What Manner of Love

“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” JOHN 17:23

 

PONDER THIS

How much does God love you? God loves you as much as He loves His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s hard for me to take in. When the Apostle John was speaking about this love he said, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1)! Do you know why John said, “What manner of love”? It seems like he was grasping for an adjective suitable to use. What colossal love, what stupendous love, what … I just can’t even think of a word. He just finally had to say, “what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.” God loves you dear friend, and you are secure in God’s sovereign love.

How hard is it for you to believe God loves you as a father loves a child?

What makes this difficult? What helps you believe this?

PRACTICE THIS

Make a list of various passages that describe the love of God for His people, starting with the two verses in today’s devotion.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Stay in the Love of God

“Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” JUDE 1:21

 

PONDER THIS

To “keep yourself in the love of God” doesn’t mean God is not loving you. Consider the prodigal son. When he left the father’s house to go to the far country and was down there in the hog pen, did the father still love him? Yes, the father still loved him. But he left the environment of the love of God. He did not enjoy the protection of the father’s house, the provision of the father’s house, and the feast of the father’s house. The father was still loving him, but he did not keep himself in the love of his father. Likewise, we are called to stay in the Father’s love.

In these last days, if you are going to survive the apostasy, the safe place is in the love of God. Keep yourselves in the love of God. We are to bask in the love of God. We are to keep ourselves in the love of God. We are not trying to keep God loving us any more than we are trying to keep the sun shining. But we are to stay in that environment. We are to stay in the love of God.

What are some ways we “keep ourselves in the love of God”?

What are some ways we go out from the love of God?

PRACTICE THIS

Read the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Consider the reality that the father never stopped loving his son, but the son did remove himself from the father’s love.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

You Are His Beloved

“Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ.” JUDE 1:1

 

PONDER THIS

In this verse, many translations use the word sanctified. But some Bible scholars tell us that’s not the best translation. Rather than sanctified, we might use beloved. Sanctified is good, but beloved is better in this particular instance because it tells something of the nature of God’s special people. What’s the difference? As an example, I love the members of my church, but Joyce is my beloved and there’s a difference. She is my love; she is special. Who is the beloved of God? The Lord Jesus. He is God’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. (See Matthew 3:17.) It is by Jesus that we are accepted, therefore God sees us as He sees Jesus, and God’s name for His own dear children is beloved. The word beloved is a perfect participle. What does that mean? It means there’s a finished action in the past that has a result in the present. It is something that cannot be changed; it is fixed. Because of what was done in the past, we are and will forever be God’s beloved.

How does it encourage you to be reminded that you are the beloved of God?

How does that change the way you think about how God sees you?

PRACTICE THIS

Make a list of what it means for God’s people to be His beloved. What promises do you know from the Bible for God’s beloved?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

His Love Will Not Let You Go

Pray Over This 

“So Peter went out and wept bitterly.”

Luke 22:62 

Ponder This 

Peter was surprised at his failure. Nobody was more surprised than Peter. Peter was not a hypocrite, and he meant it when he said, “Lord, I will go with you to prison and to death.” (See Luke 22:33.) Many times, I have done things, I have had thoughts and words erupt out of me, and I have literally been surprised at myself. I would say, “Where did that come from?” Peter did not realize what was in him. But he learned that, despite it all, Jesus, who is in complete control, had never stopped loving him.

There is nothing you can do that will make Him love you more than He loves you. And nothing you can do will stop Him from loving you. You may believe you have to earn His love. No, you don’t. The Bible says, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is the sovereign grace of God. When you fail, don’t ever let the devil say, “He is finished with you. He doesn’t love you anymore. He has written you off.” He has not. He loves you. This Christ of sovereignty is the Christ of sympathy. Thank God for that.

What tempts you to believe you can make God love you more or less?

How are you encouraged to know that’s not true? How are you challenged?

