Advent 2009:: The Coming LOVE Monday

Monday Love::

Read Romans 5:8

The greatest act of love this world has ever seen is God giving His son Jesus. John 3:16 says that God sent His son because He loves us so much, and that if we would just believe in Jesus we would have eternal life.

There is more to this love than just that familiar verse. Read Romans 5:8. There are two striking phrases that are here. The first is easy to miss without knowledge of the Greek language. The phrase is, “God shows his love…” The word that is translated as “shows” is profound.

The word picture that is painted is placing something within your reach. This book that you are holding is within your reach. When my children were very small, we had to make sure things that would hurt them were outside of their reach. There was nothing sharp left too low.

The second phrase is, “still sinners.” As sinners, we are repulsive to God. God cannot be in the presence of sin; it would contradict His holiness. Romans 3 says that as sinners our mouths are as open graves and filled with disease. In our most wretched and repulsive state, love came to our world.

This is what is happening here. As sinners, we are dead and unable to move toward God. But God’s plan to redeem us was to place His life-giving love within the reach of a dead man. Jesus is that love personified, and with the birth of Jesus that love is within our reach. That is what we celebrate this season and what we celebrate in THE COMING of love.