God Loves You More Than You Know!

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)

John 15:13 - Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (NIV)

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with these scriptures, and you may even have a pretty good understanding of what they mean, but allow me to improve your understanding into a new dimension.

First you need to understand what God sacrificed for us. Yes it is true that He died a horrible death, but that happened at the conclusion of His sacrifice, not the beginning. God came into this world by placing His soul inside a human body (See my post “Trinity”). God sacrificed His own deity to become one of us. Although as Jesus Christ He was still God and He still had to hold the universe together as only God can, He shared in every part of our humanity (Hebrews 2:14). He wasn’t omnipresent anymore; when He needed to go somewhere He had to walk, and sometimes that compounded the situation He was responding to as sick people died before He got there (John 11:21). He wasn’t omniscient anymore; sometimes He didn’t know who it was who touched Him (Mark 5:30-32). When He was a baby, somebody had to change His diapers. As He was growing up He sometimes stumbled over His own feet and skinned His knees. Even in the garden as He prepared for His greatest sacrifice, we see the fear and anguish He carried for what was about to happen (Matthew 26:42).

The prophet Isaiah said He was “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” God gave up everything He was, in order to become everything that we are, and when He gave His life for us it was in every way as costly for Him as it would be for one of us to give our own life for our friends.

This was God’s love for us, and His sacrifice. But what I want you to understand, is that as amazing as all of this is, that is only the first dimension of God’s love for us. God’s love is unfathomable, unending, and without condition. Just like life itself is part of the very essence and nature of God (See my post “God Is Life”), so also is His love. “God is love” (1John 4:8).

To truly understand how much God loves you, you need to know this… After everything He went through, everything He suffered, sacrificing His deity to have the same limitations that you and I have, and then being condemned to die at the hands of the very people He had come to save, did you know that if it would save just one more person, He would do it all over again, in a heartbeat, without hesitation… God loves us that much!

Greater love has no one more than God.


James :)

On This Day

Come now you people of earth,
sing and dance, rejoice, celebrate!
This is the day of your recovery.
This is the day that your heritage is restored.
This is the day when the transgressions of billions
have been erased and forgotten forever!
This is the day when the earth was invaded by the Mighty One,
and the enemy of old fled in terror.
Remind him this day of his dreadful defeat,
of that Little Baby that he failed to murder as a child,
who grew up and shook the very foundation of his domain,
routing demons, and torment, and disease,
until that Baby eventually allowed Himself to be hung on a tree,
and gained legal entrance and domain over the last fortress of evil,
where He crushed that enemy’s head under His feet!
On this day sorrow is commanded to flee!
On this day suffering is demanded to end!
On this day healing is given freely to all!
On this day, and on every day hereafter, through the end of time.
Who demands it? Upon whose head rests dominion of the day?
The One who was named King of kings,
and Lord or lords before time began.
Defy His reign and you will die in misery,
but bow before Him and you will know everlasting peace.
Let all the people of the earth celebrate in unending jubilation,
because Jesus Christ our Lord reigns!

Merry Christmas


James :)