God’s Love for Sinners

(Article for publication week of 11-9-2011 AD)

“But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Dear reader, has God taught you that you are a sinner? Have you seen yourself as hopelessly lost? Have you reached the end of your rope as far as salvation is concerned? Has your heart been broken because of your wretched condition? Have you tried saving yourself by your own efforts and seen that you were getting worse instead of better? Well, I have good news for you. God loves sinners!

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is a message for sinners. It is the good news of the commendation of God’s love toward sinners. The gospel is a declaration of what Christ has done for sinners. The gospel is not a message of morality or ethics, but it is the message of how God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5).

God’s love is an amazing thing is it not? Just to think that God loved us when we were His enemies! God loved us when we were unlovable. He loved us when we were ungodly and vile. He loved us when we did not love Him. This is most glorious! God Who is thrice holy, loved sinners who were unholy, unrighteous and ungodly. God would have been perfectly just to hate us rather than love us, but He commendeth His love toward us.

Now see the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of God’s love for sinners. He loved sinners so much that he gave His only begotten Son for their salvation. Christ died for sinners, not for the righteous. The Lord Jesus Christ is the co-equal and co-eternal Son of God. He became a Man to die for a sinner like you and me.

“Christ died for sinners.” Why must the spotless Lamb of God die? He died as a Substitute for sinners. Our sins had separated us from God. God , being infinitely holy and inflexible in His justice must of necessity punish sinners. His law demanded it, and the unchangeable God would not, could not quit being God, so He must punish the sinner, except a Substitute be found. In all of God’s heaven not another was found that could die for sinners. No angel could have been a sin bearer for those that God was determined to save. The substitute must be one of us. On earth not a man was found who could be the substitute, for every man was a sinner himself. No man can pay for his own sins, much less the sins of others; much, much less the sins of the great multitude that God was determined to save.

So God was manifest in the flesh. The Son of God became the Son of Man. Infinite God, became one of us to die in our “room and stead”. Christ died on an old rugged cross to pay the sin debt of all the Father had given Him in the covenant of Grace (see John 6:37, first clause). We may also say it this way: Christ died for all who would ever believe in Him (John 37 again, second clause). Christ died for sinners.

Now, if you know yourself to be a sinner, and want to be saved from your sins, look to Christ alone. There is salvation in Him and nowhere else, for God loved sinners to such a degree that He gave his Son to die for such in my case and yours.

Have you ever heard of a love greater than this?!