 

Practice This

Journal today about how you would live differently if you truly believed God would never love you more or less than He does now in Jesus.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

His Correction Is His Love

For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.” 1 CORINTHIANS 11:31-32

 

PONDER THIS

What should you do if there’s sin in your life? It may be the sin of coldness. It may be what you’d consider a very small sin. No matter what it is, deal with it immediately. In today’s text, we are reminded God is not trying to get even with you. God just wants you to be corrected. When parents punish children, they’re not trying to get even with them; they’re trying to correct them. There are some children that all you have to do is look at them, and their little hearts will melt. And when a child shows change and no longer shows disobedience, you don’t say, “I’m going to punish that child anyway.” No. What you want is a change of behavior. Likewise, Paul reminded us, “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.” God is not trying to get even with you. God wants to lovingly correct you.

How does God’s correction display His love in our lives?

When have you experienced the loving correction of God?

PRACTICE THIS

Pray and ask God where He wants to correct you now. Respond appropriately.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Honeymoon That Never Ends

As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)

When God does good to his people, it is not so much like a reluctant judge showing kindness to a criminal whom he finds despicable. It is like a bridegroom showing affection to his bride.

Sometimes we joke and say about a marriage, “The honeymoon is over.” But that’s because we are finite. We can’t sustain a honeymoon level of intensity and affection. But God says that his joy over his people is like a bridegroom over a bride. And he doesn’t mean it starts out that way and then fades.

He is talking about honeymoon intensity and honeymoon pleasures and honeymoon energy and excitement and enthusiasm and enjoyment. He is trying to get into our hearts what he means when he says he rejoices over us with all his heart. Jeremiah 32:41, “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Zephaniah 3:17, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

With God the honeymoon never ends. He is infinite in power and wisdom and creativity so that there will be no boredom for the next trillion ages of millenniums.

John Piper 

How Much God Loves You

“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” ROMANS 8:32

Ponder This

I have two sons. If you were to ask me, “Will you give me one of your sons so that I might butcher and torture him?” I would say no, absolutely not! You might ask, “What if it might save me and I could be forgiven?” I still wouldn’t do it. The reality is, I don’t love you that much. I don’t love anybody that much. But God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He did not spare Jesus. Jesus had my sin, your sin, our sin upon Him. Consider this. Do you think God will spare you if you don’t receive Jesus, if you don’t put your faith where God has put your sin? If there were ever a time when God would have been tempted to be lenient upon sin, it was when that sin was upon the Lord Jesus Christ. But Jesus suffered at the holy hand of God as the only means by which we can be saved.

How does it impact you to dwell on the truth that God gave His Son up for you?

What do we communicate to God if we seek salvation in some way outside of the provision He has made in Jesus?

Practice This

Spend time today dwelling on the reality that God has given up His only Son for you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

As Sure as God’s Love for His Son

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

God strips every pain of its destructive power. You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive, as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.

There is so much pain, so many setbacks and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures. I do not know where I would turn, if I did not believe that almighty God is taking every setback and every discouragement and every controversy and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power, and making it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.

Listen to Paul’s astonishing words in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. Life is ours. Death is ours. Which I take to mean: God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.

If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will infallibly and freely with him give us all things — all things — the world, life, death, and God himself.

Romans 8:32 is a precious friend. The promise of God’s future grace is simply overwhelming. But all-important is the foundation: I have called it the logic of heaven. Here is a place to stand against all obstacles. God did not spare his own Son! Therefore! Therefore! The logic of heaven! Therefore, how much more will he not spare any effort to give us all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for our good!

It is as sure as the certainty that he loved his Son!

John Piper 

The Father’s Heart on Display

“Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.’” GENESIS 22:4-5

 

PONDER THIS

Abraham and Isaac came to a point beyond which the others couldn’t go. The others were told to stay back while father and son went to commune together. This reminds us of the darkness of Gethsemane where Jesus left Peter, James, John, and the other disciples and went alone to commune with His Father as He faced Calvary. In Genesis 22:7, Isaac looked at his father. In Abraham’s hands were a torch and a knife. Isaac could read his father’s face. He began to realize what was about to happen. Think of what must have been going through Isaac’s heart as he saw his father go up without a lamb to that place of sacrifice. Think of what must have been in Abraham’s heart.

