God Loves You

When I help people prepare for the important step in their journey of faith of becoming church members, we cover a lot of material from ways to enhance your study of Scripture to learning how Presbyterian government works. But I emphasize three elements as the essential components of every Christian’s life, and I urge them to make them part of their own. Beginning this month, I’ll reflect on each of them in these messages, and I urge you to consider their place in your life.

First, our relationship with the Lord hinges upon the knowledge that GOD LOVES US. When Karl Barth, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, was asked to describe the Christian faith in one sentence, he paused and then sang “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” A simple childhood rhyme can capture this profound truth, but we spend our entire lives trying to wrap our minds and souls around it.

We struggle to accept and understand God’s love for us because it contradicts everything we think we know about relationships. It doesn’t take long for the youngest child to discover that they’re worth depends upon what they do. If you eat your veggies and clean up your room, your parents will praise you. Work hard in school and they put you on the honor roll; work hard at your job and you’ll get a raise or a promotion. Act and dress the way people like and you’ll become popular. If you want to be someone, and if you want people to think you matter, do what it takes to measure up. This message surrounds us so completely that we don’t even realize how much it shapes who we are.

And then God comes into our lives (or we recognize that he’s been there all along), and he says, “I love you.” If it were anyone else, we would ask “Why? What have I done, or what is it about me, that you like so much?” When it comes to God, we can’t accept that his love for us is even possible. We may be able to fool others into thinking that we’re admirable or desirable, but God knows every cranny of our lives. He knows the dark corners of our psyche that we refuse to let even ourselves see. He’s seen the shameful things we’ve done that haunt us for years. If God knows us so well (and he does), then how could he love us? This is God we’re talking about, after all. His standards are so much higher than anyone else’s. How could he look upon us with anything but disappointment and disgust?

And yet, God loves us. Before the world was created, and we were able to do anything to earn or disqualify ourselves from anyone’s love, he loved us. At the most awful, hateful times in our lives, God loves us. After the mountains melt away and the rivers run dry, God loves us.


God’s love for us does not depend upon what we do, or what we don’t do. It doesn’t depend upon who we are, or who we aren’t. God’s love depends only upon his grace: his desire for us and our well-being simply because it is what he chooses to give. It is a choice that he cemented for all eternity and proclaimed through all creation with the unspeakably immense gift of his Son for our behalf.