With Valentine's Day this week, I decided to discuss for a while the issue of a very different kind of love. It's a kind of love that demands absolutely nothing from us, is free to people everywhere and in spite of all of this, people everywhere still doubt it. I'm talking about God's love for mankind.
Despite everything God's love promises, there are still thousands of people around the world who have absolutely no trouble doubting God's love. We hear questions about it all the time. "If God loves us, why does he allow ISIS to murder across the world?" "If God loves us, why did he rip my family apart?" "If God loves us, why are there still people around the world dying every day?" Questions like this and more are being asked right now.
Those are all very hard questions, but I want you, the reader to imagine for a moment that God didn't love humanity. You can't. You know why? You would not exist. If God didn't love mankind, your parents would not exist, and neither would you. By sending His son, He allowed for you to be able to exist. If God DIDN'T love humanity, he would have been done with humanity eons ago. But He wasn't done. Why? Consider it the ultimate act of love.
We've all heard of Jesus being held to the cross by nails, but He wasn't. He was held there by love. If He was only held there by nails, He would have probably have asked for angels to bring Him down from the cross. He wasn't. His love, through the love of His father, was the driving force for Him to take the nails for you and me and everyone else around the world.
You want to hear something even stranger? Consider, for a moment, that you chose to accept Him, but you were the only thing obtained from the sacrifice. But you know what? He would still willingly do it, because even though He loves everyone in the world, He also loves every one person in the world.
Keep this in mind next time you want to doubt His unconditional, freely-given love.
