The Love of God

What if the love you most crave met you at your worst rather than your best? We walk through Romans 5 and uncover a pattern that upends instincts and expectations: God’s love finds the helpless, embraces the sinner, and reconciles the enemy—then proves it in blood. This isn’t motivational varnish or a call to try harder. It’s a rescue story where the lifeless are lifted, the guilty are pardoned, and the hostile are made family.

We thread Scripture with lived stories and hymn lines—an asylum wall that birthed a stanza, a barge on a stormy lake, firefighters who run toward flames—to show why even our finest examples of courage are only faint echoes of the cross. Paul’s tight phrases work like keys: while we were helpless, while we were sinners, while we were enemies. Add the two words that change the plot—“but God”—and assurance stops being a mood and becomes a fact. If love arrived when we deserved nothing, it will not leave when we fail again.

So we talk about receiving, not achieving. Drop the second savior of self-effort and take the gift with empty hands. Then we lean our weight on it when suffering raises hard questions, remembering that love already did the hardest thing. Along the way, we revisit classic lines—“Amazing love, how can it be”—not as nostalgia, but as theology you can sing when your courage is thin. Press play for a clear, tender tour through the gospel’s core: grace for the unworthy, security for the anxious, and hope that holds because it rests on God, not us.

If this conversation steadied you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review telling us your “but God” moment.

