Oh How He Loves You and Me
In studying God’s Tribulation judgments, it’s often easy to forget how much God loves us. Many wonder how a caring God could allow such affliction on Earth.
Many years ago I saw the disgusted face of a young woman peering at me from the audience as I spoke of Christ’s blood atonement. She felt that if she tried to be a good person and to live by the Golden Rule, God would be happy with her and forgive her sin.
But God, who is holy, determines how He will forgive sin. The prerogative is His alone. He created the system; and in His profound love for us, He came to Earth and satisfied it Himself: “And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). His was the blood that was shed. His was the life that was given. Through the Levitical system He showed us the awfulness of sin and the requirements for forgiveness, and then He met the requirements with His own blood. What more could He do?
All He asks of us is to believe. Then He applies His blood to our account, removes our sin, and gives us the gift of everlasting life (Jn. 3:16; Eph. 1:7). And because He is God, He arose from the dead.
It seems incongruous that people who crave love so desperately reject the greatest love of all: the love of Christ. Many, determined to serve only themselves, degenerate into “wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness” and become “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness” (Rom. 1:29–30). They become “backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things” (v. 30).
One day humanity’s iniquity will be full. And the God who so loved the world and gave His life for it will have no choice but to judge it.
