CE 1 YEAR: 5 God’s Love  

Week 5

God’s Love

You cannot love God more than you believe He loves you

One day Jesus was having a meal in the home of a religious leader. As they were eating, a well-known prostitute approached Jesus and began washing His feet with her tears (Luke 7:37-38). Jesus told her, “Your sins are forgiven” (v. 48). Jesus said the woman had great love for Jesus because He forgave her for so many sins. But a person who has experienced only a little love will only have a little love for others (v. 47).

How much of God’s love you experience and believe will determine how much you love God and others. Real love only comes from God (1 John 4:17) and the only reason we love is because God loved us first (v. 19). Christ’s love for us urges and compels us to love Him (2 Cor 5:14). You are not able to love God more than you believe He loves you. You are made that way.

God loving you and you loving Him sums up everything in your Christian life. Everything God promises in Scripture is to tell you how much He loves you. Everything God commands in Scripture is to tell you how to love Him. He has promised: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3). And He has commanded: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind” (Matt 22:37). But you will only be able to do this if you believe in God’s love for you with all your heart, soul, and mind.

It is the power of God’s love for you that enables you to fulfill the challenging commands of God. You must know you are a beloved son of God before you will be a devoted servant of God. This is why in both Ephesians and Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote first about God’s love for Christians, rather than about how Christians are to love and obey God. It is only after devoting 11 chapters to explaining God’s mercy on us that the Apostle urges us to offer our lives to God as a living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice (Rom 12:1).

God could not have given you more: He gave His one and only Son to suffer a cruel death on a cross to pay for all the sinful things you will ever do. And God could not ask you for more: He asks for your body as a living sacrifice. He sent His Son to die for you. Now He is asking you to live for Him (2 Cor 5:15). Will you?

The Apostle is encouraging you to serve God out of gratitude not guilt. To obey God because of love, not legalism. A guilty or legalistic person does not serve God out of love for Him. They obey God because they believe His acceptance of them depends on what they do or do not do. This leads to serving God out of guilt rather than grace and gratitude.

God your Father could never love you more, no matter what you do or do not do. This is what grace is! As God’s child, you are completely and constantly treated with the unconditional, never changing, and over-powering love of God!

The single most important thing the Christian must do is believe in God’s love for them. The single most important thing the Devil attacks is your belief in God’s love for you.

How do you know if you are believing in God’s love? You feel the powers of the Holy Spirit in you including love for others, joy and happiness in God, and peace in your heart (Gal 5:22). How do you know you are not believing in God’s love for you? You feel angry, depressed, worthless, lonely, bored, or afraid.

Such feelings tell you that you are not only disconnected from God’s Spirit in you, but also disconnected from God’s love for you. Nothing can separate you from the reality of God’s constant love for you (Rom 8:35-39). But it is believing a lie about God’s love for you (e.g. “I’m worthless, alone, and rejected” etc.) that will separate you from experiencing God’s love for you.

Everything in our Christian life depends on believing in God’s love for us. This is why the Apostle Paul prayed that Christians would grasp the full dimensions of God’s love for them. Because then they would be filled up with the full presence and power of God (Eph 3:18-19)! This prayer is perhaps the most important prayer you can pray for yourself or others. This is because how much people love and obey God depends on how much they believe in God’s love for them.

How do we know God loves us?

There are three primary ways that God communicates and demonstrates His love for you: His gospel, His blessings, and His people. First, God’s gospel says that He chose and adopted you to be His child (Eph 1:4-5). No matter what people think of you or how they treat you, nothing can change the fact that you are a dearly loved son or daughter of Almighty God (1 John 3:1)!

But Scripture does not just tell you God loves you. God also proved His great love for you by sending His Son to die for you when you were His enemy (Rom 5:6-10). The greatest proof that God loves you is the undeserved sacrifice He made for you by having His perfect Son suffer a painful death to pay for your sins.

God is God and the only rightful judge. He could have dealt with your sin any way He chose. Why did He choose to have His only Son die to pay for your sins? Because God wanted to prove His love for you beyond any possible doubt. He did not even spare His own Son from suffering for you because of how important you are to Him (Rom 8:32). In that moment on the cross when Christ died for your sin, God loved and cherished you more than His own Son. He punished His perfect Son, so that He would never have to punish you (2 Cor 5:21; Isa 53:5; 1 Peter 3:18). He killed His only Son, so you could live forever (Rom 6:23). He abandoned His precious Son, so He could rescue you (Matt 27:46). His Son went to Hell, so you could go to Heaven (Eph 4:9).

Unfortunately, many people constantly want God to keep proving His love for them. If He does not grant their prayers, protect their health, or provide their wealth, they doubt His love. They forget that the cross of Christ is more valuable and convincing than anything else God could do. Whatever you are asking God for, it is far less valuable to you, and less costly to God, than the cross. If God does not give you all you want, never forget He has already given you the greatest gift He ever could. This gift was described in week 2 on Salvation.

Since the cross of Christ, it is no longer God’s love for you that is on trial. What is being tested now is your love for God. God has already proven His love for you for all time. The real question is how will you prove your love for Him?

Think about the following carefully, because it is another way to sum up the Christian life: Who you are and what you have is God’s love-gift to you. But who you become and what you do is your love-gift to God. God has made you a son or daughter of the Almighty Ruler of the Universe and has given you His pardon, power, and eternal paradise! What will you do with that? How much will you love Him in response? As a Christian, that is the most important question you need to decide for your life. How much will you love, serve, and sacrifice for God in response to how much He has loved, served, and sacrificed for you?

The second way that God communicates His love to us is through His blessings. Every good thing you have comes from God (Jas 1:17). Think of all the ways God has provided for you! All of the possessions and people that bless your life are a gift from Him (Job 1:20). More than this, He has given you His Spirit to live in you and change you (1 John 4:13)! He allows difficulties to test your love for Him. But He protects you from so many of the things the Devil wants to do to us (Job 1:12; 2:6).

Finally, God communicates His love to us through others. Remember, the only source of real unconditional love is God (1 John 4:17, 19). So when you experience the grace, patience, and kindness of others, you are experiencing God’s love for you. God commands us to love one another so that we can “see” and experience God’s love for us (1 John 4:11-12)!

Practical Application: Who in your life has demonstrated God’s love to you? Who has treated you with grace, patience, and kindness? Who has demonstrated that you are valuable? Who has made sacrifices for you? Take some time and thank these people for showing you God’s love.

In your small group meeting this week, share praises and prayer requests and then discuss these questions:

1) Where does our love for God come from? How does the structure of Romans and Ephesians demonstrate this?

2) What are two ways the Christian life can be summed up?

3) Why is Ephesians 3:18-19 such an important and powerful prayer?

4) What does the strength of your faith in God depend on?

5) What is wrong with continuing to expect God to always prove His love for you?

6) What are some of the most difficult and sacrificial things you have done because you love God?

7) What was most meaningful to you in this chapter? Why?