What does it mean to say God loves you?
In Ephesians 1:4-13, Paul is expanding on the fact that we have been blessed with EVERY blessing (v3). If you thought that statement was outrageous, then they only keep getting bigger!
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
(Ephesians 1:5-6 ESV)
(Ephesians 1:5-6 ESV)
God has chosen to adopt us. This is more than a cold transaction of forgiving my sin, I am welcomed into the family. As Christian is a child of a perfect loving Father, we not only have access to him but he wants us to come to Him.
Adoption, by its very nature, is an act of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a son or a daughter, you do so because you choose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because He chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins except punish us as we deserved. But he loved us; so he redeemed us, forgave us, took us as his sons and daughters and gave himself to us as our Father.
Nor does his grace stop short with that initial act, any more than the love of human parents who adopt stops short with the completing of the legal process that makes the child theirs. The establishing of the child’s status as a member of the family is only a beginning. The real task remains: to establish a genuinely [loving] relationship between your adopted child and yourself. It is this, above all, that you want to see. Accordingly, you set yourself to win the child’s love by loving the child. You seek to excite affection by showing affection. So [it is] with God. And throughout our life in this world, and to all eternity beyond, he will constantly be showing us, in one way or another, more and more of his love, and thereby increasing our love to him continually. The prospect before the adopted children of God is an eternity of love. Click to Tweet this
JI Packer, Knowing God
As an adopted child of God, he has committed to loving you forever so that your love for him will grow. Let that sink in!
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