By This We Know Love

Do you know the love of God? Do you personally, intimately and experientially know the width and length and depth and height of the love of Christ which passes (human) knowledge. The Apostle Paul prays for Christians in Ephesians 3:14-19 that we would.  He does so for two essential reasons. One reason is because he has found that nothing could be more wonderful, more joy producing, more peace inducing, more fear and anxiety reducing than to know that you are loved fully, completely and unconditionally by the most glorious, most desirable, most excellent, most essential, most valuable, most awesome and majestic being in the universe – the creator and sovereign ruler of that universe, confident that He is fully committed to your eternal joy, pleasure and satisfaction in Him (Jeremiah 31:3) (Psalm 16:11) (1 John 4:18) (Romans 8:38-39).

A second reason is because it is the love of God and the immensity of that love that the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ into this world as a man to reveal, to proclaim and display.  We are told in John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Now Jesus in the course of His brief life in this world would reveal God’s love in a practical way in the compassion and kindness, the mercy and grace He demonstrated toward sick, hurting, despairing, oppressed and marginalized people of His day. However, the ultimate expression of that love would be displayed on the cross, where Jesus would be subjected unjustly to the cruelest and most excruciating means of execution ever devised by man, crucifixion. However, that would not be the worst of His suffering.  On the cross, Jesus as a man, after living the sinless life necessary for entrance into God’s presence, would take upon Himself the full wrath and judgement of God for sin.  He would do so on behalf of all who would acknowledge that they deserved such wrath and judgement for their sin, repent of it and come to Him for mercy and forgiveness, submitting to Him as their Lord and putting their faith in Him as their all sufficient savior so that they would not perish (in Hell), but receive the gift of eternal life, the glorious life with God for which man was created (Romans 6:23).

Romans 5:8-9 succinctly proclaims, But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners (living in opposition to God’s purpose for and rule over our lives), Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

To begin to comprehend the width and length and depth and height of the love of God as displayed on the cross on behalf of repentant sinners, we need to first understand what is referred to in this passage as God’s wrath, which believing men and women are saved from.

The wrath of God refers to His active, passionate, personal and necessary expression of His perfect hatred and hostility, His righteous indignation and moral outrage toward sin – His just and measured vengeance toward men and angels who in rejecting His purpose for and rule over their lives have slandered His glory, blasphemed His holiness, denigrated His majesty, and who in doing so have brought nothing but corruption, destruction and disorder – pain, sorrow and suffering and death into His good and perfect creation (Genesis 1:31). It is thus God’s resolute activity in punishing the sin he hates, a punishment that will have its ultimate end in what the Bible refers to in Revelation 20:12-15 as the second death or the Lake of Fire. We know this horrific place as Hell, which is the term Jesus most commonly used for it.  (Mark 9:42-48).

 The reality, justness and necessity of Hell has long been debated. However, the Bible makes it clear that Hell is a very real place where very real people – people created by God in His image and likeness to be the objects of His eternal goodness, kindness and love, are consigned upon their death, because of their sin, to exist forever as the objects of God’s justice, judgement and wrath (Psalm 9:17). It reveals Hell as a  place of unending and unimaginable misery, torment and agony – a place that is so infinitely horrific, so utterly revulsive, so absolutely terrifying that God the Son – Jesus Christ came to this earth to both warn mankind of it and rescue all who would repent of their sin and entrust their life to Him from it (Matthew 18:7-9) (Revelation 14:9-11) (1 Timothy 1:15-16) (Ezekiel 18:30-32)

Jesus knew, believed and warned of the absolute horrific reality of Hell. In the four gospels He talks about Hell more than Heaven and describes it vividly.  He can credibly do so because He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit created it and designed it as the just and necessary punishment for Satan and His angels and for all who followed them in their blasphemous rebellion against God (Matthew 25:41) (Revelation 20:10-14).

The Good News – the Gospel – is that God, who is rich in mercy, who delights in displaying mercy, determined from the foundation of the world that He would demonstrate the glory of His wisdom and righteousness, and the immensity of His love by providing a just means by which sinful men and women could be forgiven of their Hell deserving sins and escape such judgement, and that would be through God the Son coming as a man, and substituting Himself as a propitiation (sacrifice of atonement) for our sin, taking upon Himself, on the cross, the wrath and judgement of God we deserve, that we may be justly forgiven of our sin and reconciled to right relationship with God (Ephesians 2:4) (Micah 7:18-19) (Romans 3:23-25) (1 Peter 3:18).

The Apostle John writes in 1 John 4:10 – In this the love of God was manifested – that God sent His only begotten son into the world that we might live through Him, herein is love – not that we loved God – but that He loved us and gave himself to be a propitiation for our sins. 

Our knowledge, understanding and acceptance of this truth is both the starting and ending point of our coming to know the width and length and depth and height of the love of Christ which passes knowledge, as well as the means by which God brings us to love Him as He commands and deserves (1 John 4:19). It is so because the term propitiation ultimately points to the reality that if you are a Christian, Jesus Christ, God the Son, on the cross, bore your Hell.

More on this in my next post.  In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy the song by Sovereign Grace, By This We Know Love, based on 1 John 3:16.

Grace and Peace ×