C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 1 HOW MUCH GOD LOVES YOU If you re going to be a strong Christian, one thing is for sure: You must have a deep understanding and a strong conviction of God s love for you. The Bible says in Ephesians 3:17-19, 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. 1 Here the apostle Paul makes it clear that to be a strong, healthy Christ-follower, you need a deep understanding and a strong conviction of God s love for you. You need to truly understand what it means that God loves you. We can never fully understand it, but we have to have a deep understanding. A mature understanding. A biblical understanding. And you need a strong conviction that God loves you. You need to have an unwavering faith that God loves you. Why? There are several reasons God s love is such an important thing to understand and believe. First, if you believe that God loves you, then you will love yourself and others. If God, the sovereign creator and ruler of the universe passionately loves me, then I am valuable. And if I am valuable, then I should take good care of myself. I m not talking about selfishness. I m talking about a healthy self-love that leads to taking care of yourself spiritually, physically, and relationally. The reason people don t take care of themselves and abuse themselves and even allow others to abuse them and trample them is because they don t see themselves as valuable, important and significant, and that stems from the fact that they don t know that God loves them. In addition, if God passionately loves others, then they are valuable, and I should treat them with honor and respect and love. The reason many people are so mean, hateful, and condescending toward others is because they don t understand how valuable each individual is due to God s love for them. Second, if you believe that God loves you, then you will love God. Why do I love God? Because I understand and have a firm faith that He loves me. He is crazy about me; passionate about me; so fond of me that I want to be near Him. I want to know Him. I want to walk with 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 2 Him. I can t help but love Him back. The reason that some people come to church on Sunday and worship passionately with all their hearts is because they know the love of God. They understand God s love; they believe that God loves them. And the reason some people come to church but don t engage in worship is because they ve lost sight of God s love or have never glimpsed it in the first place, and if you don t understand and believe in God s love, then what s there to celebrate; what s there to be passionate about; why even sing? Third, if you believe that God loves you, you will fully surrender to Him. You will surrender every arena of your life to the rule of Jesus Christ when you truly believe that He loves you, because if He loves you then His commands must be for the best. If He loves me, then I can trust His rules, His restrictions, His commands, even when obedience is hard and involves sacrifice, self-denial, and delayed gratification. The reason people are struggling to hand over certain aspects of their life over to God, whether it s finances, sexuality, thought-life, dating life, career, physical health, is because they don t trust in God s love. Fourth, if you believe that God loves you, then you will run to Him in times of suffering. So many Christians are fair-weather friends. They only worship and serve God when life is good. As soon as they enter into a storm they get angry with God and run from Him, accusing Him of all kinds of evil. You re a liar God! You re hateful! And they abandon God when they most need Him. In the middle of the storm God holds out His arms and says, Come to me. I want to use this to grow you and make you stronger and more beautiful. I want to comfort you. I want to give you strength. I want to heal you. I want to do miracles for you. But they run from God during the hard times because they don t truly believe in God s love. But if you have a strong conviction of God s love, then you believe that whatever God brings into your life is for the best. And even though you can t understand why a loving God would allow certain things, you never waver in your in your faith. You say with confidence, I don t know why, but I know God, and He loves me. Instead, you run to Him when the storm hits. The storm only pushes you closer to God. You know exactly where you need to run when life gets hard; to the Lover of your soul. Understanding and trusting in God s love touches everything about you. It impacts your relationship with God, with yourself, and with others. How then do you develop this understanding and conviction about God s love for you? Where do you turn if have doubts about God s love? Where do you turn if you need reassurance that God is crazy about you? That s where John helps us in 1 John 4:8-10. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Two times in 1 John 4 John writes that God is love, which means that God always and only loves you. He never acts toward you in a way that is anything less than loving. His thoughts, actions, motives, and plans toward you are always love.
