There is a story God delights to tell. lt is the story of His grace. It is the story of Calvary, for at that place called Calvary God commended “His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God does not love us because Jesus died for us; but Jesus died for us because God loved us. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” Let us linger by the cross for a little while and think of the fact of God’s love, the measure and expression of it.
God loves you. Just revel in that fact for a moment. Bask in its blessed sunlight until every doubt vanishes, every fear is dispelled, and every question is answered in that burst of overwhelming love. We can think of the attributes of God–His righteousness, His holiness, and His justice. We think of His greatness, His power, and wisdom, but we can never know God until we know that He is love. Love is His nature; that is what He is. He loves us because He is love. A simple fact; yet it is the most astonishing fact in the world.
Hans Egede went out to Greenland many years ago and preached law and righteousness and judgment. He said, “We must prepare these poor, degraded people before they can be Christians. We must bring them to a certain state of knowledge, and then they can understand the principles of Christianity; but there’s no use preaching to them as they are in their degradation.”
He worked along this line about seven years. He didn’t succeed very well. One day he preached his farewell sermon on the text, “I have spent my labor for naught.” He went back home a disappointed man.
John Beck was appointed by the Moravian Church to take his place. The first thing he did was to preach on John 3:16. “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.” He went in and out among them and one day came in contact with a wild savage chieftain and preached the love of God to him. As the missionary talked to him, he said, “Sir, say that again! You tell me your God loves me? Our gods do not love us; they hate and they kill. Have you a God that loves?” John Beck talked with him about the love of God until his heart melted, his knees bowed, and with his lips he confessed Jesus as Lord. The wild savage became an evangelist to his own people, melting their hearts as he told them of the love of God in Christ Jesus. The love of God! That is what the Greenlanders needed to hear. That is what other poor sinners want to hear, although they don’t all know it. The message for the outcast, the message for the aged, the message for the young, the message for the ignorant, the message for the intellectual, the message for the whole world is that God loves, and that God saves sinners because He loves them.
What a discovery the soul makes when it learns the fact of God’s love.
Gretchen lived in a day when the Word of God was little known. Her father was one of the printers of Luther’s Bible, but she had never read John 3:16. One day she picked up a piece of paper from the print shop. It was torn from a proof sheet of the Bible. She read with interest the words, “For God so loved the world, that He gave . . .” Here it stopped; the rest of the verse was torn off.
“God so loved the world.” She repeated the words to herself again and again. “How wonderful!” she said. It was a new thought to her. “If God loves the world,” she said, “why then He loves me, for I am part of the world He loved. But what did God give?” That was the question that puzzled the girl. The piece of paper didn’t show how much God loved the world, nor what He gave to show His love. But she knew that God loved and her heart became lighter and her face became brighter as she dwelt on that fact–“God loves me!”
As she entered her home, her mother noticed the smile on her face. “What makes you so happy, my girl?” she asked. “Oh! look here, Mother, look at this bit of paper. It says here that God so loved the world that He gave.”
“But it doesn’t say what He gave.”
“No, Mother, that doesn’t matter; it was so very good of God to give anything to the world. If God loves me enough to give me anything, I am not afraid of Him any more. I love Him.”
We know what God gave, and in the gift of His love He emptied heaven of its richest treasure. Thus we come to our second thought: the measure of God’s love. Of course, it is beyond all power of comprehension, beyond our measurement. Paul could not measure it. Its height, its depth, its length, and its breadth were too much for him. John, though he was the disciple of love, could not measure it. When he caught a vision of God’s love, he could only exclaim, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us!” Behold it! I can’t express it. Just look at it. It’s a breadth I can’t compass; it’s a height I can’t rise to; it’s a depth I can’t fathom; it’s an extent I can’t explore. If you have spiritual eyes, just look at it.
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us!
When Balboa, journeying ever westward, reached the mountaintop from which he saw the Pacific Ocean spreading out before him, he fell on his knees and thanked God for the honor of such a discovery. At Calvary we gaze upon the limitless ocean of the love of God–unfathomable–immeasurable.
Who, O God, Thy love can measure,
Love that gave for us its treasure,
Him in whom was all Thy pleasure,
Christ, Thy Son of love.
God’s love to us is written in the crimson letters of Jesus’ blood. Inscribed there we read, “God is love.” Nowhere else in the universe can we learn the truth of God’s love. Nature has nothing to say about the love of God towards a world of lost sinners. You may look upon the majestic sea, or gaze up at the starry heavens, and be reminded of the wisdom and power of Almighty God, but nature is silent as to the love of God that reaches and saves men who are down deep in sin. Only at Calvary do we plumb the depths of the love of God’s heart, for “Deep as were Christ’s depths of anguish is the love of God to man.”
My friend, do you doubt God’s love? Let me beseech you to look to the Lamb of God and know in this was manifested the love of God to us in that He gave His only begotten Son to be our Saviour.
In the act of giving we have the measure, but in the One given we have the expression of God’s love. Listen to the words uttered when man had done his very worst, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” In that prayer was expressed the perfect love of God as Christ prays for His murderers.
I believe these words reached the ear of the thief alongside the Saviour. He had been cursing and blaspheming the Saviour as he joined in with the other thief and the crowd in taunting the Christ of God. Think of a dying robber just going to drop into a lost eternity, spending his last breath in abusing Christ! But notice that Christ will spend His last breath in praying for those who are abusing Him. If sin leads a man to abuse Christ, He, in the goodness of His heart, expresses the love of God to sinners in praying for His murderers. I think it was that prayer that wrought a great change in the heart of one dying thief.
Others continued to gibe and jeer, but he looked into the face of God incarnate, into the face of Jesus, and saw grace, kindness, perfect love, and forgiveness there. That love broke him down, won his heart, brought him salvation, and took him to glory. That first trophy of the cross is a pattern for all. The dying thief got the assurance of present salvation by a simple trust in a crucified Saviour apart from ritual, apart from ordinances, apart from works of any kind. It was faith, plus nothing; it was free grace and that alone that opened the gate of paradise to that sinner that day. Take one look at the cross, my friend. See Jesus there for you. I implore you to trust Him. He is the expression of God’s love to you.