When my first son was born, I ceased to think so much of the love of Jesus, and I thought more of the love of the Father. Though both are infinite in their love, I thought how it must have moved the Father’s heart to give His only Son to die upon the cross. Think how much the Lord Jesus suffered. Think how much God the Father suffered. But they both did so willingly, for our sake.

How does today’s devotion remind you of the Father’s heart for you?

How does it change your perspective to think of the Christian life not solely as a duty to be lived out, but as a relationship with the perfect loving Father?

PRACTICE THIS

Spend some time today reflecting on the Father’s love for you. Spend time on a prayer walk or write out a prayer of adoration to your Father.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Battle to Remind

“This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” (Lamentations 3:21–22)

One of the great enemies of hope is forgetting God’s promises. Reminding is a great ministry. Peter and Paul both said that they wrote letters for this reason (2 Peter 1:13; Romans 15:15).

The main Helper in reminding us what we need to know is the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). But that doesn’t mean you should be passive. You are responsible only for your own ministry of reminding. And the first one in need of reminding by you is you.

The mind has this great power: It can talk to itself by way of reminder. The mind can “call to mind,” as the text says: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases” (Lamentations 3:21–22).

If we don’t “call to mind” what God has said about himself and about us, we languish. Oh, how I know this from painful experience! Don’t wallow in the mire of godless messages in your own head. Messages like: “I can’t . . .” “She won’t . . .” “They never . . .” “It has never worked . . .”

The point is not that these are true or false. Your mind will always find a way to make them true, unless you “call to mind” something greater. God is the God of the impossible. Reasoning your way out of an impossible situation is not as effective as reminding yourself that God does impossible things.

Without reminding ourselves of the greatness and grace and power and wisdom of God, we sink into brutish pessimism. “I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (Psalm 73:22).

The great turn from despair to hope in Psalm 77 comes with these words: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:11–12).

This is the great battle of my life. I assume yours too. The battle to remind! Myself. Then others.

John Piper 

More than Lucky

“But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit . . .” TITUS 3:4-5

 

PONDER THIS

Sometime ago, I heard a preacher named Buckner Fanning give a message and he told a story I have not been able to forget. A man lost his dog somewhere in the Midwest. He put an ad in the paper, and it said something like, "Lost Dog. Reward offered. Mixed breed. Limps due to automobile accident and arthritic condition. Blind in one eye. Large patches of fur missing due to mange. Does not hear well. Answers to the name Lucky." Someone saw the ad and told him, “You know, he was a lucky dog, because somebody loved him, not for anything else.”

We're more than lucky dogs. We're blessed because God loves us. God doesn't love us because we're valuable. We're valuable because God loves us. That's what the Gospel is all about. It's not by works of righteousness we have done. I mean if it were by works of righteousness we have done, how could we have saved ourselves? God, in His love, moved toward you and keeps moving toward you, inviting you into a relationship with Himself for all eternity.

How hard is it for you to believe that God loves you?

How has God’s love impacted you? How has it impacted the people around you?

PRACTICE THIS

Share with another person how God’s love has impacted you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Is God’s Love Conditional?

[God] gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4:6–8)

James teaches us that there is a precious experience of “more grace” and God “drawing near” to us. Surely this is a wonderful experience — more grace and a special nearness of God. But I ask: is this experience of the love of God unconditional? No. It is not. It is conditional on our humbling ourselves and our drawing near to God. God “gives [more] grace to the humble. . . . Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

There are precious experiences of the love of God that require that we fight pride, seek humility, and cherish the nearness of God. Those are the conditions. Of course, the conditions themselves are the work of God in us. But they are no less conditions we fulfill.

