JESUS LOVES YOU
We’ve heard the statement that is the title of this article so many times that we are almost immune to it. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you. We’ve heard it so much, but what does it mean? For the most part it means little because it is said so often by people who don’t love you. People who claim to follow Jesus but who really do not.
But no matter how religious people treat you, Jesus really does love you. You don’t have to understand his love. No one does. No one understands his wrath. No one understands fully the concept of sin. And no one knows what it means that God loves us. Those are things that can only be known by revelation. In other words by God revealing them to us, by telling us. We know God loves us because he has told us so.
People know there is a creator because of the world around us. There’s no way this could all be an accident. So the Bible says in Psalm 19 that the world and the universe declare the glory of God. In other words, we know the existence of God because he has created an orderly universe. That cannot happen by chance.
But it is also imperative that we realize that while we can know something of the concern God has for people by the fact that he takes care of us in this world, we can only know the saving love of God by him telling us about it through the gospel message. The word “gospel” means good news. And the good news is that Jesus Christ died for sin so that we don’t have to pay for our own. And if you want to be saved all you have to do is ask him. That’s the good news of the gospel.
The Bible says in Romans chapter 5 that God proves his loves for us by the fact that Jesus died for us. Ultimately, the way we know that God loves us is because Jesus died for us. So if you have trouble believing that Jesus loves you because of the way people act and because of the way religious people have treated you or the things that you have heard them say or seen them do, just remember: don’t judge Jesus by the people who claim to follow him. He is perfect, we are not. And realize that many who claim to follow him wouldn’t know him from Santa Claus. They have no idea who he really is. And they certainly aren’t following him, loving him or serving him.
Dewayne Dunaway
