Coty Pinckney [This is an excerpt from a post by John Piper on the DG Blog on July 30. I encourage you to follow the link to read the post in its entirety. To explore this issue further, I highly recommend Don Carson’s book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Note that Pastor John will preach at the DGCC 10th Anniversary Service on September 8 – Coty]
I want believers in Christ to enjoy being loved by God to the greatest degree possible. And I want God to be magnified to the greatest degree possible for loving us the way he does. This is why it matters to me what Jesus really accomplished for us when he died.
There is a common way of thinking about Christ’s death that diminishes our experience of his love. It involves thinking that the death of Christ expressed no more love for me than for anyone else in the human race. If that’s the way you think about God’s love for you in the death of Jesus, you will not enjoy being loved by God as greatly as you really are.
Feeling Specially Loved by God
I wonder if you have ever felt especially loved by God because of Ephesians 2:4–5? “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
Six things stand out here in Ephesians 2:4–5.
1. The phrase “great love.”
“Because of the great love with which he loved us.” That phrase is used only here in the New Testament. Let it sink in. . . .
2. The peculiar greatness of this love that moves God to “make us alive.” . . .
3. Before he made us alive, we were “dead.”
“Even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive.” There is such a thing as the living dead. Jesus said, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60). Before God made us alive, we were the living dead.
We could breathe and think and feel and will. But we were spiritually dead. We were blind to the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:3–4); we were stone-hearted to his law and could not submit to him (Ephesians 4:18; Romans 8:7–8); and we were not able to discern spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14). Only God could overcome this deadness so that we could see the glory of Christ and believe (2 Corinthians 4:6). That’s what he did when he “made us alive” (Ephesians 2:5).
4. God does not make everyone alive.
What happened to you, to bring you to faith, has not happened to everyone. And remember, you don’t deserve to be made alive. You were dead. You were “by nature a child of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). You did not do anything to move God to make you alive. That’s what it means to be dead.
5. Therefore, God’s great love for you is really for you, particularly for you.
It is not a general love for everyone. Otherwise, everyone would be spiritually alive. He chose specifically to make you alive. You did not deserve this any more than anyone else. But for unfathomable reasons, he set his great love particularly on you.
6. He has wronged no one. For no one deserves to be saved. . . .
The Special Love of the New Covenant
Now here is the connection with the death of Christ. When Jesus died, he secured for us the removal of our deadness, and purchased for us the gift of life and faith. In other words, God’s “great love” could make us alive, because in Christ that same great love had provided the punishment of all our sins and the provision of all our righteousness.
We know this because Jesus said at the Last Supper, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). . . .
Jesus Purchased the Activation
This is what Jesus bought for us when he died. And this is what the great love of God did for us when he made us alive in Christ Jesus. Therefore, God’s specific purpose in the death of Jesus was not the same for everyone. The great love of God, shown for you in the death of Jesus, was the purchase of your faith when you were dead.
He did not merely purchase the possibility of your life that you then would activate. Dead people don’t activate. What he purchased was the activation. . . . Because of a great love for you in particular.
Feel the Greatness of His Love for You . . .
This is what I want every believer to enjoy. The great love of God for you is not the same as the love he has for the whole human race. The love God has for you moved him to make you alive when you could do nothing to make yourself alive. And that same love moved him to purchase your life by the death of his Son.
So when you say with the apostle Paul, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), feel the greatness of the words, “He loved me.” He loved me.