Amazing Love, How Can It Be?

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A number of years ago my wife, Sheila, and I were in England for a conference. We were there for a conference with missionaries that Grace Church (where I was at the time out in Los Angeles) supported. And one afternoon when there was a little break from the conference itself, my pastor and mentor, John MacArthur, and his wife, Patricia, invited us to join them that afternoon for a little tourist trip. And so, we made our way from where the conference was held to Leeds Castle. Perhaps some of you have had the opportunity to visit there. It's a wonderful place, a historic place; we enjoyed touring the castle itself and the grounds. We had a meal there together.

But at Leeds there was a very complex maze. A maze formed entirely of shrubs. They started at the ground and worked up to some 11 feet, if I remember correctly, 11 or 12 feet high, and they were solid. It was an amazing maze. We went in there on a lark, you know, we just had a little bit of time that afternoon. We went in on a lark, thought we'd have a little fun and work our way out. Forty-five minutes later we found our way out of this incredibly complex maze. My wife, I can tell you, never wants to see another maze in her life. I share that because it is from that kind of maze that we get the English word, "amazing".

One dictionary tells us that the English word really came into being probably in the early 13th century, so 1200s AD, and originally it meant to stupefy or make crazy. It probably came from the word, "masian", which is related to our word for maze. An "a" was added to it to sort of intensify it, make it stronger. And so then, to be amazed, originally, was to be driven more out of your mind by something than if you were caught in a literal maze and couldn't find your way out. It is a mental maze out of which you cannot find yourself because it is so difficult. From the late 1500s then, it explains why this word, "amaze", has had the sense to overwhelm someone with wonder.

Let me ask you this morning, what amazes you? Are you amazed by God's grace as we sing so often in John Newton's hymn, "Amazing Grace"? Are you amazed by what amazed Charles Wesley, one of the Wesley brothers, who wrote those words, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me?" Are you amazed by God's love? Do you find your mind so trapped by that truth that you can't make your way out of it, it's so profound? Paul was amazed by God's love, and in Romans 5 he wants us to be amazed as well.

I invite you to turn with me to Romans 5 as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Table. Let me give you some context since we haven't been studying this book together. Paul begins the first chapter, Romans 1:1 - 15, with his usual greeting. It's a little longer greeting than usual, but then in verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1 he introduces his theme, which is the righteousness of God given as a gift to the sinner, or what theologians call justification, being declared right with God based on the work of Christ alone received by faith alone. So, he introduces that theme in 1:16 and 17.

Then beginning in 1:18, all the way through 3:20; he explains why we need the gift of an alien righteousness, that is the right living of someone else credited to our account. It's because we have not lived that way. And then, beginning in 3:21 through the end of chapter 3 and through all of chapter 4, Paul defines justification by faith alone and defends it using Old Testament examples. We can be made right with God based on the work of Jesus Christ alone credited to our account by the Lord when we accept that gift by faith, that's justification.

When he comes to chapter 5, Paul intends to explain the benefits that come to us because of that. Notice how he begins 5:1, "Therefore having been justified by faith, …" Because we enjoy the state of being declared right with God based on the work of Christ, here are, and he unfolds in the next eleven verses the incredible benefits that are ours because the righteousness of God in Christ has been credited to our account.

I won't take time to unfold these, but notice with me just the flow of his thought. The first benefit he uncovers here is in verse 1: we have peace with God. God is at war with every unbeliever. If you're here this morning and you're not in Christ, God is at war with you, that's the declaration of the New Testament. But for those who will embrace His Son, the war is over. We have peace with God.

The second benefit comes in verse 2: we stand in God's grace. Grace is the new spiritual atmosphere in which we live. It is the air we breathe. God overwhelms us with kindness that we didn't deserve and didn't expect.

The third benefit comes in the second part of verse 2: we hope in God's glory. That is, we are expectant, confidently certain, that we will see God in His glory and that we will share God's glory.

The fourth benefit he uncovers comes in verses 3 and 4: we rejoice in our tribulations. That is, we rejoice in life's hardships, not in the hardships themselves, but in what they produce; because God is in charge of them and He's using them to build our endurance, to prove our faith, and to strengthen our hope, our certainty in the future that's ours.

That brings us to the fifth point, and the one where I want us to spend our time this morning, the fifth benefit of God's justifying grace to us in Christ is: we are confident of God's love. Look at verse 5, "Hope does" - that hope that we have that tribulations have confirmed and built, that hope, that certain anticipation of all that awaits us, does "not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." Paul says the reason that we know our hope cannot and will not disappoint us is because it is founded on the love of God. And here, in this context, he's not talking about our love to God, but rather God's love for us. That's obvious because the next three verses talk about the love of God, explain God's love to us.

