March 26, 2024

Incomparable Love

A compilation

Audio length: 13:18
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God’s love is unchangeable; He knows exactly what we are and loves us anyway. In fact, He created us because He wanted other creatures in His image upon whom He could pour out His love and who would love Him in return. He also wanted that love to be voluntary, not forced, so He gave us freedom of choice, the ability to say yes or no in our relationship to Him. God does not want mechanized love, the kind that says we must love God because it’s what our parents demand or our church preaches. Only voluntary love satisfies the heart of God. …

God is a God of love, and He is not blind to man’s plight. He doesn’t stand on a mountaintop, viewing the wrecks in our lives, without shouting a warning. Since man caused his own crash by his rebellion against the Creator, God could have allowed him to plunge into destruction.

From the very beginning of man’s journey, God had a plan for man’s deliverance. In fact, the plan is so fantastic that it ultimately lifts each man who will accept His plan far above even the angels. God’s all-consuming love for mankind was decisively demonstrated at the cross, where His compassion was embodied in His Son, Jesus Christ. The word compassion comes from two Latin words meaning “to suffer with.”

God was willing to suffer with man. In His thirty-three years on earth, Jesus suffered with man; on the cross He suffered for man. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19). An important verse to memorize is “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

God’s love did not begin at the cross. It began in eternity before the world was established, before the time clock of civilization began to move. The concept stretches our minds to their utmost limits.

Can you imagine what God was planning when the earth was “without form and void”? There was only a deep, silent darkness of outer space that formed a vast gulf before the brilliance of God’s throne. God was designing the mountains and the seas, the flowers and the animals. He was planning the bodies of His children and all their complex parts. How could creation be by chance?

Even before the first dawn, He knew all that would happen. In His mysterious love He allowed it. The Bible tells us about the “Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). God foresaw what His Son was to suffer. It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it, we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.—Billy Graham¹

Incomparable love and incomparable death

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.—Romans 5:7–8

To what can you compare the death of Jesus Christ? Paul’s words leave us completely tongue-tied to answer; we are speechless! Christ’s death is beyond compare because it is based on God’s love beyond compare. Already in human terms and experience, Christ’s death was unlike any other death. Verse 7 says, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.” What does Paul mean by this? ...

The apostle constructs a hypothetical situation, a scenario for the sake of discussion. There is a righteous man. … He is honest in his business practices. He is respectful toward others. He is a model citizen. It would be rare, Paul says, for someone to die for him. It might happen, but only because of the character of the righteous man. At least he might be worth dying for. But only a few would offer to die for such a person.

Paul goes on to say that perhaps for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. This good man is different from the righteous man. Righteous men are a dime a dozen; you find them all over. They are both unbelievers and believers. They do what they are obligated to do. But there is something different about the good man. He goes over and above what the laws of the land require. He gives more than just respect to his fellow man, he does what he can to promote the character and honour of his fellow man! … Someone might be willing, because of their love for this man, to give their life for him. But even that takes great courage.

Paul’s point? You’ll be hard-pressed to find this kind of self-sacrificing love among people. It is extremely difficult and very rare for anyone to reach within himself and produce this kind of love for someone else. No one easily gives up his life.

For us, we may not consider ourselves as either good or righteous. We were so far off the mark; we had forsaken fellowship with our God. … Yet this is where the love of Christ becomes manifest: While we were still sinners, Christ gave himself up for us. He died to set us free. What amazing love!

Christ came into this world to bring not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He came not to seek the good, he came for the lost. Christ died for the powerless and ungodly. Our only hope for salvation is in the love of God, shown in the incomparable death of Jesus Christ. … What a death! What a love! What a God and Saviour!—Ryan Kampen²

Blessed above all people

Sometimes our struggles can seem so difficult, so monumental. In fact, sometimes they are difficult and monumental. Life is certainly not easy for any of us! But the thing to remember is that when compared with the heartbreaks, devastating loneliness, frustration, hopelessness, and lack of love and purpose that many people who do not know the Lord face, without the promise of an eternity with God, our problems seem less significant.

As God’s children, we’re blessed with the constant companionship of His Spirit, and fellowship with our friends and loved ones who share our faith. We have confidence in the Lord’s unconditional love, and we know that even though we make a lot of mistakes, His forgiveness is readily available to us if we will just come to Him and ask for it.

Many of us haven’t yet learned to not succumb to guilt, remorse, and condemnation despite our knowledge of the Lord’s unconditional love and forgiveness, but we’re learning, and we know by faith that we don’t have to be weighed down by regrets, bitterness, guilt, and condemnation. We have God’s Word to claim, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1–2).

So if you’re weary with the trials and tribulations of life on earth, remind yourself that compared to the lost people of the world who don’t know the Lord, and sometimes don’t even have anything to eat or a place to live—as His children, we are blessed! Jesus died to save us so that we could help Him to save others.

As His disciples, we are called to go out into the sea of humankind, seeking those who are lost, sinking, and drowning, to offer them life, hope, and truth. We have the vastness of God’s riches to share with a lost and dying world—His love, His Word, and our knowledge of the wonderful future He has promised for all His children. We are called to share what we have received with the dying and desperate of this world who have lost hope of any comfort or who lack the knowledge of God who loves them or the heaven that awaits them. They desperately need God’s love and truth, these who die a thousand deaths before their physical body is laid to rest in the grave. Won’t you do everything possible to share with them the lasting joy and peace of mind and eternal life that you have in Jesus?

What if you had no purpose in life, no hope for the future, no one to go to when you were fearful, no one to comfort you when you were sad, no one to help you when you were confused, no way to get rid of your burdens of condemnation, no way to deal with the death of loved ones, no way of knowing where they had gone or if you would ever see them again, no way of dealing with loss or injury or illness or catastrophe, no one to help you when you are lonely?

If someone helped each of us to know Jesus and His salvation, how can we fail to do the same for others? If Jesus loved you so much that He died for you, He also loved them so much that He died for them. Someone made it possible for each of us to know Jesus, and it’s now our responsibility to pass the message on! The Lord wants us to have great concern for others, realizing that they live in turmoil and confusion and lack of love, and we have the truth and answers in Him and His Word that they need.

The Lord promises great returns if we’ll give unto others. “Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ” (Colossians 3:24). What a marvelous cycle! As we give His love and truth to others, the Lord promises to give to us in turn—His strength, faith, and joy. As a result, others will see us and they’ll know we’ve been with Jesus, and they’ll want to know Him too.—Maria Fontaine

Published on Anchor March 2024. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso. Music by John Listen.

¹ Billy Graham, Hope for the Troubled Heart: Finding God in the Midst of Pain (National Geographic Books, Aug 1, 1993).

² https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/romans-57-8-incomparable-love-and-incomparable-death

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