Great Love

Most of us know that God is love (1 John 4:7). Most of us know that "God so loved the world" (John 3:16) One of the great lines I find in my Bible is in Ephesians. The second chapter begins with a description of the desolate state of Natural Man.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1-3)

Truly bad news. The "you" at the beginning there refers to the Gentile believers in Ephesus and the "we" a short distance later refers to the Jews, so Paul points out that Jews are "like the rest of mankind" in this "dead in trespasses and sins" condition. No one starts out without it. It's bad. So the magnificence of the next sentence is huge.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:4-7)

That is a big "but." Over against "dead in trespasses and sins" you have "but God." Over against "following the course of this world" you have "but God." Over against living in the passions of our flesh and carrying out the desires of body and mind, you have "but God." And what "but" is that? Based on His rich mercy (not mere mercy, but rich mercy) "because of the great love with which He loved us," God acted. He took dead people and made them alive together with Christ. He took sinners and raised them up with Him. He took people following the prince of the power of the air and seated them with Him in the heavenly places. HUGE.

There is an interesting note in all this about God's "great love with which He loved us." We tend to think that God loves everybody the same. We know that God loved the world from John 3:16 and we think, "He loves everyone equally." But that's not what this text says. This text says that because of His love for us He accomplished things for us that He doesn't do for everybody. Because of His great love He made us alive together with Christ (past tense) and because of His great He love raised us up with Him (past tense) and because of His great love He seated us with Him (past tense). Because of His great love and His rich mercy, He accomplished all of this for us, for those whom He chose before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him (Eph 1:4). This is great love and this is special love, reserved, as John 3:16 tells us also, for those who believe and not for everyone.

Sometimes I think we're too used to our salvation. Sometimes I think we find God's grace and mercy and love to be passé. Sometimes I fear it becomes boring or, in the common vernacular of the day, "meh." It must not be. If we don't have an awesome fascination with this great salvation handed to us by grace -- unmerited favor -- then we just aren't grasping how rich His mercy is, how great His love is ... and how bad off we were. And that failure to grasp and be grateful, as it turns out, is a great loss.