Now Paul explains that we are confident that God loves us because God revealed it to us directly at the moment of salvation. Look at what he writes, "… it has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." At the moment of salvation when the Holy Spirit came and made us new, He poured out within our hearts a knowledge that God loves us. He flooded our hearts, literally is the language, poured out. He overwhelmed our hearts with this knowledge through the Holy Spirit. He convinced us of God's love.

But here's the thing I find interesting, even though Paul says for every Christian at the moment they were saved God poured out an awareness, a knowledge that God loves them, yet, here he is again, reminding the Roman Christians of that. They needed to be reminded again. We need to be reminded again of the love of God, because we forget. More than that, even as believers, we continue to sin and the guilt that comes as a result of that sin makes us question what, "does God still love me?"

Well, we need to be reminded of God's love, and the next three verses describe the nature of the divine love. Look at verses 6 - 8,

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

This paragraph is probably the greatest statement in all of Scripture about God's love for us. It describes in unmistakable terms the character of the divine love. And there are several qualities about God's love that distinguish God's love from all other loves. I want us to look at those qualities and rehearse this in our minds this morning, because these qualities show God's love to be truly amazing.

Let me briefly remind you of them. First of all, the first quality of God's love that Paul touches on here is that God's love for us is unconditional. There's the first word, unconditional. Paul's main argument in this entire section is this, Christ died for us when we were the worst of people. You understand that? I was bad. You were bad. We were all bad in terms of morally and spiritually before God. So, salvation, that is our spiritual rescue, had to be entirely of grace motivated solely by God's unconditional love. You doubt that, look at the character of the people here for whom Christ died. Who we were is captured in three words: the first words in verse 6, "helpless", helpless. This word doesn't refer to physical weakness but rather to moral helplessness. Theologians call this total inability.

It means that before Christ, we were utterly incapable of changing our character, and we were utterly incapable of doing anything that pleases God. The best way to summarize our moral inability, that is our helplessness, is to say that we were dead spiritually. That's what the New Testament does say, do you remember in Ephesians 2:1, Paul says, "And you were dead in your rebellion and sin," spiritually dead to God. You may have been physically alive, but you were dead to God. As far as God is concerned you were dead.

As you know, if you've been in our church any time at all, when I was in seminary I lived in a funeral home for a short time and in my experience there I saw many dead bodies. A dead body is defined by total inability, total, utter, complete inability to do anything. Paul is saying that spiritually and morally we were as helpless as those who are spiritually dead to do anything physically. We were helpless to do anything spiritually that mattered; helpless.

Paul adds another word to describe our condition, look at verse 6, "ungodly." This term describes both evil acts, evil behavior, that contradicts God's law and the underlying attitude toward God, a state of defiance and rebellion. I'm going to live my way, I'm going to do what I want, I don't care what my Creator thinks. It presents man as totally destitute of any fear of God, opposing God's rule in his life, and resenting God's commands, resenting the voice of conscience. The ungodly man here lives in open rebellion against God's law and at the same time that he flaunts God's law and says, "I'm going to live however I want regardless of what conscience or the Bible says." He basically ignores God. Day‑to‑day he just acts like God doesn't exist. Can you imagine a greater affront to your Creator than to live as though He didn't exist? That's how we lived. We lived as those who were ungodly.

The third word used to describe us when Christ found us is down in verse 8, it's the word, "sinners." It's a familiar New Testament word. It pictures all of us as having missed the mark. God set up a target, and not one of us hit it. We all missed it. We have failed to keep His laws. We have failed to measure up to His glory. We have failed to arrive at His standard of perfection. We have failed to conform to His image. Frankly, we have failed to be what God made us to be. That's how God saw each of us: helpless, ungodly, sinners.

We had completely missed the mark of what God made us to be; we were completely helpless to change that reality, to do anything about it; but worst of all, even though we were in that condition, we didn't care. And, in fact, we flaunted God's laws, and we lived as if God didn't exist from day‑to‑day. We just ignored Him. We treated God as if He were completely unimportant. It's not a very flattering picture, and yet, that's what we were. But that picture makes it obvious that God's love for us was what? Unconditional, that is, it was not conditioned on anything in us. It was conditioned solely on the fact that God chose to love us. It was unconditional.

A second quality of God's love in this passage is that it's "eternal". In spite of what we were, Paul says in verse 6 that, "at just the right time Christ died." That's an interesting expression, "at just the right time Christ died." That means that the death of Jesus Christ was not an afterthought, it was not an accident; it was the divine plan. Christ's death was premeditated, premeditated by God Himself. Galatians 4:4 says, "when the fullness of the time came." When the time was just right, God sent forth His Son. At the same time in God's mind, Christ was as the New Testament tells us, "… like a Lamb having been slain from the foundation of the world." It was if He had died for us before the world was ever made. You know, we should never think of God's love like our love. Our love is fickle, our love is impulsive, but God's love, on the other hand, is unchangeable, and it is eternal.