C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 3 Then John tells us how we can tell how much God loves us. God showed us how much He loved us on the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross of Jesus Christ is the best picture, the best expression, the best example, the best manifestation of God s love for us. If you have doubts about God s love look at the cross. If you need reassurance and reminding about God s love for you look at the cross. If you need a deeper understanding of God s love look at the cross. J.I. Packer wrote, The measure of love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of His only Son to be made man, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God. Philip Graham Ryken wrote, The cross reveals the heart of God. In the cross we know that God loves us in spite of our rebellion. In the cross we know that he forgives our sins. In the cross we know that he loves us all the way. At the same time, the cross reveals the heart of Jesus Christ. Sacrifice is the best proof of love. Anyone who is truly in love will make bold sacrifices for the beloved. And the ultimate sacrifice of course is death. Therefore, a sacrifice unto death is the ultimate proof of supreme love. Okay. So let s do this. Let s look at the cross. My purpose at this point is not to lead you to think through all the theological implications of the cross. I don t want us to focus on Christ s works of propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation on the cross. Suffice it to say that the cross was the means by which Jesus rescued us from sin, Satan, and eternal punishment and brought us back into an intimate relationship with God. For now however, I simply want to focus on what Jesus went through on the cross, because He loves us so much. Jesus didn t merely die for you. He was crucified for you. One source describes crucifixion as a particularly cruel and degrading form of capital punishment. Scholars believe that crucifixion was first practiced by the Medes and the Persians and then used by Alexander the Great who lives about 300 years before Christ. Eventually it was adopted by the Romans. Crucifixion was universally recognized as the worst form of torture and punishment. The pain is so horrible that there were no words that could describe it, so they invented a new word: Excruciating, literally meaning from the cross. The Romans only crucified slaves and foreigners. They considered it too harsh for citizens. Let s turn to Mark 15 and walk our way through Mark s account of Jesus crucifixion. 1 Very early in the morning the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law the entire high council met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead because they were jealous that all the people loved Him and followed Him, and because Jesus had claimed to be God, which was the ultimate blasphemy. But the entire world at that time, including Jerusalem, was under the rule of the
C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 4 Roman empire, so the Jewish leaders authority had its limitations. They were allowed to rule the Jewish people for the most part, but one of the things they could not do was carry out capital punishment. For that they needed the permission of the Roman governor, whose name was Pilate. 2 Pilate asked Jesus, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus replied, You have said it. Pilate was not interested in the religious controversies of the Jews. He didn t care if some man committed blasphemy by claiming to be God. So the Jewish leaders had to bring a political charge against Jesus to Pilate, that of claiming to be King of the Jews. By claiming to be King, Jesus was threatening the Roman empire, whose only King was Caesar. By claiming to be King, Jesus was guilty of treason, and could be sentenced to death. And Jesus doesn t deny it. He doesn t try to talk His way out of the situation. He doesn t beg for His life. He doesn t argue or condemn others. It s because He knew what He was doing. He was exactly where He wanted to be for our salvation. 3 Then the leading priests kept accusing him of many crimes, 4 and Pilate asked him, Aren t you going to answer them? What about all these charges they are bringing against you? 5 But Jesus said nothing, much to Pilate s surprise. Again, Jesus doesn t defend Himself. He is allowing His death, because it s all part of His plan. 6 Now it was the governor s custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner anyone the people requested. 7 One of the prisoners at that time was Barabbas, a revolutionary who had committed murder in an uprising. 8 The crowd went to Pilate and asked him to release a prisoner as usual. 9 Would you like me to release to you this King of the Jews? Pilate asked. 10 (For he realized by now that the leading priests had arrested Jesus out of envy.) 11 But at this point the leading priests stirred up the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. 12 Pilate asked them, Then what should I do with this man you call the king of the Jews? 13 They shouted back, Crucify him! 14 Why? Pilate demanded. What crime has he committed? But the mob roared even louder, Crucify him! 15 So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.
