Does God really love us?  How do really know and what does it mean for us?

I knew a man in his mid-thirties who was dying of cancer.  He was worn out, out of breath, out of purpose and out of gas.  And with all these left out feelings – he told me he was also out of love for God.   He didn’t feel any love for God or from God, and had a hard time believing God loved him.

I’ll bet if we are honest, we’ve all felt this way at various times.  We’ve heard the words, “God is love,” but after a setback or suffering we sometimes place these great words on the same trivial level as saying, “I love ice cream.”  Here we see love reduced to a feeling that can be quickly lost.  

 So, how is God’s love different, and what can we possibly say about God’s love, to a young man who is dying from cancer?  

1 John 4:8 says “God is love.”  It does not say God loves us occasionally or God loves us only after we’ve said the Lord’s Prayer twenty-one times.  Instead, “God is love” defines the very character of God.  Just as water is wet, God is love.  Because God is eternal, it means God has always been love and will always be love.

Even before creation, our triune God – God the Father, God the son, and God the Spirit – had each other to love.  They were so filled with love that they decided to make man, just so they could share their love.  It’s like when a husband and wife love each other so much they decide to have a baby – just to be able to share their love even more.  In Genesis we read, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” (Genesis 1:26). Notice the plural words “us” and “our.”   One God, yet three persons – so filled with love they wanted to share it with others, so they made mankind.

Likewise, the Psalms say, “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (Psalm 107:1).  Forever love certainly describes the character and essence of God.  

Now, the man with cancer told me he knew these verses by memory, yet he still felt alone and couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t make it perfectly clear that he loved him.  

Looking for a more personal answer, we talked about how his wife sacrifices her own life every day for their infant son.  She bathes, feeds, and holds him.  She sings to him, reads to him, loses sleep for him and regularly dies a thousand little deaths so he will thrive.  She loves him, not because of what he has done for her, but because of who he is – her child.  

Then I asked him to imagine sacrificing himself, by voluntarily allowing some horrible men to torture and kill him, with the promise that everyone in the world could be saved. “Would you do it?” I asked.  He said it would be a tough decision, but yes, he would do it.

Then I asked him, “Suppose those same horrible men wanted to torture and kill your son when he is in the prime of his life, with the same promise that everyone in the world could be saved.  Would you let them do it to him?”  The man shook his head no, and suddenly realized the enormity of the sacrifice God made for us.  

What more could God possibly do to show us his love than to allow his own Son to suffer and die on our behalf?  While we were sinners, totally and completely undeserving, he gave his One and only Son whom he had loved since time began, to become a little, vulnerable, and killable human child.  To allow his Son to die a gruesome death for us, to show us his amazing, merciful, and gracious love.

This is what the good news of the gospel is all about.  God loves us even though we are weak, undeserving, and sinful people.   The anti-gospel that Satan wants us to believe is in order to be loved, we have to be lovable, great, sinless and righteous.  No wonder his lies make so many of us feel left out, worn out and unlovable.