Pastor’s Pen: God’s love is a gift to a world of sinners

While out for a walk recently I passed a young woman pushing a pram. She wore a t-shirt with words written on the front - ‘No Love Wasted.’

As I walked on I pondered that statement. What did it mean? There were two possible explanations.

First it might mean I should not bother wasting my love on people whom I thought undeserving of my love - like Alfred P. Doolittle called the lower classes in the film ‘My Fair Lady’, ”the undeserving”, of which he claimed to be one.

In the Bible we read about the kind of people the Pharisees thought undeserving - thieves, prostitutes, tax collectors, and other undesirables. Did God waste His love on them? Who do we righteous Christians consider undesirables? Don’t waste your love on them!

Listen to the words of Jesus: “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matthew 21:31)

St Paul wrote in Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The young mother with the t-shirt will lavish her love on her child, and that love will grow and deepen each day.

Mamma Cass Elliot, in one of her songs, sang about love with the words, “and it’s getting better, getting stronger, warm and wilder, getting better every day.” The Bellamy Brothers also sang about love in their hit song, ‘Letting love flow like a mountain stream.’ Streams turn into mighty rivers. The head of the River Lagan begins as a trickle. But by the time it reaches Belfast it is a vast river. My wife, Iris, always told me, “I love you more than yesterday, but not as much as I will tomorrow.”

God’s love cannot get any stronger, or wilder, or bigger. God’s love was already vast as an ocean and then some, which Jesus came to show us.

At Christmas the love of God burst into a world of sinners, the undeserving. But because of God’s love for us, His mercy withheld from us punishment for our sin when Jesus died on Calvary, and His grace gave us what we didn’t deserve - salvation, eternal life - when He rose again.

His love is a gift, accept it and receive eternal life. No love wasted!