God’s Love Demonstrated
Romans 5:1–11
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
How can any merely human words sufficiently express the greatness of God’s love for us? Did you know that the love of God seemed so great to the biblical writers that they invented, or at least raised to an entirely new level of meaning, a brand-new word for love?
The Greek language was rich in words for love. There was the word storgē, which referred to affection, particularly within the family. There was philia, from which we get “philharmonic” and “philanthropy” and the place name “Philadelphia.” It refers to a love between friends. A third word was erōs, which has given us “erotic,” and which referred to sexual love. This was a rich linguistic heritage. Yet when the Old Testament was translated into Greek and when the New Testament writers later wrote in Greek, they found that none of these common Greek words was able to express what they wanted. They therefore took another word without strong associations and poured their own, biblical meaning into it. The new word was agapē, which thereby came to mean the holy, gracious, sovereign, everlasting, and giving love of God that is expressed here.
If you do not yet fully appreciate (or perhaps have not even begun to appreciate) the greatness of the love God has for you, the explanation is probably that you have never really thought of yourself as God saw you in your fallen state.
Perhaps you have never thought of yourself as someone who was utterly without strength or powerless before God saved you. Perhaps you have never considered yourself to have been ungodly.
Nor a sinner.
Nor God’s enemy.
But that is what you were—and still are if you have never come to Christ in order to be justified. It is only if you can recognize the truth of these descriptions that you can begin to appreciate the love that God holds out to you through the death of his Son.
If you have never responded to this great overture of the divine love, let me encourage you to do that, assuring you that there is no greater truth in all the universe. Can you think of anything greater? Of course, you can’t. How could anybody? God loves you. Jesus died for you. Let those truly great thoughts move you to abandon your sin, love God in return, and live for Jesus.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.