As seen in the first several verses of Romans chapter 5, one of the great benefits of justification is reconciliation — a restored personal relationship with God. When you come to God through faith in Christ, He no longer relates to us as a holy Judge, but as a loving Father who welcomes us into His presence. God wants you to know and to be confident that He loves you. This passage is about how you can be sure of His love.
Why is this so important? Because this knowledge of God's love is the foundation upon which all healthy spiritual development and maturity develops.
We have a close analogy in the area of childhood development. Millions of tax dollars have confirmed through research what good parents have long known through common sense. From failure to thrive of infants deprived of physical nurturing, to higher incidences of unwed pregnancies and divorce for children from broken homes, the connection is clear, as D.A. Carson, author and theologian writes in his book A Call to Spiritual Reformation: "All things being equal, apart from the intervention of the grace of God, all of us know that for a human being to grow to a full emotional and interpersonal maturity, the stability of a loving and disciplined home is an indispensable ingredient."
The same thing is true in the spiritual arena. In his commentary on Romans, John Stott writes, "To be sure of the love of his or her parents is almost indispensable to the healthy emotional development of a child…To be sure of God's love brings even richer blessings. It is the major secret of joy, peace, freedom, confidence and self-respect."
This is why Paul prays as he does in Ephesians 3:18-19. Why does he pray that we may comprehend the extent of God's love for us? "...so that you may be filRomans led up to all the fullness of God," which is a synonym for spiritual maturity (see Ephesians 4:13).
This is also the major path of healing for those of us who were deprived of healthy love in our families of origin, or who are having to raise children in broken homes. Many can testify how becoming sure of God's love has substantially healed deep wounds and mitigated the damage we pass on to our own children.
How can you know that God loves you? How can you become increasingly confident in His love so that you grow into the person He designed you to be?
In Romans 5:5-11, Paul discloses the two avenues through which God does this: one is a "demonstration" and the other is a "pouring out."
Read Romans 5:6-8. How can you know that God loves you? Re-read Romans 5:8. To "demonstrate", which is sunistaymi in Greek, is to show openly, even to prove. We saw earlier that God demonstrated His justice by sending Jesus to the cross (see Romans 3:25), because this is where He showed humanity that He will not allow sin to go unpunished. But the cross is also God's demonstration of His own unique love for us.
According to the Bible, the essence of love is giving. And the degree of love is measured partly by the costliness of the gift to the giver, and partly by the unworthiness of the recipient. The greater the chasm between these two, the greater the demonstration of love.
Human love at its highest gives costly gifts to the people we deem worthy (see Romans 5:7). People are very rarely willing to give their lives for others, even for people they consider to be very worthy. They sometimes do this, but not for people who they consider to be bad and unrighteous.
WWII veterans recount soldiers who fell on a grenade to save their buddies, but I know of no account in which a soldier fell on a grenade to save a Nazi. A fireman may risk his life to rescue his neighbor from an arson's fire, but there are no accounts of firemen offering to go to prison for the arsonist. A parent may mortgage everything he has to ransom his child, but I have never heard of any parent who offered to post bond for his child's kidnapper.
Now, this is precisely the way in which God's love is unique. God gives His most precious gift — the Messiah, His own Son. And to whom does He give this gift? Notice the downward progression of Paul's description of humanity: "helpless;" "ungodly;" "sinners;" "enemies." The gap between the preciousness of God's gift and our unworthiness is humanly inconceivable. Only a love that is way beyond our own would do such a thing. Yet this is exactly what God has done! And He did it for us "while we were yet" this way. He did not extend His love to you only after you turned to Him; He extended His greatest gift of love to you even while you were headed the other way (see Luke 23:33-34). In fact, it is the realization of this fact that motivates us to turn to Him.
How can you know God loves you? Because God has given His Son for you. He did this openly, in history. He predicted through the Old Testament prophets so you could know it was His doing rather than some historical accident. He explained it both through Jesus and His apostles so you could know exactly why He did it. You can go back to this as often as you need to. When the evil in the world around you screams that there is no loving God, when your heart within you is full of darkness and despair, you can come and stand on this ground and be anchored by this demonstration that God loves you.
There is yet another way God communicates His love to us. Read Romans 5:5b. God not only "demonstrates" His love by having sent Christ to die for us; He also "pours out" His love within our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The image is of a shower of rain soaking parched ground. So God soaks our parched hearts with His love through this work of His Spirit (see John 7:37-39). One of the Holy Spirit's main roles is to "make us deeply and refreshingly aware that God loves us."
And this is not something that God does only for a few, privileged “super-saints”. This is something He does for all who put their faith in Christ to justify them (Romans 5:1 defines who the "us" is).
Maybe you have come to understand that God loves you because He gave His Son to die for you. But knowing this intellectually, as wonderful and necessary as it is, does not make you a Christian, nor does it fill the void in your heart. For that, you need to actually experience God's love for you on a personal level. And God is ready and waiting to pour out His love within your heart, if you will only open the door of your heart and invite Christ in (see Revelation 3:20). What will you experience? Some people experience a dramatic sense of joy. Others experience a profound sense of relief and cleansing. Others experience a subtle, yet deep sense that they have made the right decision, that they have come home. You will experience God's love in your heart — whatever expression of it that God knows you need.
But while this "pouring out" happens initially when you receive Christ, God wants it to be an ongoing shower on your soul; the word used in Greek is ekkechytai, which is written in present tense. How does God's Spirit continue to pour out His love within our hearts? This is difficult to describe exactly, because it is profoundly personal. We must avoid demanding God or prescribing to others how He must do this. Yet the scripture provides us with an outline of what this looks like and how to receive it:
In order to experience this outpouring of God's love, you need to get regular exposure to God's Word.
So, in order to experience this outpouring of God's love, you need to choose to regularly draw near to God in prayer.
So if you want to experience this outpouring of God's love, you need to choose to go on trusting God and following Him when you suffer.
So if you want to experience this outpouring of God's love, you need to be regularly involved with other Christians – both willing to receive His love through them, and willing to let Him give His love to them through you. The best way to do this is to be regularly involved with and invested in a faith community.
To summarize, God makes us sure of His love in two different yet complementary ways:
The work of the cross is public; the work of the Spirit is private and personal.
The work of the cross is historical; the work of the Spirit is contemporary.
The work of the cross is objective; the work of the Spirit is subjective and experiential.
We need both God's "demonstration" and His "pouring out" for healthy growth and development. Christians who focus only on the work of the cross and neglect the work of the Spirit become spiritually stale. Christians who focus only on the work of the Spirit and neglect the work of the cross become unstable. We need to be anchored securely in the work of the cross and animated regularly by the work of the Spirit if we want stable and vital spiritual development.
