The Power of God’s Love

The Lord came here while we were yet sinners.

God’s love was indeed very great because when He came, none of us were good. We were all concluded under sin. But He came and gave His life for us.

There is no love greater than that. I thank God that in His plan, He did not use force to draw us back to Him, but He used the power of love.

Man: God’s Masterpiece

Everything that God had created, great and small, was created by the word of His mouth. Whenever God spoke, His words created things into existence. But on the sixth day, God created His masterpiece, and He called him man.

When God created man, He did not speak man into existence. But He created him personally by scooping dust from the ground.

The Bible says that God scooped dust from the ground and form it (Genesis 2:7).

Man was created so beautifully, delicately, and magnificently that the stars in heaven clapped their hands with joy! These were the angels who looked upon the magnificence of God’s creation.

We are God’s masterpiece!

We were beautifully made. We are not just ordinary creations of God. The Bible says that we were created in God’s image. We didn’t come from monkeys. We came from God!

Now, along with all the Father had given to man, man was also given the freedom of choice.

The Power of Choice

All that we have are under the jurisdiction of the power of God. He was the one who made us all. But there is one thing that God did not put under His jurisdiction: that is the power of choice.

God did not invade your willpower to choose what you want to do. You have the power to choose! You can even choose to disobey God or obey Him; accept Him or reject Him.

This choice was given to our first parents, Adam and Eve.

Upon seeing the man that God had created, the devil became envious of him. Man had the very position that the devil wanted; he wanted to become the sole inheritor of everything that God created.

Satan intended to rule everything. He wanted God to get out of His throne! He wanted God to be phased out! Can anybody do that? No, no one can! And so, instead, it was the devil who has phased out of heaven. He was the one thrown down! And now he envied man because the Father loved man!

God gave man everything. And so, the devil said, “I will gamble. I will deceive man!” So the devil entered into the serpent. And the serpent made a way so that man would fall into sin.

The Fall of Man

Adam was not alone because the Lord gave him a companion, Eve, who became his wife. He created man and He also created woman. Man and woman. But there was no talk about marriage at first; it was only man and woman.

Woman was created as a helpmate for the man. But the serpent entered into the woman’s body by deceiving her. He told the woman, “Did God say that you should not eat of the fruit of this tree, for if you do, you will die? God was telling a lie!” The devil told the woman that God was not telling the truth. “You will not die, but you will become as wise as He.” And the woman looked at the fruit and saw that it was good to eat (Genesis 3:4-6).

So, the woman took the fruit, ate of it, and gave some to the man. That was when they disobeyed the commandment of God. That was when sin came in.

Sin is disobeying the Will of God. Sin is the trespassing of God’s law.

Adam and Eve trespassed God’s law on that day. Sin entered into the life of man. When sin entered, the devil knew that death would enter also. If sin came in, curse would also come in. That was how man was removed from the Will of God.

That was his choice.

Man was driven from the Garden of Eden because he had sinned against God.

It was his sin that served as the wall of separation between man and God. That’s because God is a Holy God. If He tolerated sin, then He would cease to be a God of holiness.

But God wanted to restore man to Himself.

The Plan of Redemption

It was man’s nature to sin. We are born sinful. And we cannot escape from that. We are helpless. And so, God planned to redeem man, and His first plan was to redeem us through His mighty power!

Israel was God’s people living under the bondage of sin. They were under the Egyptians, who tortured them and who cruelly ruled over them.

When He heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt, He said that He would send His messenger to save them. So He sent Moses.

When Moses told Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” Pharaoh said, “No.”  The ten plagues devastated Egypt. The Egyptians trembled at the power of God, and so did the children of God. The powerful hand of God set them free.

The Parting of the Red Sea

When the Egyptian armies were pursuing the Israelites, and they had nowhere to escape. They cried to God. Moses cried to God, and He showed them His mighty power. He parted the Red Sea, and the people of God passed between the waters (Exodus 14:21-30).

They trembled at the power of God, but there was no change in their hearts. They were under the bondage of sin. There was no change in their lives.

Today, many people also tremble. They are very loyal to their religions, but there is no change in their lives. No matter how loyal we are to our religion, we will never be reconciled to God unless a change happens in our hearts.

Sodom and Gomorrah

God displayed another manifestation of His power in Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities were cities of sin.

What was their sin? They were guilty of sodomy. What is sodomy? In the last days, sodomy is called homosexuality and lesbianism.

God loves homosexuals but He hates their perversions. He wants them to come back to Him. He wants to redeem them! God not only hates the perversions that they do. God abhors sin.

Men trembled with the power of God displayed in the Old Testament. They trembled in fear but there was no change in their lives. So, the destructive power of God failed to change man. Man still could not go back to God.

Yet He still wanted man to come back to Him. So, He came without our asking for Him to come. It was a voluntary leaving of the portals of glory to come down to this earth, which was full of sin and iniquity.

He came down here without using power or force. How we were deceived by our own will, is how God wants us to be saved also. By our own will, not by force, nor by trembling and fear.

What was this plan? It was the plan of redemption through the power of love!

The Plan of Redemption through the Power of God’s Love

He came and walked among us. It was love in demonstration. He came to get the glory from the hands of the devil. He wanted to destroy the powers of hell that had bound us, binding our hands and feet and putting us into the prison wall we call sin.

All He did was good. He healed the sick. He prayed for them. He freed men from disease. He cleansed men from demonic possession.

What was He doing? He was gathering the broken pieces of God’s image in us that were shattered by the big hammer of the devil’s deception.

We fell onto the ground, broken into pieces. Jesus Christ came and lovingly picked up all of the broken pieces of our lives and fit them all together delicately once again.

He wanted to create us in His own image. Not by means of power, not by means of the manifestations of the power of God that will make us tremble, but by the manifestation of the power of love!

How was that love manifested? Jesus Christ came and He made Himself defenseless and vulnerable.

God’s plan was to do everything not according to the power that men should tremble, but according to love. Through love, man would be saved!

He walked on the earth with His disciple. He is a powerful personality. He was the Word of God manifested in the flesh. He was the Son of God. He was equal to God. Whatever He says would happen. But He came to save man, only by love, not by the power to make men tremble.

The Lord has gone deep, deeper than the flesh. He has come into your heart, into your spirit, where you are blind. That is where you are enslaved. That is where you are imprisoned. That is where it should be dealt with, and the Lord knows that He cannot deal with it by the manifestation of His terrible power, but by the power of His love!

Jesus Christ: God’s Love Manifested

Jesus Christ was God’s love manifested among us. He is the love that the Lord had done. The Bible is not complete without the supreme story of God’s love sacrificing for us.

Judas, one of the twelve apostles, sold the Lord Jesus Crist for 30 pieces of silver. He decided to deliver the Lord into the hands of those who wanted Him dead or alive, and the soldiers arrested Jesus Christ.

He was alone. He was like a sheep going to the slaughter, but He did not open His mouth.

The Jewish people said, “Crucify Him!” Pilate said, “I do not see any sin in this Man.”

The people told Pilate, “If you will not crucify that man, you are not a friend of Caesar!” That was why the two prisoners were set free. One of them was Barabbas, the criminal.

Pilate asked the people, “Who will I let loose among you?” Because of the wickedness of the people, they choose the bad Barabbas.

“Crucify Him!” the people cried, referring to Jesus. “Crucify Him on the cross!”

It was for sin, for trespasses, and for iniquity that the Lord was there. At that very moment, the love of God was displayed among men.

He stood there, without saying a single word. He was alone.

Jesus Christ was feeling what we are feeling. He walked through what we are walking through. He felt everything.

He knows the pain of the mother waiting for her child in the wee hours of the morning not knowing what happened to her child. The Lord has felt what you are feeling.

The Lord has gone through the problem that you are facing today. If you are being accused and are experiencing injustice, the Lord Jesus Christ has gone through all that. He was human like us. He was tempted in all points as we are tempted. Yet, He was without sin.

When He was delivered unto the hands of the people, He was arrested. He was stripped of His clothes. He was mocked. He was reviled. He was tied to Pilate’s scourging post. His face was beaten. He was spat upon.

Every evil thing was done to Him. But Jesus Christ never opened His mouth because He was the Word of God. He was commissioned to save us, not by power, but by love.

That was love in manifestation. He did not speak against the people. His heart was not angered. He carried the burden of our sins.

Do you know what happened next?

They laid bare His back. He was tied to the scourging post, His back facing His tormentors.

The Roman soldiers had a whip, which. had tails made of leather. In the middle of that leather was a steel ball. Attached to it was a hook with three heads. When these tails are on your back, each of the nine tails would be deeply embedded into your skin. Your skin will split open as the hooks pierce into your body. Each of these 9 hooks has three heads and is equal to 27 hooks that when pulled back, would bring skin and flesh along with it.

The Lord received thirty-nine stripes on His back. The Bible says that He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our sins was upon Him, and by His stripes, we are healed.

That was what happened to our Lord Jesus Christ.

And after that, the soldiers took a vine called a Jerusalem vine, which was growing abundantly on the seashores of Galilee. The thorns of this vine are as long as the thorns of a pomelo tree.

They formed the vines into a crown, purposely made smaller than Jesus’ head. They tied strings on both sides. When they put it upon Jesus’ head, they pulled the strings downward so that the crown of thorns would pierce deeply into His head. The blood began to spurt from His head, flowing down over His eyes, over His face.

His face was also swollen because of the beatings. Isaiah saw this in his vision of the Messiah in suffering and in pain. He said He was bruised for our transgressions. There was no beauty that we should desire Him (Isaiah 53:2). He was alone but He said not a word because that was love in demonstration. He chose to die for us.

Then they made Him carry a big cross down the way we call ‘Via Dolorosa.’ This was the way of suffering, where condemned criminals were made to walk.

This was the greatest spectacle of shame. This was the greatest display of human indignity. Jesus passed through that way.

He carried His cross bearing our sins, our iniquity, the curse, and the debt that was upon us. He came without sin and in the courtroom scene of heaven, we were condemned to die because we have sinned. But somebody came and stood before the judge and said, “I will take their place and I will die for them.” He was our substitutionary Savior.

He walked in suffering. Love was in His heart. He looked at us and saw us mocking Him, but the Lord saw beyond our mockery. He saw hearts that were lonely, unchanged by the fetters of sin, and He wanted our souls to come back to our Creator.

Before He went to Golgotha Hill, He prayed three times and told the Father, “Let this cup pass from me…” He knew that He going to suffer. He was alone.

The flesh was trying to contradict the Will of God. But deep down inside, there was a cause greater than the flesh. It was the cause of salvation because Jesus saw that by the disobedience of one, all have died; and by the obedience of one, all are going to live!

The Lord saw this, and so He did not mind the shame, the suffering, and the cross when He saw the reward before Him. He saw you and me gathering here. He saw all of His children around the world that would come to Him by love.

He came and carried the cross. When He arrived at Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, Mount Calvary, they laid Him down. They took spikes that were about nine inches long and they began to nail the Savior. 

Every time they hammered the nail into His hands and into His feet, it was the love of God triumphing. It was the love of God coming down, picking up the broken pieces of our lives, and putting them together.

While He was crucified on that cruel cross, He suffered so much pain. We feel so much pain when we are pricked with tiny thumbtacks. How much more if nine-inch spikes were to pierce our hands and feet? They crucified the Lord Jesus Christ with those nine-inch spikes. Then His cross was pulled up and fixed into the hole that was dug in the ground.

It was erected slanted slightly downward. This was calculated so that the weight of the body will be held solely by the spikes in the hands and feet.

This was the ultimate tactic of the Romans for convicted prisoners to suffer the ultimate suffering. There was nothing more painful than being crucified with only the spikes pierced into the hands and feet, carrying our weight.

Jesus was crucified in this fashion. Medical doctors say that a man crucified in this manner will not die because of the loss of blood. A man crucified in this fashion will die because of the irregular beating of his heart.

Therefore, I conclude that Jesus Christ died of a broken heart. He was brokenhearted because of you and me. That was the supreme sacrifice of the love of God.

Even on the cross, the devil did not stop trying to thwart the plans of God. He entered into the body of one of the criminals crucified beside the Lord Jesus Christ.

The man said, “If you are the son of God, get down from your cross. Save me and yourself” But the other criminal hanging beside Him said, “I believe in you, Jesus Crist. When you go to Paradise, take me with You.” Jesus said, “You will be with me in paradise.” The soldiers said, “You saved others but you cannot save yourself? Come down and save Yourself!”

The Lord did not say anything. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The love of God prevailed. He said, we did not tremble because of His show of power, but we trembled because of that love displayed in the Lord’s life when He suffered on the cross.

We trembled because of that great supreme sacrifice of the love of God manifested toward us. Satan was defeated. When Jesus Crist said, “Father, it is finished!” That meant He had done it. “I came and I conquered by the power of Love!”

Love was the Only Way

What had they done to the Lord? Humanly speaking, you would weep because of what He had gone through to save us, but spiritually speaking, it was the only way possible. It was the only way for Him to penetrate into the thick wall of sin into our hearts and bring us back to the Father.

This was when God’s entire plan for man to come back to Him was fulfilled. It was through the power of love.

That is why when we learn about this, we learn that this is not the same power that makes us tremble because there is an earthquake. This is not the power that makes us tremble because the Red Sea has been parted. When we know what He did for us, our hearts bleed. We cry deep within ourselves, and we draw near to Him because of love.

This love displayed on Calvary is the same love that is now drawing us to Him like a magnet. Nobody has forced you to come before Him. Nobody has forced you to receive Him as your personal Savior. Nobody has told you by force to come to Him and accept Him. Nobody curses you if you will not obey His words! You came to Him because you loved Him.

What does the Bible say? “We love Him because He first loved us,” (1 John.4:9). “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man will lay down His life for His friend.” (John 15:13).

Jesus Christ was buried. After three days, He rose up again from the dead. The Bible says that in His resurrection, He brought with Him the keys of death, hell, and the grave.

He won over death, and we can now come back to Him freely. He has made a way going to the throne of God. We can now go back to Him with love in our hearts.

Two thousand years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ came and He preached to us the greatest sermon—that by His love, He sacrificed on Calvary for you and me. This was the greatest sermon that continues to be preached to this day. This is the love of God.

He will triumph over your life! You will now come out of your prison cell. Your diseases will be healed through the love of God.

And it is that power that will deliver you from demon possession, from diseases and sickness, from financial distress, and from darkness.

Take it right now! It’s in your hands! It’s your choice to accept it. I received it. Nobody forced me, and I am still serving Him now. I am happy because I have chosen to love Him. Why have I chosen to love Him? Well, because He first loved me.