The Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all nations – as it is today. (Deuteronomy 10:15)
It is one thing to know that God chose to create us; not only that, but He chose to create us in His image. It is another thing altogether to know that we are also objects of His Almighty Affection. From the opening of Scripture to the very last word, the Bible demonstrates just how much God loves and cares for us. God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21).
And the love of God is not dependent upon us! God did not love us because we were lovable. God did not love us because we were worthy of His love. God did not love us because we did anything to earn or deserve His love. God simply chose before the beginning of time to love us (2 Timothy 1:9), and His love is as unconditional as it is complete. God will never love us any more than He already does, and He will never love us any less. Our Father’s love is fixed, full, and final.
Think about it this way: God created you so He could shower His love upon you. You can read this word because God loves you. You are alive right now because God loves you. And when you breathe your last, God will love you in eternity just the same as He loves you today. Because of the sinless life, sacrificial death, and supernatural resurrection of Jesus, God has made a way for us to be welcomed into an eternal and personal relationship with Him, simply by trusting in what Jesus has done for us our Savior, our Redeemer, and our Lord.
Because God’s love for you is based on His character and not your conduct, you are an object of His affection moment by moment, each and every day. No human mind can even begin to grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18). Remember, on this side of glory, we get only a taste of what it means to be the object of God’s almighty affection. We are “looking through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12KJV). When we reach the other side we will, for the very first time, experience the end of all sin, sickness, sorrow, and struggle. We will be in eternal bliss with our Lord Jesus and all the saints of God.
I have repeated this lovely conclusion to C.S. Lewis’s book, The Last Battle, from the pulpit on more than one occasion, and it bears repeating here: Summarizing the lives of the four siblings, Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter, who passed through the wardrobe and into Narnia, Lewis wrote —
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
That is the glorious future that awaits all those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of their lives and thus are objects of God’s almighty affection.
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!
Grace for the Race 