If this is true, I fear that the unqualified, biblically careless reassurances today that God’s love is all unconditional may stop people from doing the very things the Bible says they need to do in order to enjoy all the peace that they so desperately crave. In trying to give peace through “unconditionality” we may be cutting people off from the very remedy the Bible prescribes.

To be sure, let us proclaim, loud and clear, that the divine love of election, and the divine love of Christ’s death, and the divine love of our regeneration — our new birth — are all absolutely unconditional.

And let us declare untiringly the good news that our justification is based on the worth of Christ’s obedience and sacrifice, not ours (Romans 5:19, “as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”).

But let us also declare the biblical truth that the fullest and sweetest experiences of the grace of God and the nearness of God will be enjoyed by those who daily humble themselves and draw near to God.

John Piper 

Absolute, Sovereign, Almighty Love

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34:6)

God abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Two images come to my mind:

The heart of God is like an inexhaustible spring of water that bubbles up love and faithfulness at the top of the mountain. Century after century the spring keeps on flowing.

Or the heart of God is like a volcano that burns so hot with love that it blasts the top off the mountain and flows year after year with the lava of love and faithfulness.

When God uses the word “abounding” — “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” — he wants us to understand and feel that the resources of his love are not limited. You can drink at this mountain spring all day, year after year, generation after generation, and it never runs dry.

You might even risk saying that God is like a government that simply prints more money when there’s a need. Inexhaustible, right? Well, there’s a difference. God has an infinite treasury of golden love to cover all the currency he prints. The government is in a dream world. God banks very realistically on the infinite resources of his deity.

The absolute existence, the sovereign freedom, and the omnipotence of God are the volcanic fullness that explodes in an overflow of love. The sheer magnificence of God means that he does not need us to fill up any deficiency in himself. Instead his infinite self-sufficiency spills over in love to us — to sinners — who need him, and the gift of himself in Jesus.

We can bank on his love precisely because we believe in the absoluteness of his existence, the sovereignty of his freedom, and the limitlessness of his power.

John Piper 

Present and Powerful Love

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Romans 8:35)

Notice three things in Romans 8:35.

1. Christ is loving us now.

A wife might say of her deceased husband: Nothing will separate me from his love. She might mean that the memory of his love will be sweet and powerful all her life. But that is not what Paul means here.

In Romans 8:34 it says plainly, “Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” The reason Paul can say that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ is because Christ is alive and is still loving us right now.

He is at the right hand of God and is therefore ruling for us. And he is interceding for us, which means he is seeing to it that his finished work of redemption does in fact save us hour by hour, and bring us safely to eternal joy. His love is not just a memory. It is a moment-by-moment action by the omnipotent, living Son of God, to bring us to everlasting joy.

2. This love of Christ is effective in protecting us from separation, and therefore is not a universal love for all, but a particular love for his people — that is, those who, according to Romans 8:28, love God and are called according to his purpose.

This is the love of Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” It is Christ’s love for the church, his bride. Christ has a love for all, and he has a special, saving, preserving love for his bride. You know you are part of that bride if you trust Christ. Anyone — no exceptions — anyone who trusts Christ can say, I am part of his bride, his church, his called and chosen ones, the ones who, according to Romans 8:35, are kept and protected forever no matter what.

3. This omnipotent, effective, protecting love does not spare us from calamities in this life, but brings us safely through them to everlasting joy with God.

Death will happen to us, but it will not separate us. So when Paul says in verse 35 that the “sword” will not separate us from the love of Christ, he means: even if we are killed, we are not separated from the love of Christ.

So the sum of the matter in verse 35 is this: Jesus Christ is right now mightily loving his people with omnipotent, moment-by-moment love that does not always rescue us from calamity but preserves us for everlasting joy in his presence even through suffering and death.

John Piper 

The Father Who’s Never Too Busy

“As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him.”

