Hello Friends!
Welcome to a new 5-part Daily Devotions series titled “We love Him because He first loved Us.” This
series will investigate the often misunderstood doctrine of the sovereignty of
God’s saving purpose based on the Word of God.
Please join us over the next five weeks as we learn more about this
very important truth.
Let’s begin our study
with the first lesson: THE
PERVERSENESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE…
We love Him because He first loved Us (Part 1 of 5)
Old musical hymns are wonderful, aren’t they?. One that may be
familiar to you is, “Oh, How I love Jesus!” The closing line of that
song is intriguing: “Oh, how I love Jesus… because He first loved me.” If you are indeed familiar with
this beautiful hymn, you no doubt know that this is also what the Apostle John
says in the Holy Bible:
We love Him, because He
first loved us – 1 John 4:19
Look at it closely and you’ll see at least five great doctrinal
lessons this verse teaches us. Today, we’ll consider the first one; then we’ll
look at the other four in the coming weeks.
For some reason, before becoming a Christian, hearing the chorus
of that song had always struck me as a strange reason for loving Jesus. Of
course, in my unregenerate state, I had almost no understanding whatsoever of
the love of Jesus Christ for me. He loved me but was I supposed to love Him too?
Besides, loving Him just because He loved me first didn’t seem like a
particularly noble or admirable reason for loving Him. Love is supposed to be
unconditional, isn’t it? So “because He first loved me” never sounded
like quite an adequate motive for loving Jesus.
Incidentally, there’s a minor textual issue in this verse that I
ought to mention. In the King James and New King James Versions, this verse is
translated just the way I have read it: “We love
Him, because He first loved us.”
That’s because the Greek texts from which the King
James Version was translated include the object Him.
It doesn’t matter which reading you prefer, because our capacity
for loving God is dependent on our ability to have true love. If we couldn’t love at all,
we certainly couldn’t love God. Therefore, the meaning of this verse includes the truth that “We love Him,
because He first loved us.”
Think with me for a moment about the implications of that phrase
at the end:
“He first loved us.” In other words, there was a time when we didn’t love Him. That is
the very essence of sinful depravity, isn’t it? A failure to love God as we
ought. Nothing is more utterly and totally depraved than a heart devoid of love
for God. As the Apostle Paul also said:
The carnal mind is
enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God – Romans
8:7
That describes a hopeless state of utter inability to love God,
obey His commands or to please Him. That is the state of all whose hearts have
not been renewed by Jesus Christ.
This is a particularly poignant expression coming from the
apostle John, who in his gospel refers to himself repeatedly as “that
disciple whom Jesus loved.” Notice that in John’s own mind, Jesus’ love for
him completely defined who he was.
Why was this such a prominent feature in John’s thinking? I
think he gives us a clue right here in our verse. The reason he was so
preoccupied with the love of Christ for him is that he knew that love was
utterly undeserved. He was keenly aware of his own sinfulness. As amazed as
John was with the love of Christ for him, he must have been equally amazed at
the thought that his own heart had once been devoid of any love for One who was
so lovely. How can the human heart be so cold to One who is so worthy of our
love? Anyone who truly appreciates the glory of Christ’s love, as John did,
will be appalled and horrified at the realization that our own hearts do not
love Him as we ought to. The knowledge of how perfectly He loves us produces
such a sense of utter unworthiness, doesn’t it?
You can see this vividly, even at the end of John’s life, when
he sees a vision of the risen Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation where he
writes:
And when I saw Him, I
fell at His feet as dead – Revelation 1:17
He was literally frightened into a coma, because this vision of
the glorified Christ smote him with such an overpowering sense of his own
sinfulness. And in an almost involuntary response, he collapsed on his face out
of fear.
That same overpowering consciousness of sin and shame is implied
in the words of our verse, “We love Him, because
He first loved us.” We are so
utterly and totally depraved that if God Himself did not love us with a
redeeming love, we would never have loved Him at all. If that does not fill you
with a consciousness of your own sin and if it doesn’t shock you with a stark
realization of the impenetrable hardness of the fallen human heart – then you
need to meditate on it a little longer.
It is my hope that you can see how this verse clearly and
forcefully underscores the very essence of human depravity. There is nothing
more desperately wicked than a heart that fails to love God. There is nothing
more blind and irrational and sinful than not loving Someone so worthy of our
love. We should need no motive to love Him other than the sheer glory His
perfect being. And yet, we would not love Him at all if He had not first loved
us!
Remember, this is the first and great commandment:
Jesus
said to him, “‘You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all
your mind” – Matthew
22:37
The whole of God’s law is summarized and epitomized in that one
simple rule. To break that commandment is to fail in every single point of the
law. There is nothing more completely and totally wicked. And yet, our verse
reminds us that we are so hopelessly and thoroughly wicked that not one of us
could ever truly love God unless God Himself enabled us to do so. It means that
we are totally unable to save ourselves. We have a debilitating moral inability
that makes our love for Him an utter impossibility until He intervenes to give
us the ability to love Him.
We cannot by sheer force of will set our hearts to love Him,
because as fallen creatures we are so in love with our own sin and rebellion
that our desires are twisted. Our affections are warped and hopelessly
corrupted. And we are powerless to change ourselves:
Can the Ethiopian change
his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are
accustomed to do evil – Jeremiah 13:23
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint – Isaiah 1:5
The [unregenerate] heart
is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked—who can possibly
understand it? – Jeremiah 17:9
Our hearts are poisoned by sin, and that is why we do not and
cannot love God on our own. That is precisely what is meant by total depravity.
It’s not that we are as evil as we could possibly be, but that evil has
infected us totally—in every part of our soul—so that we are incapable of
righteous desires and holy motives and loving affections toward God. I hope you
can see how this truth is implied in this text…
Thank you for reading! Don’t miss next week’s edition as we investigate lesson #2…
May the
Lord Jesus Christ continue to bless you with His perfect love, mercy and grace!
Keep looking up and sharing the Gospel while
there is still time… Hallelujah and Maranatha – come quickly Lord Jesus!
Blessings!
Shane <><