Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Everybody knows the little song, "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know." But does the Father love us? And did He love us before Jesus died for us? Yes! "God [the Father] so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16).
If He so loved us before Jesus died for us, then was He reconciled to us before Jesus died? Yes! He was already in a state of being reconciled to us, not that any change in Him was at any time necessary. This reconciliation of the Father to us was not accomplished by the sacrifice of Jesus. The correct word to say is that the sacrifice of Jesus demonstrated the fact of His already being reconciled to us (Rom. 5:6-11, 15-21). So let us delete the word "accomplished" by the cross and substitute the right word, "demonstrated."
But what does this actually mean to us? And what does it mean to the souls for whom we pray and to whom we want to witness? It means that the Father has no chip on His shoulder against anyone personally; He loves "all men," even "the world," sinful as it is. It follows therefore that God treats every person as though we were righteous, even though we are not.
God loves the person, but He hates the sin. The sinner (that's everybody) must learn to believe that the Father loves him just as much as the Son loves him, so much that He wants to separate him from sin.
But the problem is that the sinner (everybody) loves sin, so how can we be separated from that which we have been born and bred to love? The answer is the cross--where the Son of God built that bridge across the dark chasm of our alienation from God. He also suffered alienation from His Father when He cried out on His cross, "My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46). No sinner has ever felt such horror of separation from God as did Jesus in that hour!
He was "made to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21). Now the message of the cross says to us, "You be reconciled to God!" (5:20). The Father has proven His reconciliation to us; now let the truth melt our stony hearts.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 8, 1999.
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