God Loves YOU!
The slogan “God loves you” gets slapped on bumper stickers, billboards, and pens. If you ask me, it’s cheesy, and it cannot have much effect unless one first explains what God’s love is like.
It goes without saying that we often coast through life without contemplating how God loves us. We may sing, “Jesus loves me—this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” but but in our private thoughts, we often become doubtful and discouraged, declaring that God does not really love us. We forget that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16), and we hide our shame so people will accept us. We carry around our burdens, failing to understand that Jesus took away our shame when He died on the cross.
How do we truly know that God loves us? We are told that if there had been just one person, Jesus would have died for that one. However, nothing grieves me more than theological nonsence that makes people feel unworthy and unwanted—that makes them feel that God won’t love them unless they first believe. I don’t accept that God says, “If you accept Me, I won’t torture you in hell.” That’s not consistent with the Biblical definition of love. God so loved the world that He gave His very own life. “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and the divine love depicted on the cross is God denying Himself for you. The love He gives to you is giving you life.
God is the very definition of love, yet in our discouragement and striving to merit His approval, we deny that love. You might say I am unworthy of love or that God could never possibly love someone like you, but though God knows everything about your life, He still loves you. We are told that even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). God maintains His love for us though we are yet sinners.
God loves you in the way portrayed through His death on the cross—enduring shame for you. God entered our shame and brokenness so He could restore us. When all the layers of sin and shame are stripped away, the you that God truly loves is revealed. We all have hang-ups of some sort, yet we each have an original loveliness that God wants to restore. That’s what God sees and He makes a way for you to get your life back—to become the real you that is meant to thrive.
The cross is the place of intimacy with God, who took our shame and sin and chooses to love us no matter what. His other-centered love is the only thing that can overcome the brokenness in our lives. God’s love is transformative, and if we let it take hold of us, it will change us.
So imagine God loving you today, just you and the Lord touching souls, and become convinced that there is nothing that can separate you from His wonderful love—not any power of hell, any flaw within you, or even any bad decision you have made (Romans 8:31–39).
Keep your eyes fixed on God loving you and drink in the depths of that love. Contemplate God’s great love for you a little bit more and slowly fall in love with the One who denied Himself and first loved you.
Craig Ashton Jr.
Theological InTents 
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