because
he already has dealt with that. He's going to deal with it more.
Listen to what he says in verse 32. This is back to 1 John 4,
9 and 10. He that spared not his own son. Those words should ring in our
ears daily. He that spared not his own son. He didn't spare his son. Remember Abraham, God said, take
your son Isaac, your only son, your only begotten son Isaac,
and offer him up as a sacrifice on the altar. And that's what
Abraham did. He took him. He took the wood. He took the fire. He bound his
son Isaac. He laid him on the altar. He
stretched forth a knife to plunge it into the heart of his son.
And God called to him from heaven and withheld him from killing
his son. But God didn't stop. He spared not his own son. The sword of God's justice entered
into his fellow. From Zechariah 13 and verse 7.
He smites the sheep. The one who is the fellow of
Jehovah was smitten by Jehovah God. The father did not spare
his own son. We can't get beyond that, can
we? But he goes on, he says, if he didn't spare his own son,
but he delivered him up for us all, How shall He not with Him
also freely give us all things? Here's that giving of God's love. If God gives to us the highest
gift, then in that highest gift He gave us everything. He will
give us all things and therefore He will give us life. He will
give us His Spirit. He will give us eternal salvation. He will give us the grace of
faith and repentance. He will keep us. He will preserve
us into the day of Christ Jesus. He will present us to Himself
without fault. without blame, unreprovable,
unrebukable in His sight, and He will do so with exceeding
joy. He will do all these things because He gave His Son for us.
So there can be no love of God that doesn't save if God gives
all to those for whom He gave His Son. But he goes on in verse
33, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? In verse 32, He says that He
didn't spare His Son, but delivered Him up for us all. It defines
what all means, doesn't it, in verse 33? Because He continues
with the same thought of giving all for us when He says, Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? The all, in verse
32, are the elect, in verse 33. And what does He say? who shall
lay anything to the charge of God's elect, as long as we have
been God's elect." And you know how long that is? Before the
foundation of the world, God chose us in Christ from before
the foundation of the world. As long as we have been God's
elect, no one could lay anything to our charge. He says, Who shall
lay anything to the charge of God's elect? If God chose them,
then He also justified them. He says so. It is God that justifieth. Now, in eternity, Christ had
not yet shed His blood. Oh, but wait! He had been ordained
to shed His blood. In 1 Peter 1.20, the precious
blood of Christ was ordained by the Father for His people
before the world began, and their names were written in the Lamb's
Book of Life, which is that eternal covenant of grace. And so, who
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that
justifieth, shows that as soon, which is from eternity, as God
chose them in Christ and gave them to Christ, He viewed them
in Christ, and from then on He saw them as He sees His Son,
justified in His Son by the blood of His Son. So He goes on. Who
is He that condemneth? Condemns who? Who is He that
condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us, for the elect, for those
for whom God gave His Son and didn't spare Him. They are the
ones God justified. Those are not condemned because
Christ died for them, because Christ rose for them, because
Christ is seated in glory for them and reigning as King of
glory, and because in that place, as our everlasting High Priest
and King, He makes intercession for us. And God hears him. Jesus
said in John 17, 9, I pray not for the world, but I pray for
those that you have given me. because they're all yours, they're
all mine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine. So Christ
prayed for and died for his sheep, and they are the ones who will
be saved to the uttermost. And so we see here in verse 35,
who shall separate us from the love of Christ shall. And he goes on, and he goes on
in verse 39, in all these things he says, Neither height nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." What does it
mean to be in Christ Jesus our Lord? Those two little words,
in Christ, contain an ocean of truth. As I intimated a minute
ago from Deuteronomy 7.7, it has to do with this covenant
God made with His Son. It refers to the relation the
people of God stand between Himself and His people by a covenant. Remember what the covenant is?
Remember one of the first things God says in this covenant? What
does God promise? I will be a God to them and they
shall be my people. What is this? But the love of
God giving Himself to His people to be their God and they to be
His people. And this was made in a covenant.