Transcript

Hymns As Theological Windows

The Immeasurable Love Of God

Three Questions From Romans 5

While We Were Helpless

While We Were Sinners

While We Were Enemies

The Rare Gift Of A Dying Love

But God: Mercy In Action

Receive And Rely On This Love

A Love That Will Not Let Me Go

SPEAKER_00 0:26

You need to understand that it had nothing to do with this man, it had everything to do with God. This man was, and the word is used, asthenes. This man was helpless. And it is important to understand that because then we have a true picture of our own spiritual healing. God doesn't come to those who have a little faith. God doesn't come to those who say, I think I can walk with God. God doesn't come to those who have a little pious strength. He comes to those who are spiritually dead, who are unable to lift even a little finger to help themselves. And he says, To them, arise and walk. One of the things I want to do as we work our way through this text is to use the lyrics of hymn writers. I want to work our way as we work our way through this passage through several great hymns. One that I want to begin with is a hymn whose lyrics were found in an unusual place. An insane asylum at the turn of the last century was being torn down, and they discovered these words written on one of the walls of the rooms. The words that were discovered were later added to a hymn written by F. M. Lahman. A hymn that he had thought he had finished. He had already written two stanzas and a chorus. But as soon as he heard these words, he immediately wanted to add them to his hymn. That hymn was eventually published in 1917. Those anonymous lyrics written on the wall of that insane asylum were these. They read, Could we with ink the ocean fill? And were the skies of parchment made? Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade? To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. To speak today on the subject of God's love is both wonderful and impossible. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote in the late 1800s, can you imagine it? That God who is greater than immensity, whose life is longer than time? This God, the all-boundless one, should love you, that he should think about you, pity you, consider you, this would be expected. But that he should love you, that his heart should go out to you, that he should choose you, that he should have graven you on the palms of his hands. To think of it, can you but lift your hands with adoring wonder and say, Thy love to me was wonderful. In my study I was reminded of Augustine, the brilliant church father of the fourth century, who was walking along a seashore and he saw a little boy who dug a little hole next to the edge of the water, and he was running furiously with his little pail back and forth, dipping it into the sea, and then running back and pouring it into the little hole. And Augustine stopped and asked him, What are you doing? And the little boy said, I am pouring the sea into this little hole. To try to talk about the love of God, to explain it, is to try and pour an ocean of infinite truth into our little minds. It is impossible. Well, after telling you it's impossible, I'm going to spend about 30 minutes trying to do it. You're in Romans chapter 5, I'm sure. We've been going through a series of studies on the perfect gifts of God, and now we arrive at the treasure of God's love. Where do we start with this gift of love? Well, what I want to do is simply follow what Paul has given us as he describes it. And we're going to answer three questions. Number one, we'll answer what kind of people does God love? Second of all, what kind of love does God give? And third, how do we respond to this kind of love? Just what kind of people does God love? There are three categories given to us. The first category is in verse six. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. That's the kind of person that God loves, the helpless person. While we were still helpless, you'll find that phrase repeated three times in this text. While we were helpless, your translation may render it without power. It refers obviously in this context to a man or a woman who is helpless or powerless to please God. We use this word figuratively in the English language to refer to someone who cannot lift one finger to help themselves. That person, we say, is absolutely helpless. The word appears in the book of Acts. For the sake of time, let me just retell this story to you. Peter and John are going into the temple, and they will pass a man who's been lame from his birth. His friends pick him up every morning and they deposit him at the doors of the temple, and hopefully they would assume if anybody would give it, it would be those that are about to go into worship God. And so they put him by the doors and he would there beg from the people. Peter and John are going in and they're going to pray, and this beggar asks of them, Would you give me some silver or gold? And Peter looks at this man who is unable to walk, absolutely helpless, and he says, Silver and gold have we none. But what we do have, we will give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ, arise and walk. And the text says, immediately his feet and ankles were strengthened, and with a leap, for the first time in his life, he stood upright and began to walk. And he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. Evidently the first Pentecostal recorded in the Bible. You need to understand that it had nothing to do with this man, it had everything to do with God. This man was, and the word is used, asthenes. This man was helpless. And it is important to understand that because then we have a true picture of our own spiritual healing. God doesn't come to those who have a little faith. God doesn't come to those who say, I think I can walk with God. God doesn't come to those who have a little pious strength. He comes to those who are spiritually dead, who are unable to lift even a little finger to help themselves. And he says to them, Arise and walk. God loves helpless people. Secondly, Paul tells us that God loves sinful people. Same phraseology is used again in verse 8. But God demonstrates his own love toward us that here it is, while we were yet sinners. While we were helpless, now Paul writes, while we were yet sinners. Since the whole of humanity is sinful, does this mean that God loves the whole of humanity? Yes, in some measure, all the world benefits from the love of God. It is the love of God for his creation, by the way, that keeps it from being destroyed even now. It is the love of God manifested in and through common grace that allows an unbeliever to take a breath of air or feel the rain upon his face to be able to enjoy the beauty of the sunset. Now, without a doubt, the only person who can experience fully the measure of God's love is the one who loves God's Son. But God loves the world. