Jesus’s love for you

Jesus’s love for you as a sinner is demonstrated through his deliberate choice to die on your behalf—not because you earned it, but precisely because you couldn’t.

The Timing of His Love

Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8), and at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6). This wasn’t a rescue after you’d cleaned up your life—it was intervention while you were actively rebelling. God’s love is demonstrated not by our love for him, but by his love for us, shown through sending his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).

His Mission to Sinners

Jesus explicitly stated his purpose: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matt 9:12–13). The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10)—not the accomplished or worthy, but those who recognize their need.

The Substitution

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God (1 Pet 3:18). God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). He absorbed the penalty your sin deserved, transferring his righteousness to you.

Love as God’s Essence

This isn’t transactional obligation—it flows from who God is. When Scripture says that God is love, it teaches that love is no incidental aspect of God’s being. Rather, it is the essence of his being[1]. Though people can discover no reason in themselves, no value or worth that would evoke that love, yet he loves them because he is God who is love[1].

Universal Scope

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).

The cross proves that Jesus doesn’t love you because you’re good—he loves you as a sinner, and that love is powerful enough to transform you.

[1] Moisés Silva and Merrill Chapin Tenney, in The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, A-C (Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 2009), 437–438.