And that covenant was made with the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the
head of that covenant. Isaiah 42.6 and Isaiah 49.8 say
that God has given Him to be a covenant for the people. That
means that He deals with them in all things in their head,
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this covenant is what
God is speaking of here when He speaks about being in Christ.
The covenant was made with Christ before the world began because
it's an everlasting covenant. In Hebrews chapter 13 and verse
20 it calls it the everlasting covenant which was made by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in Revelation 13 it says
those in that covenant are those whose names are written in the
Lamb's book of life. The Book of Life is called the
Lamb's Book because Christ was slain in order to save all those
whose names were written in that book. As He told His disciples
in Luke 10, verse 20, Rejoice that your names are written in
heaven And all things that were promised
by God to the people in that covenant were promised to them
with Christ. So that the covenant that was
made with them was actually made with Christ and all the promises
given to Christ were given to them because they were given
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And they were given to them in
Him. All that Christ is to God in
that covenant They are in Him. God's people are to God all that
Christ is as their mediator. In Him, in Christ, refers to
the eternal relationship between Christ and His people in which
they are joined to Him in the eternal bond of this covenant
of love. Remember, Jonathan and David
in 1 Samuel 18, right after David had killed Goliath, and Jonathan,
the king's son, Saul, took off his armor, took off his sword,
he took everything off and he gave it to David and David and
Jonathan made a covenant and David swore to Jonathan that
he, David, would be kind to Jonathan's son because of the bond of the
covenant of love between Jonathan and David. And so in the same
way we see the love of Christ for his people. Jonathan had
a son named Mephibosheth Mephibosheth, when he was a child, was dropped
by his nurse as she was fleeing, and Mephibosheth's legs became
lame, so that he was lame because of his fall. and we fell in Adam
and we became lame in our sin. We couldn't walk. We couldn't
do one thing to please God. But because of the covenant David
made with Jonathan and Jonathan made with David for his son Mephibosheth,
David was kind to Mephibosheth all his days and provided everything
for him. In fact, David treated Mephibosheth
As he treated his own sons, Mephibosheth sat at David's table, the king's
table, all the days of his life. And so we sit at Christ's table.
Everything he has for his people is given to us because of this
love of God which is in Christ in this covenant. In Him, in
Christ, means that God receives His people as He receives Christ
Himself. Remember, the Apostle Paul wrote
to Philemon in the book of Philemon regarding the slave Onesimus
and instructed Onesimus, the runaway slave, to take the letter
to Philemon. And so Onesimus took the letter
of Paul's writing on his behalf to his master Philemon. And you
can see him going to Philemon, holding that letter in his hand.
He put all of his confidence to be accepted by Philemon. and
treated with mercy because of what Paul wrote in that letter.
And Paul committed himself to Philemon. He said, receive Onesimus
as myself. Receive him that is my own bowels. If he's done you any wrong, if
he's harmed you in any way, put it on my account. I will repay.
And so we see in this that All that in Him means that God receives
His people as He receives Christ. He receives them when He receives
His people. And so we also see that when
God uses these words in him, it means that God loves his people
even as he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember in John 17 and
verse 23, he says that the father loves his people as he loves
his son. These are words beyond our comprehension. The love of God towards His people
is the love He has towards His Son. And that can only be as
our mediator, because of this relation we stand, because we're
in Him. Now, we can go on and on, but
the point here is that God has, from the beginning, from eternity,
has set up Christ. so that he would treat his people
and his son as one with him, that everything he is to them,
they are in him, and everything God gives to him, he gives to
them in him. And He receives them as Him and
loves them as Him. Because this was God's choice.
And so He writes in Romans 5.14 that Adam was a figure of Him
that was to come in this way. Everything Adam did in that first
transgression, we did in Him. And His sin became our guilt.