PSALM 103:13

 

PONDER THIS

I’m so glad our Heavenly Father is never too busy putting out the sun, the moon, and the stars, running the Universe, and commanding the angels that He doesn’t have time to spend time with us. His schedule is never so booked that He can’t talk to you. No one else on Earth can be there for you like that. You can come to Him any time and talk to Him. I don’t mean to be irreverent, but you can jump up in His lap and put your spiritual arms around His neck. He is a Father who loves you.

When our first child was born, my pastor at that time said something to me I have never forgotten: “Adrian, before you have children, you always think of the love that Jesus, the Son, had when He died for our sins, but after you have children of your own, you think of the great love the Father had when He gave His Son.” Your Heavenly Father loves you so much. Spend time with Him, embrace Him, and thank Him every day.

What are some ways you spend time with your Heavenly Father? What distracts you from this?

What are some ways you have experienced companionship with God? What are some ways you feel distant from God?

PRACTICE THIS

Spend some time with your Heavenly Father and thank Him for always having the time to spend with you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What Does Real Love Look Like?

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” 1 JOHN 4:16

 

PONDER THIS

We need to give our kids unconditional love. I’ve often noticed that men who had fathers who did not love them do not know how to love to their kids—they must be taught. We need a generation of men to mentor other men who never had fathers who taught them unconditional love. We must break that cycle.

Unconditional love doesn’t mean you give a child everything he or she wants. That’s not really love at all. True love is not giving others what they want, it is giving others what they need. There must be unconditional acceptance, regardless of the child’s behavior. I may not accept what you do, but I accept you. Children need to know that so deeply that when they are in trouble, they won’t be afraid to come to you. If children don’t have a sense that their parents love them no matter what they do, they’re not going to share their mess-ups with you, and you won’t have the opportunity to help them through their greatest challenges.

Who are the people who were there for you in your hardest points of life? How have you learned love from them?

What are some things that make it challenging to love others unconditionally?

PRACTICE THIS

Thank someone today who loved you unconditionally while you were growing up.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God’s Pleasure to Do You Good

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

Jesus will not sit by and let us disbelieve without a fight. He takes up the weapon of the word and speaks it with power for all who struggle to believe.

His aim is to defeat the fear that God is not the kind of God who really wants to be good to us — that he is not really generous and helpful and kind and tender, but is basically irked with us — ill-disposed and angry.

Sometimes, even if we believe in our heads that God is good to us, we may feel in our hearts that his goodness is somehow forced or constrained, perhaps like a judge who has been maneuvered by a clever attorney into a corner on some technicality of court proceeding, so he has to dismiss the charges against the prisoner whom he really would rather send to jail.

But Jesus is at pains to help us not feel that way about God. He is striving in Luke 12:32 to describe for us the indescribable worth and excellency of God’s soul by showing the unbridled pleasure he takes in giving us the kingdom.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Every little word of this stunning sentence is intended to help take away the fear that Jesus knows we struggle with; namely, that God begrudges his benefits; that he is constrained and out of character when he does nice things; that at bottom he is angry and loves to vent his anger.

Luke 12:32 is a sentence about the nature of God. It’s about the kind of heart God has. It’s a verse about what makes God glad — not merely about what God will do or what he has to do, but what he delights to do, what he loves to do and takes pleasure in doing. Every word counts. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

John Piper 

The Freest Love

“Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.” (Deuteronomy 10:14–15)

God’s electing love — the love by which he chooses a people for himself — is absolutely free. It is the gracious overflow of his boundless happiness guided by his infinite wisdom.

Deuteronomy 10:14–15 describes the delight God had in choosing Israel from all the peoples of the earth. Notice two things.

First, notice the contrast between verses 14 and 15. Why does Moses describe the election of Israel against the backdrop of God’s ownership of the whole universe? Why does he say in verse 14, “To God belongs everything in heaven and on earth” and then say in verse 15, “Yet he chose you for his people”?

