"In this the love of God was made manifest among us,
that God sent his only Son into the world,
so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
(1 John 4:9-10)
"Sometimes we're so weighed down by our sin, losing sight of our identity in Christ, that we struggle to believe that God actually and personally loves us. We may believe that God loves the world, or individual people in it, but we're less likely to truly believe that God loves us. This is because we struggle to accept that God's love is pure, unmerited, and free grace. Into this doubt Paul repeatedly brought a freeing truth: Jesus loves you. He cannot love you anymore. He will not love you any less!
Other times, we're so unfamiliar with our sin, often because we really don't consider it honestly or feel it personally, that we don't appreciate God's love. We neglect to remember that God's love is not for the underserving but the ill deserving. We're all sinners who instead of our deserved death, hell, and wrath get life, heaven, and love through Jesus. The truth is that we deserve love less than we could ever imagine, yet Jesus loves us more than we could ever dream."
~Mark Driscoll, "Who Do You Think You Are?"
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