Why God Loves You? (6/2/19)

ATT: This past weekend, I had the privilege of officiating my former youth’s wedding in New York City. I had known her since she was 12. She’s now 30, a professional in the fashion industry, travels to Paris every year, and serves faithfully at a small church. I also met my other former youth who came to the wedding as well. It was such invigorating and refreshing trip for me, as God has shown me a glimpse of the fruit of my labor in the past. And I got the soul rest that I didn’t know I needed. I ran at the Central Park, walked everywhere to Time Square, Rockefeller Center, Ground Zero, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the China Town. Thank you for your prayers and I came back so encouraged to continue what God had called me to do, which is to pastor you faithfully.

Now, this message is an expansion of the message I gave to the couple at the wedding. Every wedding I get to officiate, I take it as an opportunity to preach the good news. I don’t want to give a flowery and feel-good messages that everyone will find pleasant and move on, but I want to make an impact for Christ and there is no better place for it than a wedding since it represents the relationship between Christ and the church.

So, this message focuses on the nature of God’s love and its implications on our lives. Let me start it off like this: There is a difference between Christian love and non-Christian love. And the difference is shown in this way: What happens when you wake up one day, look at your spouse sleeping next to you and think, “why did I marry this person? My love for him/her is gone!” (By the way, young people, that happens to just about every couple sometime in their marriage. So, expect it) If you are living by the world’s definition of love, your marriage is over. How can you continue to live with the person when you don’t love that person? That’s dishonest. But in the christian definition, now you can begin to truly love because you will have to learn to love. Why? How? Because the Christian love is not because of, but in spite of. Here’s what I mean.

The non-christian or worldly love is because of. I love you because you are beautiful, smart, funny, and/or kind or all of the above. The Christian love however is in spite of. I love you in spite of your flaws and faults. That is because love is from God. And God loves us not because of our loveliness but in spite of our ugliness. Have you thought deeply about why God loves us? We assume because there is something good in us, something that is worth loving in us and that’s why God loves us. Well, we assume that because that’s how human love is. Humans love one another when there is something lovely in the object of love. Think about why you chose your spouse. Think about why you like that boy or girl. In Janet’s case, she saw in me a tall, handsome, athletic, smart, kind, and pastorly man, what is not to like? Joking aside, that’s why we love someone – there is something lovely in that person. However, we make the biggest mistake if we think that’s why God loves us – that there is something in us that God finds attractive. No, the reason why God loves us is not in us, but in God. God does not love us because we are lovely. God loves us even though we are ugly, because God is loving.

Deuteronomy 7:7.7 (speaking to the nation Israel) It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers,”

In other words, “I have loved you because I have loved you…” God loved the nation Israel because God is love and not because of anything in the Israelites themselves. The worldly love depends on the loveliness of the object of love, but God’s love depends on the loving nature of the One loving! This is a difficult concept to understand because we are so used to thinking of love in the worldly way.

Ephesians 2:4 re-enforces this characteristic of God’s love: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”

Why did God love us again? When did He love us? While we were dead in our sins! Not when we repented and when we started behaving nicely, that’s when His started loving us. NO! He loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). In order to demonstrate His great love – and great love is loving even when the object of love does not deserve it – He loved us. In other words, God loves us because He is love, not because we are lovely. He loves us in spite of us and not because of us!

That is the way God loves us and then He turns around and tells us to love one another as He loved us. That includes loving our spouses like God loved us – loving in spite of and not always necessarily because of. And this also includes loving our brothers and sisters, and also the world the way God loved us.

This has far reaching implications!

Implication 1: In the context of marriage or love relationship, true love starts when natural love cools. When your natural love is gone, when you start wondering why you married him or her, that’s when true godly love can began. You can love now not because the person is lovely, but in spite the person is ugly. I put it this way to the bride and the groom last weekend:

The bride that I married this past weekend was 30, as I said. She’s a beautiful girl. Given that she’s an Asian gal, she has maybe 15 more years of this beauty left, it’s all downhill from that point on. And the man she married is a very capable individual – working as a consultant for a firm. But in that competitive world, he might lose his job and unable to provide for the family and be working a minimum wage paying job and resort to playing video games every night because of depression… in other words, what made them fall in love in the first place may disappear in a few years. Then what? According to the worldly standard, the marriage is over. But according to this new way of love, the marriage is really just beginning. It’s now just starting since they can now love with supernatural love – God’s love, and not just with the natural love that depends on the loveliness of the beloved. Listen, marriage is not about our happiness and companionship. It is about reflecting the glory of Christ and His relationship with His bride the church. And when we strive to love like Jesus did, happiness and companionship will come as a reward. Stay in your marriage even when natural love is gone.

 

Implication 2: Since love does not depend on the loveliness of the object but on us who are loving, we must get the supply of love from the source. We must be on our face and ask God to fill our love tank with his love, for without it, we cannot properly love our spouse, our children or our church. So, rather than demanding that they change to become more lovely – like lose some weight, get an education, behave differently so that you will be more lovely in my sight – we will be working on ourselves – our capacity to love which can only come from God.

Now, does that mean that we are not concerned about our spouse’s health or well-being? Does that mean that we never try to discipline our children and just let them be? No. We try to help our spouse live a healthy lifestyle. We discipline our children to stay away from trouble. But we do that for their sake, their well-being and not how they may please us and be of use to us, for our sake. But with God’s love driving us rather than the loveliness of the object, we can be more patient, kind, and long suffering. “I love you as you are, but I love you too much to have you stay as you are.”

 

Implication 3: Since God’s love for us depends on God and not on us, we can enjoy the freedom that comes from self-forgetfulness. We don’t have to stop every minute and ask if God is still pleased with us. Have you ever been in a relationship where the person was so concerned about getting your approval that it made you uncomfortable? If my children ever said to me, “Daddy, I’m so worried that I may not be pleasing you at all times. Do you approve of me? Do you like me? Do you love me?” I would be offended! “Why don’t you trust in my love for you and rest in it? Why are you trying to earn my love for you when I already love you because you are my daughters? Relax!”

A Christian who understands that we are loved in spite of who we are because of His great love understands that we can rest in Him. We can be confident that His love will not wane for us because of our flaws and shortcomings. So, rather than keeping our eyes on ourselves and our performances, our eyes will be on Him. 2 cor 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

 

Implication 4: Since love depends on the one loving and not the object of love, we can love others unconditionally the way God loves us. We love them not because they deserved it but because God has infused that love in us in spite of that person. It’s natural to love those who are lovely. But Christians are those who love the naturally unattractive, because the love of God is in him/her. ILL: When I was youth pastor, I knew a pretty girl was visiting whenever I saw a group of boys crowding around one girl after service. Since the beginning of time, boys want to be around pretty girls. But what if these Christian boys approached the girls with the godly love and not the worldly love – not because of but in spite of? Wouldn’t they give equal attention to those who are not so attractive? Wouldn’t they try to see the inner beauty more than the outer beauty which is fleeting?

Now, please don’t take this to mean that, if you are single, you are to go find the most pitiable and undeserving person you can find to marry. Wisdom dictates that you find someone who is most like Christ, because even so you will have to learn to love in spite of. But the principle is that we love out of the love that God gives us and not for the superficial wrapper that person comes in.