Lloyd Jones points out in this brief phrase, "at the right time", there is a powerful lesson about God. Listen to what Lloyd Jones writes.

Even before the world was made God knew about us and was interested in us, and our names" [speaking to Christians here] "were entered in His book of life. He has loved us with an everlasting love. There is no greater proof of the love of God toward us than the fact that He was aware of us and had chosen us before the foundation of the world. It was planned that Christ should die for us before we ever lived.

I want you to put on your thinking cap for just a moment and think with me for just a time. Try to imagine in your brain, as far back as you can go, try to imagine eternity past. There were no human beings. There were no angels. There's no earth. There are no stars. There are no planets. There's no universe. In fact, there is no space, there is no time, and there is no matter. There is absolutely nothing but God, nothing but the communion within the eternal Trinity.

And in Their eternal counsel, They determined to create and to create man. And then They decided to allow man to fall into sin, to give him the capacity to choose, and to allow him to fall into sin. And then the Father sovereignly determined out of that sea of fallen humanity that He would set His love upon certain individuals and give them to His Son as an eternal expression of His love. That's what the New Testament teaches.

Look over at Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1:4. We've studied this in detail when we worked our way through this passage. "He," that is the Father, this is Ephesians 1:4, "He," [the Father,] "chose us," [that is believers,] "in Him," [that is Christ,] "before the foundation of the world." Before the world was ever made, He chose us in Christ. Why? In order that, "we would be holy and blameless before Him." What motivated God to choose? Look at the next two words, "In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself." The motivating factor of God's eternal choice was His love and His love alone. So, the Father set His love upon us, but not only the Father, the Son. The Son, too, set His love upon us, and He [Are you ready for this?] joyfully, gladly, volunteered to offer Himself up as the ransom, the sacrifice, for our sins.

Before there was anything but God, God knew you, Christian. And He knew you by name. And He loved you with an eternal, unchanging, unending love. And that love that began in eternity past continues throughout our entire lives here and reaches into eternity future. There has never been a time, nor will there ever be a time, when God didn't love you or doesn't love you. And His love for you will never lessen to the slightest degree because God's love is eternal.

The third quality of God's love here is: it's sacrificial. Look at verse 6, "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Notice that little word, "for". In verse 8 Paul says it again, but notice how he says it there, "Christ died 'for' us." The Greek word translated, "for," there means, "in behalf of", that's the primary definition of the word, to die in behalf of us. It points out that Christ died for our benefit, not His own, and He died in our place, as the Scripture makes it clear, as our substitute. He died where we deserve to die. And notice He didn't die for people who were pretty good. He died for, verse 6, "the ungodly," and verse 8, "for sinners." What an amazing demonstration of the love of God. What an amazing exchange.

Think about this. Now I know you've heard this before, but think about this as if you'd never heard it before. God sacrificed His Son for you. In a sense, God traded His Son to get you. Scripture everywhere identifies the death of God's Son on the cross as the ultimate expression of the love of God. The verse that almost everyone knows, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His Son." First John 4, the apostle John writes, "By this the love of God was manifested," [or demonstrated,] "that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation," that's a word that simply means the satisfaction for His own wrath. God sent His Son to satisfy His own wrath against our sins.

You know, in one sense, the genuineness and depth of love, even human love, can be measured by what we are willing to sacrifice for someone else, what we're willing to give up. Isn't that true? Your love for the people in your life is determined by what you're willing to turn loose for them. Think about what the Father sacrificed. Think about what the Son sacrificed. Think about what the Spirit sacrificed in order to make that love known to us. You see, God's love for us is sacrificial in the extreme. There was nothing greater God could have sacrificed than He did. It was a sacrificial love.

The fourth quality of God's love is: that it's unique. It's unique. Nothing else like it. Look at verse 7. In verse 7 Paul asks us to contrast God's love with the best of human love. He writes, "For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die." Here's Paul's point: It's not likely that any of us would willingly die in the place of someone we thought of as righteous. That is, to volunteer to give our lives simply because we respect somebody. It happens, but it's rare. It's more likely, he says, that we would lay down our lives for someone that we considered good, that is, someone who calls out our affection, our own love toward them.

There's a story from the last century over in England. There was a small boy whose sister desperately needed a transfusion, a blood transfusion. And as it turned out, he, her brother, was the right match, and so he agreed to do it. And on the appointed day they brought them into the little clinic there, and they laid the boy and his sister on cots next to each other and they began to take the blood out of this little body and pump it into hers. At about halfway through the procedure the little boy looked up to the doctor with the saddest of eyes, and he asked him this question; he said, "So, Doctor, how long before I die?" You see he really thought, in his little simple mind, that giving his blood meant he would die; he was giving up his life so his sister could live. That happens among human beings. Christ put it this way, the pinnacle of human love is that we would be willing to lay down our life for a friend, that is someone close to us, a sibling, a spouse, a child, a fellow soldier.