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world. That means his atonement is unlimited. It is in that unlimited sense of the atonement that allows the unbeliever to curse God and still enjoy his supper tonight. But that will eventually end. Why? Because the atonement of Jesus Christ is limited. Do I have your attention now? That is, it is only beneficial in its fullest and eternal measure to those who've been redeemed. For now the invitation is universal. God loves the world, and the world is full of sinners. And God, can you believe it, loves sinners. Now, who's a sinner? The word sinner comes from a verb which simply was used by the ancient Greeks to originally refer to a marksman who fired an arrow and missed the target. It then came to be used of someone who'd missed the right way. Then in the Greek Old Testament translation, it was chosen by the Spirit of God to refer to somebody who missed the divinely appointed goal, which is to please God. A sinner then is not necessarily somebody who's way off the mark, it's simply somebody who's missed the mark. It doesn't mean that if the target was right here, that the real bad sinners are the ones that are aiming over here. No, all of humanity is lumped in as people who more than likely in some way try to hit the mark and everybody misses, for all have what? Sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You see, ladies and gentlemen, that's the bad news. You're a sinner. Did you know that? You are a sinner. But the good news is the fact that you're a sinner. Why? Because God happens to love sinners. You're right with me. You're so far ahead. We could pack it up and go home. Not yet. The truth is we happen to love people who are lovely and easy to love. We tend to like people that are likable. So we assume that that must be the way God loves. Let me use an illustration from D.A. Carson's commentary, he's a wonderful theologian who, so to speak, puts the cookies down on the bottom shelf where we can all get to them. He illustrates the difference in a rather crass, earthy way. I think you'll get the point. It's somewhat humorous. The difference between our vision of love and God's. He wrote, Picture this. Charles and Susan are walking down a beach hand in hand. They have kicked off their shoes and the wet sand squishes between their toes. And Charles turns to Susan, gazes deeply into her hazel eyes, and says, Susan, I love you. I really do. What does he mean? What he means is, Susan, you mean everything to me. I can't live without you. Your smile paralyzes me from 50 yards away. Your sparkling good humor, your beautiful eyes, the center of your hair, everything about you transfixes me. I love you. What he most certainly does not mean is Susan, in spite of the fact that your nose is so large it belongs in the cartoons. And your hair is so greasy it could lubricate an 18-wheeler. Your knees so bony a camel looks elegant. Your personality makes a till of the hun look sweet. Oh, but Susan, I love you. That would be the end of that walk on the beach, I'm sure. So God, he goes on to say, comes through his word and says, I love you. What does he mean? Oh, you mean everything to me. I can't live without you. Your personality, your witty conversation, your beauty, your smile, everything about you transfixes me. I love you. No. What he rather means is, listen, morally speaking, your huge nose and greasy hair, your disjointed knees and selfish personality, your sinfulness makes you disgustingly ugly to me, but I love you, not because you are attractive, but because I have chosen to love you. Isn't that great? My friend, if you think that you deserve God's love, even in some small way, you will never feel totally secure in his love. Because you will always be afraid that you might do something undeserving of his love, something that will make you less attractive to him. And you will do that today and tomorrow and every day for the rest of your life. The person who knows that God loves them today, even though they are undeserving, is the person who can rest in the fact that God will love them forever, and even that is undeserved. There's one more kind of person that Paul refers to in this passage, the person that would perhaps surprise us the most that God would ever love. Look down at verse 10. Here's the same phraseology: For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. While we were enemies, you ought to circle those three phrases in your paragraph. Verse 6, while we were helpless, verse 8, while we were sinners, and now verse 10, while we were enemies, there's an ascending, or you could say a digression, of evil here. Enemies of God. This is a serious thing about sin, for sin is ultimately rebellion against God. It isn't just failure to follow God, it is refusal to follow God. And here's Paul's point. After you discover what kind of people we all are, you discover that none of us stand a chance. But then you discover that Paul is giving the answer simply to the first question. What kind of people does God love? Here's the answer to the second question. What kind of love does God give? Would you look back at verse 7? For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died. He goes on in verse 7, and he says, you know, somebody might die for a righteous man, or someone might give their life for a good man. But it would be a rare thing. It does happen. And when it happens, we're all hushed by the heroism of someone who saved another, forfeiting their own life. We have all been moved by the stories of firefighters who were rushing up the stairs in a burning building while everybody else was trying to rush down and out to safety. And when we hear those stories, we are amazed because that expresses in some small way the giving of God's Son. I had lunch with Dr. John Milheim and we were talking about the seminary and how things were going and how excited we were with God's blessing and the number of students. And something prompted me to just ask him about his past, his home life, and he shared with me a story, and I asked him for permission to tell you, and he gave it. He had an older brother named William. William was a godly young man who would be a mentor and a leader for John, their father having left them when they were young. William shared Christ with people, and while he was stationed in the Navy, he shared Christ with some of his buddies. One of them he even brought with him to Moody Church. They were stationed nearby. Brought him to Moody Church, downtown Chicago, where he could hear the gospel he had not yet received Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. On one weekend, William's friend was getting married and asked William if he would take his duty so he could not only go to the wedding but have a little honeymoon time afterward, and William said he would. While his friend was away at the wedding, the Navy pilot crashed into the lake and was lost, and they sent out a barge to rescue and retrieve this plane and the body of the dead pilot. William was assigned to be on that barge. And while they were out there, and a diver was already down at the bottom securing cables deep under the water, a sudden storm came up. And they knew they needed to pack up and leave, but they couldn't pull the diver up too quickly or he would perish. And so they had to take their time. And while they were trying to rescue the diver, the water eventually overwhelmed the barge and it sank. And William and all of the men perished except for one man. The man that William gave his life jacket to. An older man. And he said, You take my jacket. And that man lived. And he was the only one who did it. A friend of William who was away came back and attended the funeral. And the pastor was able to lead him to faith in Jesus Christ. How could you refuse after knowing somebody died for you, right? And he went on to attend Moody Bible Institute, and he entered the ministry and pastored for many decades, and he is now with the Lord. That's a rare thing, isn't it? To hear of somebody giving their life like that. And yet you discover it is with God even deeper and more amazing. But God, verse 8, demonstrated his own love toward us in that while we were yet in the act, you could render it according to the tense, while we were in the process of sinning, violating his holiness, offending his nature, while we were in the process of spurning him, he died. His son did for us. But God, Paul would use that phrase, but you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all lived in the lusts of flesh, indulging the desires of flesh and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest, but God. There it is. