the Love of God | Bible Study Blog Party

Wowzers, I can’t believe its June already! I hope you’ve all had a great start to your summer. 🙂 To start off my summer blog posts (which are really no different than my spring, fall, and winter posts, except for the fact they’re posted during the summer) I am joining Faith at I Like That on a Bible Study Blog Party. I’m cutting it a little close, seeing as how the party ends on the 9^th of June, but better late than never, eh?

Anyway, what is a Bible Study Blog Party? As Faith explained it, it’s where a bunch of bloggers read and study the same passage of the Bible and write about it. I was super excited that Faith chose Romans chapter 8 since Romans has become one of my favorite books in the Bible. 🙂

I’ll be honest here—one of the reasons I’m posting on one of the last days of the party is because I didn’t feel like my post was really coming together. My words weren’t flowing like I wanted them to and I didn’t feel like I really got any great pearls of wisdom to share with y’all.

But you know what? I realize that that’s okay. It’s not about me anyways. It’s not about my words or how eloquently I write. It’s about God and His Word. I’m going to do my best to write what God put on my heart and trust Him with the rest. That’s why I love the promise in Isaiah 55 that says the word of the Lord will never return void—God’s word always accomplishes what He sends it to do!

So, let’s get this party started! Which reminds me—you guys need to go check out Faith’s post for this party! God spoke to her about Romans 8:1 (The there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus verse) and it is so good. Seriously, go read it! 🙂

As I read Romans 8, the part that really popped out to me was verses 31-39, where Paul talks about nothing separating us from the love of God and how we are more than conquerors.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”  ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.   ~Romans 8:31-39

I realize that is quite a chunk of scripture there, but I couldn’t bring myself to shorten it up. It’s such a wonderful truth to know that nothing separates us from the love of God, and sometimes I think it’s hard for us to grasp. In fact, Paul says in Ephesians…

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ~Ephesians 3:17b-19

God’s love for us is so great we’ll never get to the bottom of it!

Nothing we say or don’t say, do or don’t do, will make God change His mind about loving us. God loved (loves!) us at our worst. Romans 5:8 says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God saw us broken, full of sin and shame, and said “Because I love you, you are worth it.” Jesus bore our sins and brokenness on His body because He desired a relationship with each and every one of us. Why? Because that’s how wide and long and high and deep Christ’s love is for each of us.

The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. ~Zephaniah 3:17

This verse was a big one for me too. Because not only does God love me, He takes great delight in me. And in Isaiah 62:4 it says that the Lord will call His people Hephzibah, which in Hebrew means my delight is in her. I love that. God delights to be with me! He rejoices and sings over me! He loves me because I am His child and there is nothing that can change that.

The Bible is full of verses about God’s love for His people…

I am abounding in love and faithfulness. (Ex. 34:6)

I have loved you with an everlasting love. (Jer. 31:3)

My love reaches to the heavens, my faithfulness to the skies. (Ps. 36:5)

My love endures forever. (Ps. 136:26)

My steadfast love will not depart from you. (Is. 54:10)

I loved you so much that I gave my one and only Son to save you. (John 3:16)

And of course there’s many, many more, but do you see a pattern? God’s love for us is boundless, limitless, forever, and complete.

Just because God’s love for us never ends, that doesn’t mean that we can live however we want. Like, “I know God will still love me, so I can do whatever I want.” God is very clear that He wants His people to be set apart from the world. That’s why He calls us peculiar treasures in Exodus 19:5 (KJV) and also that we are not to conform to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2).

So while it is true that Jesus loves us right where we are at, He doesn’t want to leave us that way. God wants us to surrender our hearts and allow Him to change us to become more Christ-like every day. This heart change isn’t something we accomplish on our own (thank you Jesus!) but something God does in His strength, in His love.

God is a relentless lover. He won’t give up loving you. It doesn’t matter where you are at in life or what you are going through, He loves you. It’s just as Paul wrote all those years ago—nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ❤

❤ Nothing. ❤