But God's love, (here's Paul's point) God's love is so much greater because God sent His Son to die, not for good people, but for those who were completely evil. Not for His friends but for His avowed enemies who hated Him, and not for the righteous but for sinners. Listen, if you have children, imagine for a moment, willingly, gladly, offering your child to die in the place of the worst of criminals, some condemned criminal guilty of the worst of crimes. Not merely crimes against the law or the government or other people, but imagine that those crimes that make that criminal deserving of death were perpetrated against you and the people you love. And then imagine turning around and offering your only child's life so that criminal could be pardoned and go free. That's what God did. And so, it's no wonder Paul says God's love is unique.

There is a fifth quality, and final quality of God's love: it's proven. It's proven. Look at verse 8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." You see that word, "demonstrates?" It's a Greek word that means to prove something. God proved His love. Or we could say God displayed His love at the cross in its true and unmistakable character. There's no wondering what God's love is like. He proved it. He proved what it was like. Even though Christ's death happened in the past as a historical event, it stands forever as a proof of the love of God to anyone who will listen, to anyone who will examine it.

A few years ago, I heard for the first time a song that has captivated my mind ever since, because it captures the wonder of the love of God shown at the cross. We sing it here, and I know you'll remember the words,

How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that He should give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure. How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turns His face away, as wounds which mar the chosen One lead many sons to glory. Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon His shoulders, ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held Him there until it was accomplished. And His dying breath has brought me life; I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom. How deep the Father's love for us.

Believer, try to get your mind around this profound reality: God, the almighty, infinite, Creator, has chosen to set His love upon you. And He's done that because of absolutely nothing in you. In fact, He's done it in spite of everything you are and everything you've done. And if you want proof of God's love for you, then just look at what He did at the cross when He gave His own Son to die in your place. He did it when you were totally unable to do anything to please Him, unable to move toward God, when you didn't fear Him, and when you lived in rebellion against Him. Here's Paul's point, listen carefully: we can be secure in God's love because we were never the cause of it. The only cause was in God Himself. James Montgomery Boyce, before his death, wrote this,

If we think we deserve God's love, we cannot ever really be secure in it because we'll always be afraid that we may do something to lessen or destroy the depth of God's love for us. It is only those who know that God has loved them in spite of their sin, who can trust Him to continue to show them favor.

It's only as you understand, Christian, that you were helpless, ungodly, a rebellious sinner and that it is entirely in spite of you that Christ died for you and that you can have assurance. Because then you'll know that your salvation didn't depend on you at all. It was all of God, all motivated by His great eternal love. You will understand, as the Israelites did, that God loved you because He loved you.

That's the message of Romans. Look over at Romans 8, Paul finishes this section on justification with that very point. Look at Romans 8:28,

… we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to [be] … conformed to the image of His Son" – [there's His love in eternity past setting His love upon us] so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; [that's the effectual call when, through the gospel, God calls you to Himself, perhaps as He's doing to you this morning] and these whom He called, He also [declared righteous or] justified; and these whom He justified He … [will eventually] glorify.

[So] What … [do you] say … [about all this]? If God is for us, who [can be] … against us? … [If God didn't] spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, … [isn't He going to give us everything with Christ?] Who [can] … bring a charge against … [us]? God is the One who declared … [us righteous]. who … [can condemn] us? Christ Jesus is … [the One] who died, yes, rather who was raised who is at the right hand of God and now intercedes for us. [Here's the punch line,] verse 35, [so] Who will separate us from the love of Christ? [And he says, nothing. In fact, verse 37, whatever comes into my life, I will be able to] … overwhelmingly conquer [and I'll do it] through Him who loved us. And here's the conclusion of this great doctrine of justification, verse 38, "For I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing" [if you miss the particulars, get the big picture, absolutely nothing] "will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

All that's left for us is to say with Wesley, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me?" That's the love we celebrate in the Lord's Table.

Let's bow our heads together.

Our Father, we thank You for the cup. We thank You for the powerful reminder that it is to us that our Lord was the Lamb, having been slain before the foundation of the world. That He gladly, freely poured out His perfect life in the violent death of a substitute, the innocent for us, the guilty. Father, we thank You for such love.

Lord, may we truly be amazed by love. We pray that You would seal that to our hearts and because we understand something of Your love for us in Christ, that we would love You in return and that we would live our lives, not for ourselves, but for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.