C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 5 The crucifixion begins at about 9 AM on Friday morning. And it begins with flogging, in which the victim is tied to a post with his arms and hands tied up over his head in order to fully expose his shoulders, back, buttocks, and legs. This harsh whipping or scourging usually lasted 39 lashes, but many times it could have been a lot more than that, just depending on the mood of the soldier. The whip was called a cat of nine tails (or flagellum or scorpion). It had nine braided leather strands or thongs with heavy metal balls woven into them. When the whip would hit the body, it would cause deep bruises which would eventually bust open as the flogging continued. The whip also had hooks made out of sharp bone, metal, or bronze, which would dig into the flesh as the whip wrapped around the body, and then it would rip the flesh off and cause deep cuts to the bone. One scholar who studied Roman beatings said, As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh. Eusibius, a historian from the third century wrote about flogging, The sufferer s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure. The flogging was so severe that it would cause the victim to go into hypovolemic shock, the effects of critical blood loss. Four things happened to Jesus at this point. First, his heart would have raced to try to pump blood that wasn t there. Second, his blood pressure would have dropped, causing him to collapse and faint. Third, his kidneys would have stopped producing urine to try to hold on to what was left. And finally, Jesus would have become intensely thirsty as His body craved fluids to replace the lost blood. As I mentioned, many victims didn t survive the flogging. 16 The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor s headquarters (called the Praetorium) and called out the entire regiment. 17 They dressed him in a purple robe, and they wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head. 18 Then they saluted him and taunted, Hail! King of the Jews! 19 And they struck him on the head with a reed stick, spit on him, and dropped to their knees in mock worship. 20 When they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified. 21 A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus cross. (Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) 22 And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull ). 23 They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, but he refused it. In a standard Roman crucifixion, the victim wouldn t be flogged until he reached the site of the cross. But in this case, Jesus had to carry a cross which could have weighed between 100-200 pounds after being flogged. As I mentioned, the hypovolemic shock would have caused Jesus to be extremely weak. He was fainting and collapsing. Jesus didn t carry the entire cross, only
C h u r c h A c a d i a n a. c o m 6 the horizontal crossbeam. The way that crucifixions were done was that the vertical beam remained standing in place at the site of the crucifixion, and the victim carried the crossbeam. 24 Then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. They divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. 25 It was nine o clock in the morning when they crucified him. Once Jesus was at the site of the crucifixion, Golgotha or Calvary (Place of the Skull), He was nailed to the cross. His hands were stretched out on the crossbeam, and spikes that were 5-7 inches long would have been nailed into His wrists. In the language of the day, the wrist was considered to be a part of the hand, but the nails weren t driven in the hands because the flesh and bone in the hand can t support the weight of the body, so the nail would just rip through the hand. Consider the pain of the these nails. The nail would have pierced the median nerve. This is the largest nerve going out to the hand. Do you know the pain you feel when you hit your funny bone? That s called the ulna nerve. Imagine squeezing and crushing that nerve with pliers; that s the pain Jesus felt from the nails in His hands. Next, they would have lifted Jesus up and connected the crossbeam to the vertical beam. At this point, all of Jesus weight would be supported by His nail-pierced wrists. His arms would have immediately been stretched out six inches and His shoulders would have been dislocated. Then, the soldiers would have put a single nail through Jesus overlaid feet. By the way, He was likely stripped naked in order to increase the humiliation. This is where the genius of crucifixion was manifested. Once hanging on the cross, death was a long, slow process. In Jesus case, it took 6 hours. How did He die, exactly? Scholars believe He died from asphyxiation and cardiac arrest. Asphyxiation is a fatal lack of oxygen. Cardiac arrest is when your heart stops beating and you die. Once hung on the cross, the body hangs in an inhale position. Every time Jesus needed to exhale, He had to push up on His feet, which would cause the nail to tear through the foot and press up against the tarsel bones. He would lift himself up to exhale, and then sink down to inhale. This was obviously extremely painful and exhausting. Eventually His breathing slowed down. This led to an irregular heartbeat, which eventually led to cardiac arrest and death. How can you know how much God loves you? Look at what Jesus did for you on the cross. He did all this; He willingly put Himself through the worst form of human suffering and humiliation for your benefit. All because He loves you. You didn t earn it. You didn t deserve it. He didn t have to do it. He could have come down from the cross. But He loves you. God proved once and for all that He is passionately and crazily in love with you. And because of the cross, you can know it. You can see the full extent of it. You never have to wonder. You never have to doubt. If He did that for you, He loves you. The cross settles it. He loves you. Now the question is, will you believe it? Will you trust in God s love for you? Will you allow God s love for you demonstrated on the cross to impact every area of your life?