And because of that guilt, that sin we committed in Him, His
condemnation was our condemnation. And His death, our death, But
because this was a figure of Christ made from creation before
the foundation of the world, everything Christ did, we did
in Him. And the obedience He rendered
to God and yielded in His own death was obedience we rendered. And the justification God made
of Him in His resurrection, He justified us because we were
in Him. And all the blessings in eternity
because of His victory, because of His obedience are given to
us. So then in Colossians 2 verses
9 and 10 it says, the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him
and we are complete in Him. And so God's love is nowhere,
not saving love, is nowhere but in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
as we've said already, God's love is everlasting. We know
it's everlasting because God is love. We know it's everlasting
because God is everlasting. He's from eternity and to eternity. And he says so in Jeremiah 31,
3, that he loved us with an everlasting love and that nothing can separate
us from the love of God in Christ. Now, when you consider all these
things, and there's so much more, let me just list a few of them.
First of all, that God gives life. Remember Ephesians 2 and
verse 4? He says, But God, who is rich
in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us even when
we were dead in sins. What was our condition? Dead
in sins. Enemies in our mind. and enemies
to God's law and criminals to God's justice. And yet in the
Lord Jesus Christ, He loved us and gave us life. Now, if that's
God's love, if God's love gives life to sinners who oppose Him,
who are in themselves dead in sins, then what can we say about
the love of God? We can say this, that all whom
God loves, He gives life to. All whom God loves, He gives
His Son for. All whom God loves, He justifies. And all whom God loves, He loves
the same from eternity to eternity. Nothing can change God's love. Nothing can change God. Nothing
can change His love. And we might think, well, If
that's the case, then that must mean that God loved His people
before they loved Him. Is that possible? Well, of course
it's possible. That's what the scripture says.
We love Him because He first loved us. He loved us when we
were enemies, when we were sinners, when we were ungodly. God gave
His Son for sinners. That's the way the love of God
is commended, made known to us. And so if God loved us before
we loved Him, then He had to love us even when we were sinners. If He didn't love us when we
were sinners, what hope would we have? Yeah, it's absolutely
the truth of Scripture that God loved His people before they
were converted, before they knew Him, before they loved Him. Even
when we were dead in sins, because of His great love wherewith He
loved us, He quickened us, He gave us life together with Christ.
That's amazing, isn't it? Yes, God's love was the same. In fact, God's love was made
known. The way in which God loved us
from Scripture are greater in their revelation from Scripture
than His love after we were converted. Have you ever thought about that?
Have you noticed that when we were yet sinners, what did God
do? Christ died for us. When we were enemies, what did
God do? He reconciled us with the death of His Son. He gave
His Son for us to be the propitiation for our sins. So God's love to
us was not only when we were yet sinners, but the greatest
actions of His love are made known from Scripture. before
we were saved, before we were converted, when we did not know
God. In fact, the only way we know
the love of God is what He did for us before we knew Him. And we might think, well, doesn't
this then, if God loved us when we were sinners, doesn't that
mean that we're going to want to continue to sin more? Because now we know if God loves
us, or loved us when we were sinners, then He's going to love
us even though we go on in our sins. But I want you to think
about this. Remember the woman I mentioned
whose tears she used to wash Jesus' feet and hair and the
ointment she poured upon Him? What caused her to love Him for
that? What caused her to love Him with
that great love? Wasn't it the knowledge of His
love for her as a sinner? And that love that she knew and
believed and was persuaded of as a sinner is what caused her
to pour out this love upon Christ. So the effect of God's love to
us as sinners doesn't cause us to want to sin more. It causes
us to love Christ the more. And so, in 2 Thessalonians 3,
he prays that the Lord direct your hearts into the love of
God right after he says, I'm confident that you will do and
will do everything that we command you. And remember Peter? He said, I will not deny you,
though all forsake you. I won't. I won't deny you. But
that's the very thing he did, isn't it? And remember what happened
when the Lord Jesus Christ, standing there with his persecutors who
put him to death, and his eye caught Peter's eye. And when
Peter's eye met Jesus' eye, what happened after Peter denied him
that third time? He went out and he wept bitterly. Why? Because he knew the love
of Christ for him as a sinner, Malachi 3.6 says, I am the Lord,
I change not. Therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consumed. The Lord Jesus told Peter before
he denied him, you're going to deny me this night three times.
