How do you know God loves you? How do you experience that love and lastly how can you enjoy that love? Three important questions that are all answered in the space of a few verses in Romans 5.

The evidence of God’s love (v.8) is the death of Jesus Christ.

But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ died his death was for you. An important distinction between the death of Jesus and the vast majority of deaths. His death accomplished something. Forgiveness of sins and that Paul explains is the ground for both justification by and reconciliation with God.

This gives us something incredibly tangible and solid to point to when we doubt or waver, when our feelings wobble all over the place.

But we are also to experience God’s love: to know it in our bones and deep in our heart. For that God has given us His Holy Spirit (v.5). The experience of the love of God is not to be a fleeting thing but instead is poured out in abundant, lavish, thrilling fashion.

Lastly we can enjoy the love of God. He has given us the evidence and He has given us the Holy Spirit but in order to enjoy this love we respond in the only manner that’s truly appropriate to what God has done: rejoice (v.2, 3, 11).

The gift is so wonderful because it is everlasting, unchanging, unfading and cannot be taken from us that even in the face of suffering we have cause to rejoice and when we do it fuels our endurance, deepens our character and strengthens our hope. Three excellent reasons to rejoice.

---

If you would like to watch the sermon from Grace Church Stockholm on this topic, you can find it here