Romans 5:8: God's Love

Romans 5:8.. "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

So this morning I'm deciding to do the cheesy youh pastor thing and write a devotion about God's love on Valentine's day. Yup. It's cheesy. Nope. I don't care.

What is God's love? Surely we cannot fully plunge its depths, but we certainly can attempt to tread its waters. Romans 5:8 gives us a pretty good picture of what God's love is, by telling us that God showed his love for us by sending his son to die for us while we were still sinners. Hmmm. Perhaps many of you have heard this verse before, but what does it mean?

Romans 5:8 shows us that God did not love us because there was any good in us. Surely there was not any good in us, as Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us. This is truly a great tenant of the Gospel. If we think that God loved us after he had healed us from our sin, we are led into thinking that we deserved God's salvation. However, Scripture tells us that salvation is a free gift of God, that is, that we did not earn it in our own righteousness, but that God gifted it to us even while we were still sinners.

For surely there is no comparable love than the selfless love that the Father has for us, and we ought to praise him for that this morning. I encourage you: take some time today to consider the love of God. Let it encourage you, and cast out your fear (1 John 4:18). Amen.