Understanding What Love Is : Peter Ku
Romans 5:6-8 (ESV)
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Having grown up as a Christian, the idea that God sent Christ to die for our sins because he loves us was something I heard time and time again. It’s something that every Christian is told to believe in, but I never really understood the weight of these words. I would always say “God loves me” and “Jesus died for my sins,” but looking back now, I know that I didn’t truly believe what I was saying. I had just been repeating empty words that I was told were true without any conviction. I only began to believe and hope in these truths after I turned away from God.
I grew up like any normal kid. I had a good family, good friends, and I didn’t have any traumatic experiences; but as I grew older, a deep sense of unhappiness and emptiness started to grow in me. I’m not exactly sure where these feelings came from, but they continued to grow over time and so did my desperation to find a solution. In the search of an answer, I turned to the things of this world instead of turning to God. I hung out with friends as often as I could, drank excessively, and tried to find fulfillment in meaningless relationships, but nothing was enough. I couldn’t find the answer in the things of this world, but I doubled down on my sins and continued to keep my back towards God. Eventually, I came to hate myself and the way that I was living.
During this time in my life, I hadn’t been to church in many years, but for some reason, I started to have a desire to go back. I was invited to Grace Church and I went into service without any expectations, but for the first few weeks that I sat in on worship, my eyes would well up at any mention of God’s love. Every song proclaiming His amazing love for us made me fight back tears and it was then that I realized that God was telling me that He loved me. It didn’t matter how much I hated myself, He loved me.
At that point in my life, I thought of myself as exactly how the verse describes us. Weak. Ungodly. A sinner. I was weak and broken in all aspects, ungodly in the way that I intentionally distanced myself from Him, and a sinner lost in the things of the world. I had come to hate myself and my sinful life, but it was then that God graciously reminded me of the truth in the rest of the verse. That while I was weak, Christ still died for me. That He shows His love for me in that while I was a sinner, Christ still died for me. He knows all of my faults, yet He still accepted me and deemed me worthy enough to sacrifice His son for me.
While I still struggle to accept that I’m someone worthy of the love and sacrifice He has given to us, God has now given me hope and faith. Hope and faith in knowing that it doesn’t matter what I think of myself, it is the undeniable truth that He loves me and that He says I am worthy. Amen.