Transformed by Love

I want to point out to you an interesting verse. It is 1st John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.” This is such an important verse. Earl Palmer writes: “This one electrifying sentence is a classic one-line summary of the historical basis of Christian ethics.” Amen! It explains why we do what we do. It tells how we get from being enemies of God to being people who love Him. And, as it says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

This isn’t meant to slight your love for God. Many of you truly love God with all your heart. But what this does is show who initiated that love, and it wasn’t us. We didn’t pursue God, He pursued us. He is the initiator of this relationship we have with Him, not us.

Romans 3:11 makes that clear: “There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.” This is precisely why Jesus had to come to “seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).” He was the pursuer, not us.

Remember what we learned in: Romans 5:8-10?
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

Love for God isn’t natural to our fallen, sinful nature. It’s only a response to His great love for us. He pursued and wooed us.

Romans 2:4 teaches:
“Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” God showers us with blessings even while we’re rank unbelievers who shake our fists in His face. And He does it to woo us. The purpose is to lead us to repentance. Like Scripture says, “It rains on the just and on the unjust” - God does that on purpose. He wants to show His love to draw people to Himself in repentance.

But once we’ve come to repentance, when we realize all that God has done for us out of love His great love, it breaks our hearts and we respond in overwhelming love and gratitude back. When we realize how we treated God in our rebellion and unbelief, and how much He did to bring us to Himself, we can’t help but be overwhelmed with love for Him in return.

Think about it: Do you realize all that God has saved you from? Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote this:
“The Holy Spirit makes you come to the terrible realization, ‘I must be spiritually dead! I must be lifeless! I must have a heart of stone! There is something wrong with me. I’m in trouble. What can I do?’”

The only answer is to repent. You must turn from your sin and turn to the only one who can save you. You must turn to the one who loved you enough to die for you. Our heart aches in grief over the way we treated Him and despised His law. And we, in turn, feel such a wave of gratitude and love in return. It’s a total transformation, a new birth, we are given a new heart.

Zechariah told of that kind of moment in:
Zechariah 12:10 - “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.”

In other words, “we love Him because He first loved us,” and we long for Him with a passion, longing for Him as much as a mother would grieve for the loss of her firstborn.

This is a total transformation. Zacchaeus, that wee little man who climbed up the sycamore tree to see Jesus, had that kind of transformation. His encounter with Jesus radically changed him and made him a new man. He had been a greedy, thieving tax collector, but not any more.

Luke 19:8-10 says of him:
“Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.’
And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.’”

Zacchaeus was just such a lost soul that Jesus came to seek and to save. But so was I, and so are you. When we really realize how much He loves us and how much He did to save us by dying on the cross for us, how can we not respond? How can we not be melted inside by His love? Our hearts of stone will become hearts of flesh.