The reason seems to be to get rid of any notion that God was somehow boxed in to choose this people — that there were some limits to his choosing and he was somehow forced to choose them. The point is to explode the pagan idea that a god may have the right and authority to have his own people but no more.

The truth is that Yahweh is the only true God. He owns everything in the universe and has the right and authority to take any people he wants for his own special possession.

Thus the unspeakably wonderful truth for Israel is that he chose them. He did not have to. He had rights and privileges to choose absolutely any people on the face of the earth for his redeeming purposes. Or all of them. Or none of them.

Therefore, when he calls himself “their God” he does not mean that he is on a par with the gods of Egypt or the gods of Canaan. He owns those gods and their peoples. If it had pleased him, he could have chosen a totally different people to accomplish his purposes.

The point of putting verses 14 and 15 together in this way is to stress the freedom and the universal rights and authority of God.

The second thing to notice (in verse 15) is the way God exercises his sovereign freedom to “set his heart in love on your fathers.” “He delighted in your fathers to love them.” He freely chose to take pleasure in loving the fathers.

God’s love for the fathers of Israel was free and merciful and wasn’t constrained by anything that the fathers were in their Jewishness or in their virtue.

This is a lesson for us. For us who are believers in Christ, God has chosen us just as freely. Not because of anything in us, but because God simply delighted to do it.

John Piper 

God Demonstrates His Love

God shows [demonstrates] his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

Notice that “demonstrates” is present tense and “died” is past tense. “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The present tense implies that this demonstrating is an ongoing act that keeps happening today. And will keep happening tomorrow.

The past tense “died” implies that the death of Christ happened once for all and will not be repeated. “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Why did Paul use the present tense (“God demonstrates”)? I would have expected Paul to say, “God demonstrated (past tense) his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Was not the death of Christ, when it happened, the demonstration of God’s love? And did not that demonstration happen in the past?

I think the clue is given a few verses earlier. Paul has just said that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3–5).

In other words, the goal of everything God takes us through is hope. He wants us to feel unwavering hopeful through all tribulations.

But how can we?

Paul answers in the next line: “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). God’s love has been poured into our hearts. The tense of this verb means that God’s love was poured out in our hearts in the past (at our conversion) and is still present and active.

God did demonstrate his love for us in giving his own Son to die once for all in the past for our sins (Romans 5:8). But he also knows that this past love must be experienced as a present reality (today and tomorrow) if we are to have patience and character and hope.

Therefore, he not only demonstrated it on Calvary; he goes on demonstrating it now by the Spirit in our hearts. He does this by opening the eyes of our hearts to taste and see the glory of the cross and the guarantee it gives that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38–39).

John Piper 

The Great King’s Wine

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

I have never heard anyone say, “The really deep lessons of my life have come through times of ease and comfort.” But I have heard strong saints say, “Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God’s love and growing deep with him, has come through suffering.”

This is a sobering biblical truth. For example: “For [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Paraphrase: No pain, no gain. Or:

Now let it all be sacrificed, if it will get me more of Christ.

Here’s another example: “Although he was a son, [Jesus] learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The same book said he never sinned (Hebrews 4:15).

So learning obedience does not mean switching from disobedience to obedience. It means growing deeper and deeper with God in the experience of obedience. It means experiencing depths of yieldedness to God that would not have been otherwise attained. This is what came through suffering. No pain, no gain.

Samuel Rutherford said that when he was cast into the cellars of affliction, he remembered that the great King always kept his wine there. Charles Spurgeon said, “They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls.”

Do you not love your beloved more when you feel some strange pain that makes you think you have cancer? We are strange creatures indeed. If we have health and peace and time to love, it can become a thin and hasty thing. But if we are dying, love becomes a deep, slow river of inexpressible joy, and we can scarcely endure to give it up.

Therefore brothers and sisters, “Count it all joy . . . when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).

John Piper