November/December 2000
God Loves Sinners?
by J. Michael Feazell
| God loves you. He has a full pardon for you, and you can rest from all your shame and guilt if you'll simply trust him. |
There is an ugly rumor going around that God hates sinners. They say that you'd better be good or God will get you. They say you are bound for hell unless you change your ways. They say God hates sinners.
Even the mythical good guy Santa Claus has been painted with the same brush: "He's making his list and checking it twice. He knows if you've been naughty or nice."
If the rumors about Santa Claus are true... oh well, we get coal in our stocking. But if the rumors about God are true, we're dead meat!
But there is good news! These ugly rumors about God are not true. Let some witnesses who know the score set the record straight.
First witness: The apostle Paul. Here is plain testimony given by someone who doesn't even have to swear on a stack of Bibles, because God used him to help write the Bible. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). "However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness" (Romans 4:5).
God loves sinners. How do we know? Because it was precisely for sinners, and precisely while they were sinners and in their sins, that Christ died for them. Paul went on to say, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- of whom I am the worst" (1 Timothy 1:15).
Not convinced?
Let's bring in the star witness: Jesus Christ. "What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?" (Matthew 18:12). "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:17).
Regardless of how ugly your life is, regardless of how horrible your sins are, God is on your side. He loves you and wants you to know he loves you.
In writing about Jesus, the Gospel-writer Luke records that the Pharisees and the scribes criticized Jesus for welcoming sinners and eating with them (Luke 15:2).
And hundreds of years earlier, the prophet Isaiah recorded God as saying to sinners:
"'Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool'" (Isaiah 1:18).
Are you a sinner? I am. And I'll tell you this. We don't have to listen to the rumors. God loves sinners. God loves sinners so much that, in Christ, he took their sins on himself. God loves sinners so much that, in Christ, he died for them. And more than that, he was raised from the dead so they can have new life in him forever.
If you are a sinner, God loves you. He is on your side. He has a full pardon for you, and you can rest from all your shame and guilt if you'll simply trust him. He knows all about everything you are and everything you've done and everything you ever wanted to do. He loves you anyway.
He wants you to be safe and secure and at home with him forever. Trust him.
Jesus Christ came not to condemn sinners, but to take away the sins of the world. Take your sins to him and be clean. It's his opinion of you that counts, and he says that in him you are clean. He loves you so much that he gave himself to be crucified to make you clean.
Don't believe the rumormongers. Trust God's own word. He saves those who trust him, and no matter how much pain our sins cause us right now, in him we are pure as snow. In Christ, we have golden tickets to his eternal banquet of joy. He loves us even though we are sinners.
-- J. Michael Feazell