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead and our transgressions made us alive together with Christ. We headed to hell. Why? We're helpless. We can't lift a finger. We are sinful and then we're hostile. We would reject him. He moved on our behalf. But God, what a rescue! What a relief to think he knows the worst about you. And he loves you. That's the love of God. Another hymn writer tried to summarize it when he wrote, He left his father's throne above, so free, so infinite his grace, emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race. Tis mercy all immense and free. For O my God, it found out me. Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? Sinful me. But that's what kind of love he has: love that was willing to die. The word for love in Romans 5.8 is the word agape, which references the love of God toward us. It is the love of will, it is the love of infinite intellect, but it is a love that demonstrated through action. For God so loved the world that he what? That he gave. Not for God so loved the world that he thought. For God so loved the world that he wished. No, for God so loved the world that at the right time he gave Jesus Christ died. An anonymous author categorized that great text, John 3.16, into 12 phrases in an attempt to express the vastness of God's gift of salvation. Listen, God, the greatest lover. For God so loved, the greatest degree. For God so loved the world, the greatest company, that he gave the greatest act, his only begotten son, the greatest gift, that whosoever, the greatest invitation. Believes the greatest simplicity. In him the greatest attraction. Should not perish the greatest promise, but the greatest difference, but have the greatest certainty, but have everlasting life, the greatest possession. But God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Jesus Christ died for us. I love the way Spurgeon said it. He said that Jesus Christ took the cup of our condemnation, and with one long draught, he drank damnation dry. The final question How do you respond to this kind of love? Well, two ways. One, you receive it. It's a gift. You don't deserve it. In fact, you can't earn it. No one's worthy of it. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is what? Is eternal life. I'm convinced that there will be many people listening to me today who do not have the gift of God's love through Christ. Why? Because you think in some measure you deserve it. You think you've earned it. Have you been listening? God demonstrates and delivers his love to the sinner, to the enemy, to the helpless one. And those who recognize they have nothing to offer him but that sinful, helpless hostility. To them, they are granted the love of God forever. There are people that have two saviors. You ask them, do you know you're going to heaven? Oh, yeah, why? Well, because I believe in Jesus and I'm doing my best. How many saviors are in that answer? Two. What they believe about Jesus and what they're doing. You do not get to heaven with two saviors, you get there with only one. Depend upon yourself and perish. Depend only on Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. I find it fascinating that this text, Romans chapter 5, verse 8, was the verse that sparked the great Welsh revival of 1904. A young man by the name of Evan Roberts was listening to a man by the name of Seth Joshua preach on this text, and he came under such conviction of God's love. He began to weep, and he would later write, what literally bent me over was that God would commend his love for humanity when there was nothing to deserve that love. It was that text that burrowed its way into his heart. And he went away and he would pray for 13 months that God would deliver that message somehow to Wales, that people would hear that God loved them, even though they were sinful and helpless and hostile. And finally, after 13 months of praying intensely, he sensed God wanted him to speak. He wasn't a speaker, but he felt impressed to do so. And so he went to his church and he called a meeting of the teenagers. And they had a meeting that went till midnight, and then it went beyond midnight. The doors of that chapel, in fact, would not close, as people were always there praying and repenting and receiving Christ for many days and nights and months. In fact, from that chapel, revival spread like wildfire. And when it was over, more than 100,000 people had placed their faith in Christ, publicly professed their faith through baptism, and had joined the churches of Wales. Have you ever had a revival in your own heart and life? As a believer, where you know that he loves you and it brings you to tears, you receive that kind of love. It's a gift. It permanently places you within the family of God, and then over the course of your life, the second response, having received it, is to rely upon it. It's a guarantee from God, not just a gift. Why is it that the first time difficulty strikes our lives, one of the first things that we might question is whether or not God? God loves us. If he loved us, would he do that? But his love is true and his gift is generous, and his love is a guarantee. And Paul would say, What can separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing. I want to close by reading one more hymn written by an author who clung to the guarantee of God's love as a believer. His name was George Matheson, and he pastored for a number of years. What was unique about his ministry was that he was completely blind. In his day, which was the turn of the last century, more than a hundred years ago, he pastored a church of several thousand, which was very unique. But he loved the Lord and the people. One of the challenges he had was, of course, being blind. Commentaries and the scriptures were not written in, much of it not written in Braille. So his sisters lived with him. They remained unmarried for quite some time in their lives, but they lived with him and they learned personally the languages of Scripture. They learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and they helped him study. They lived together, and his sisters would help him by reading the text and commentaries and leading him to verses that would come to his mind, and he would ultimately fashion his messages, and then he would get up and preach on Sunday to several thousand people. One by one, his sisters married and moved away. Finally, the last sister married, and George Matheson was completely alone. He was able to care for himself, but of course, there was the struggle of ministry and now the loneliness of going through all the processes, and they there were friends who tried to help, but nothing like he had. A few months after his last sister moved away, and he would write that he lost that love. He would write of a love that would not leave him with these words.