“God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”― Romans 5:8
THE objection which a sinner, thinking of what he is and what he has done, will naturally, necessarily, and indeed very reasonably raise against any belief that God has love toward him, is, that he is a sinner. He will say, and neither man nor angel can find out the least shadow of a reason why he should say otherwise, “While I am a sinner, can. God possibly have any love towards me? Were I no sinner, I could easily believe it. It were no wonder that He should love a creature that was dutiful and obedient to Him. This is consistent with the goodness of His nature; but to conceive that He should have any love towards sinners, nay, that WHILE we are sinners, He should have love towards us, how can this be?” Thus reason speaks, concluding positively against any possibility that God should have love towards sinners. But now, what saith the Scripture? Oh, how far are God’s thoughts above our thoughts! “While we were yet sinners,” God loved us. It is not said, when we repented and turned from our sins, then He conceived love towards us; but when we were YET sinners; neither righteous nor good, but sinful and unprofitable, then He loved us. Here has the peculiarity of God’s love towards us; He loves us being sinners; He does not love us BECAUSE we are sinners, but THOUGH we be so He loves us: when we could expect nothing but that He should hate and abhor us, just at that very time He loved us. Our sins did not stop the course of His love towards us, but rather gave Him occasion of exerting it in the most glorious, and otherwise inconceivable, depths of it. God “first loved us,” saith John. When? Why when we were sinners, and did not love but hate Him. Otherwise His love had not been first. But He first loved us, lying in our sins, and then we, knowing His love towards us in our vile and sinful condition, are wrought upon thereby to love Him again. This is a point above all other things to be attended to; for comfort and holiness grow out of it. See to it, therefore. You are a sinner; you know yourself to be so; you are ashamed to think what a sinner you are. Well now, but do you believe that God hath love towards you while you are thug a sinner? Here lies the point. If you raise an argument from your sins against God’s loving you, you destroy the peculiarity of His love turn His truth into a lie, measure His thoughts by your own, and put an absolute stop to a possibility of your putting confidence in Him returning to Him, or loving Him. But if sensible that you are a sinner, and ashamed at the thoughts of yourself for being so, you do yet believe that He loves you, you will find this so astonishing a thing as shall utterly overcome you, and constrain you, in the most forcible, yet freest manner, to love and rejoice in Him. Here we must all come as we mean to be Christians. We must not preposterously seek a reason I’m God’s loving us in ourselves, which is indeed impossible, since we are sinners. We must see the whole cause of God’s loving us IN GOD, and not suffer our sinfulness to lie as an objection to His love towards us, since here lies the verb glory, eminence, and peculiarity of God’s love: and so doing, we shall find our souls filled with peace, love, and thankfulness. (1 John 2:2; 3:16; 4:9, 10; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Luke 7:42; Rom. 15:13.) S. W.