“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)
Talk is cheap. If I say I love someone but ignore and mistreat them, I am just showing that my words mean nothing. Love needs actions to be real.
Romans 5:8 tells us that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Two things stand out about this verse.
First, is the word shows–God shows his love. Throughout the Bible, God tells his people he loves us, and this is how he proves it without a shadow of a doubt. He loves us so much that while we are still rebelling against him, he does what is necessary to save us, even though it is the most painful and costly thing.
Second, is that Jesus’s death on the cross for our sins was an act of God’s love. It says God showed his love for us when Jesus took the punishment for our sins. This means that Jesus fulfilled God’s plan to save. It wasn’t a fallback plan. It was God’s intentional act of ultimate love.
God’s words are never cheap, so when He declares his love for us, we know they are true. He showed it through the work of Jesus on the cross.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe!