I Love You This Much
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit . . . .
1 Peter 3:18 (ESV)
How can this be? “You would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son.” Amazing! This is the Good News! This is the Gospel!
When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son! We cannot measure such love by any other standard. He is saying to us: I love you this much.
The cross is the heart of the gospel. It makes the gospel good news: Christ died for us. He has stood in our place before God’s judgment seat. He has borne our sins. God has done something on the cross we could never do for ourselves. But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that he loves us.
Sinclair Ferguson, Grow in Grace (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1989), 56, 58.