The other day a salesman came into my office, trying to sell me some tools. He kept on commending these tools, telling me what very fine tools they were. But if you turn this verse up in your Bible and read the first part of it, you will find that God Himself commends something to us. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Just think of GOD taking such trouble. He commends His love to us.
He gives the reason too. The salesman in my office wanted me to buy his tools because he said that they were not only very good tools, but they were just suited to my needs. We might be sure that God’s love would be wonderful, but He has made it known in a way that just suits our need. For sin is sin, whether we like to believe it or not, and “the wages of sin is death.” Either a sinner must die in his sins or Someone-able-to-do-it must die for him. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the only One able to do this, and this He has done, blessed be His name. Now “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Some folks (grown-ups, too, who ought to know better) say they will not believe this because they do not understand it. Just think! They cannot even understand how we go off to sleep or how we wake up again. So how can they understand how the death of Christ in the sinner’s place frees him from the judgment of a holy God against sin, nor how it is that “the blood of Jesus Christ... cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7).
Besides, God does not ask us to understand it. He asks us to believe it. Long before you were born, God took the only way of meeting your need, and because of the death of His Son, God can make His wonderful love known to all men. If they will but accept Jesus as their Saviour, God can forgive their sins and bless them.
ML-11/25/1962