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“God Commendeth His Love toward Us”

Romans 5:8

Every time I read Romans 5:8 I stand amazed. — ““God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!” I marvel at the wonders here declared and revealed to sinners who deserve God’s everlasting wrath. God, the Triune Jehovah, here lays naked his tender heart. God, in giving his Son to die in the place of sinners, gave all his love at once. Behold, the crucified Christ, and behold all the love of God. — The crucified Son of God is the embodiment of God’s infinite love for poor, lost sinners who despise him and his love.

“Behold how he loved him,” said those Jews, when they saw Christ weeping at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:36). What shall we say of this love of his beyond compare, in bleeding for sinners at Calvary? Here, the Lord God lays naked to us the inmost tender bowels of his fatherly compassions. O my soul, love his love, and never leave meditating on it, until he is wholly fixed in my heart, who was wholly fastened to the cursed tree for my sake!

Known Love

To know the love of God is heaven on earth; and the New Testament sets forth this knowledge, not as the privilege of a favored few, but as a normal part of the everyday life of God’s children. Blessed is the man who can say with John, — “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1 John 4:16). The Apostle Paul had no greater desire for the saints of Ephesus than that which he expressed in this prayer. — “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19).

Shed Abroad

In this fifth chapter of Romans, the Apostle has told us of the believer’s confidence of hope, showing us that our confidence arises from the knowledge of God’s love. — “And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (v. 5). When Paul speaks of the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts, he is not talking about our love for God, as some have suggested. He is rather talking about our knowledge of God’s love for us. And, though he had never met these Roman believers to whom he was writing, he took it for granted that, in as much as they were believers, the statement would be as true of them as it was of him. Here is the fulness of our joy and the confidence of our hope. — “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.”

Paul is not talking about faint and passionate impressions of God’s love, but a deep and overwhelming knowledge. God’s love has flooded our inmost being! It has been poured out, flowing freely, and without limitation, into our souls. This knowledge of God’s love for us, having flooded our hearts, fills them now. Like a valley, having been flooded with water, remains full, Paul assumed that the saints of God to whom he wrote this Epistle would be living in the enjoyment of a strong sense of God’s love for them. This is the ministry of the Divine Comforter, God the Holy Spirit: — He makes us to know the love of God.

Commended

In verses 6-11, the Apostle is showing us how we know the love of God. We know the love of God for us, above all else, because of what he has done for us by the sacrifice of his Son. We see God’s love toward us in providence. We read of God’s love toward us in his Word. We hear of God’s love toward us by the Gospel. But God’s own commendation of his love is this. — “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” — The greatest possible display of the love of God for poor, lost sinners is the sacrifice of his darling Son in our place upon the cursed tree.

“Could we with ink the oceans fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade, —

To write the love of God above

Would drain the oceans dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky!

Don Fortner

Pastor Fortner’s