And Peter couldn't accept that. And yet after he sinned, that's
when he knew the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Loved him
before. loved him though a sinner, though
weak, and though fallen in sin. And it was that knowledge of
his love that turned Peter to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that
was the foundation on which the Lord Jesus then turned to Peter
and said, do you love me? And three times he asked him,
and three times Jesus said, then feed my sheep, feed my sheep,
feed my lambs. Do for those for whom I shed
my blood. Tell them. Tell them of my great
love. And tell them how the Lord has
loved you. You see how the Lord directs our hearts into His love?
You see how impossible it is that God could love everybody
and His love be eternal and unfailing towards His people? And that
some of those whom He loved perish at last? Do you see how unscriptural
and unacceptable it would be to say that God loves those He
never gives life to? He never gives faith to? Because
these things don't come of ourselves. We're flesh only. We have no
spiritual life, no spiritual being. He has to birth us and
create us in Christ and give us this grace of faith and love
and all things. We can do nothing without Him.
And to think otherwise is to still need to be taught by God. But God draws us to the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so we have to go back to
this question again. Does God love me? If God loves
me, how will I know it? Well, think about what it means
to actually believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. when your conscience
challenges you by accusations, or if from scripture you see
God's requirements of His people, or find a description of those
whom God loves, and you wonder, that doesn't match what I know
myself to be. What do you do? How do you answer? What do you look for? What gives
you comfort finally? There's only one thing that a
believer finds comfort in. It's in the fact that the Lord
Jesus Christ is my all. We look away from ourselves.
We don't consider ourselves. If God has given us this faith
in Christ, then we see all that God requires met in His Son. And though we find nothing in
ourselves, in fact, when we find ourselves as Romans 4 and 5 describe
us as ungodly, as sinners, as without strength, as enemies
in our mind and by wicked works, and we see then that God's love
was made known to us, in the death of His Son, in His justifying
grace towards us, in all these things that He gives to us, eternal
life and His Spirit and all things. When we see that, then we realize
God's love has to be in Christ. And it's only in Christ that
I see and know and have the love of God. And so we rest the entire
eternal weight of our souls on what God thinks of His Son for
us. That's what faith does. Do you
find comfort and assurance knowing that if God receives Christ alone
for sinners, then He is all your acceptance before God? And that
because of this knowledge, you're persuaded to venture your all
upon Him? And do you, with this knowledge,
come to God by His blood, pleading only what He thinks of Christ
and receive from Christ for sinners? And do you have hope in God because
of what the Lord Jesus Christ is as Mediator and as Savior
and as High Priest and as King? Do all these things bear upon
your conscience daily? Do you come to God and ask Him
to receive you for Christ's sake alone? And do you find rest and
peace in knowing that God has given answer from His Word, that
all that He requires of His people, He has provided and received
from His Son? then you believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. If God has given you that persuasion in your heart,
then you trust Christ, don't you? And if you trust Him, it's
because you're born of God. And if you're born of God, it's
because God loved you. And if God loved you, then you
are born of God. And you believe because Christ
died for you. And if Christ died for you, then
God gave His Son for you. And if God gave His Son for you
at the cross, then He determined to do so before time began. And
He prepared a kingdom for you. And nothing shall separate you
from the love of God. This knowledge in your heart
will produce in you a love for God and a love for His people,
because you will be humbled as a sinner and made thankful in
your heart, and as the psalmist said, thy lovingkindness is better
than life.