Advent: December 9

Sometimes we think that God couldn’t possibly love us any more because we’ve sinned in that way again. But this verse tells us that our sin never surprises God. It tells us that He decided to love us right in the face of all our sin … while we were still in our sin, still sinners!

How often do you feel like God might sort-of-love you because He’s promised to and therefore is obligated, but He also sort-of-wishes you’d be more loveable. Oh, rejoice! God loves you at your worst. He loved you while you were still a sinner. He is best glorified by us when we trust in His love for us and believe that He isn’t lying. It is then that we will love Him and have love for our neighbor. Christ didn’t die for righteous people, for those who have fulfilled all the law and been really good. No, He died for sinners, like you and me.

We have been talking all week about how much God loves us. That is what Christmas is all about. Today our verse tells us when God loved us. It says, “while we were still sinners.” Did you hear what it said? It didn’t say “while we were good boys and girls” or “while we did everything just exactly right.” It said, “while we were still sinners.” That means that when we were in the middle of doing something bad, God loved us. That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? We think that God only loves the good people.

The truth is that God’s love is what makes good people, not that good people make God love them. Think of the worst thing you have done, maybe you hit someone, or stole something, or lied, or maybe something even worse than all of those things. In that very moment, God loved you. That is pretty hard to believe isn’t it? That is why we need help to believe, we need God to convince us that His love is true and real. We need to hear every day how much He loves us. We need to hear that you can’t be good enough to earn His love and you can’t be bad enough for Him to stop loving you. That is what Christmas is all about: God’s love coming down to earth and right at you no matter what you do.