The key to believing the love that God has for us is seeing
it revealed in the word of Scripture. A few people were allowed to see Jesus in
the flesh and touch him and watch him teach and heal and suffer and die and
rise. We might feel jealous that our faith in the love of Christ can't be based
on that kind of first hand sight and touch. But that was not God's
plan. When Jesus prayed for his disciples in John 17:20, he said,
"[Father], I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who
believe in Me through their word." It was the plan of God that we come to
faith, not by seeing the love of Christ in the flesh, but by seeing the love of
Christ in the word of those who knew him.
The focus of the next four weeks sermons
will be the depth of Christ's love for us. I hope this will help you prepare
yourself in prayer and meditation for what's coming. And I hope it will help
you know when God is moving you to invite others to attend church with you. My
aim in this series is that our love for one another and for those outside would
grow and deepen. But this will happen only as we are rooted that is, as we
believe—more and more deeply in the love of Christ for us. And that belief
comes by seeing the depth of Christ's love for us revealed in his Word. So for
four weeks I want to direct our attention to the depth of Christ's love for us.
As I have pondered the love of Christ for
us, and the different ways that the Bible presents it to us, I have seen four
ways that the depth of Christ's love is revealed. We will spend a week on each
of these.
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