March 8, 2026
"God's Love through Thick and Thin"
Romans 5:1-8
Does it seem that God is unloving? Does it seem that God is unjust? There are certainly people who think this way. The reason they think this way is because of all the bad they see in our world. And it appears that bad goes unpunished. If God is a loving God, why does He allow this all to happen? If He is in control, He certainly could step in to stop it all, but He doesn’t. How can He be a loving God?
A tornado rips through a town, killing a dozen people. Many homes are destroyed as a result as well. People’s lives have been turned upside down. What’s the future going to look like for these people?
Couldn’t God have prevented this tornado from happening? If He really loved these people, He would have prevented the tornado from happening in the first place. What kind of God allows this to happen to people?
A man and his wife are suddenly awakened by a loud crash in their house. The husband jumps up out of bed to see what is going on. As he is descending the steps to go downstairs, he is met by two men with guns. They demand to know where he keeps his money and other valuables. The husband refuses to answer them and puts up some resistance. One of the men shoots and kills him. The wife all the while can hear all the commotion and fears for her life. The men enter the bedroom and shoot her as well.
Couldn’t God have prevented this horrible crime from happening? Didn’t He love these people? Why did He allow this to happen? These crimes happen often in our country. Why didn’t God do something? Why doesn’t He do something now to prevent something terrible like this from ever happening again?
Pol Pot, the dictator of Cambodia in the mid to late 1970s, killed about 2,000,000 people. I believe it was close to a third of the population, if I’m not mistaken. This despotic ruler did this without much opposition. No one stood in his way.
How could a loving God have allowed a person like Pol Pot to get away with killing a couple of million people? God could have prevented this horrible tragedy in Cambodia from ever happening. Why didn’t He? Didn’t He have any compassion on these people? 2,000,000 people lost their lives at the hands of a wicked ruler. Where was our loving God?
I’m sure what I have just said is real hard for us to understand, and even to listen to. What I have said causes us to raise questions about the love of God. There is a whole lot of evil in our world that goes on unabated and with impunity. It seems that God is no where around. People are allowed to step on other people at will. Look at how people treat each other. It’s not always for good.
If God truly loved the people He created, He wouldn’t let people destroy each other. How can God be a loving God? What people see going on in the world today has caused many people to turn away from God. God isn’t a God of love for them.
Our text from Romans makes the case that God does indeed love us. The evil and suffering we see going on in the world aren’t signs that God’s love is absent. We shouldn’t interpret the bad that happens as a refusal on God’s part to get involved. God deeply cares about the people He created.
Paul says that suffering eventually produces hope in us, hope of a better life with God in His kingdom. The suffering and evil we witness and hear about in our world ought to compel us to turn to the Lord, and not away from Him. He is the only one who can help us through all the bad we see in the world.
When a child falls down and gets hurt, to whom does the child turn? When a child is in pain, whom does a child seek out? Usually, its mom. The child turns to its mother because it knows she can help. The child seeks the love of its mother. Does the child think that she doesn’t love him or that she could have prevented his injury? No, he simply turns to her for help.
When suffering and evil press upon us, we seek the Lord’s love and care. We believe He can help us, which He does.
The evil and suffering in the world ought to turn us off to the world. Why run to something that causes us pain and suffering? Why put our hope in this world? God uses the suffering, evil, pain, and so on in this world to pull us away from the world toward Him.
This is really a sign that God loves us. He knows that eternal life with Him is far better for us, even though we don’t always see that. He has the foresight that we don’t. He sees how to use the suffering and evil of this world for our good. Again, the hope of a better life with God is much more appealing when we experienced the bad of this world. Who in their right mind would want to stay here when he/she could live with the Lord forever in His perfect kingdom? God uses the pain and suffering and evil of this world to drastically lessen our desire to stay here. God has something far better in mind for us.
If God didn’t love us, He wouldn’t try to turn us away from this world. He would let us run after it. He wouldn’t send people into our lives to tell us the truth. He would make life real easy for us here so we would have no desire to want to be with Him in His kingdom. We would be deceived into thinking that this life is what we want and all we need.
Some people are confused by this. They think that God demonstrates His love by making life easy and allowing a person to do whatever he/she wants. If a person loves this world and everything about it, God should be okay with that. There is nothing wrong with desiring to stay here and build a wonderful life. If God doesn’t see it this way, then He isn’t a God of love.
If a person hopes only in this life, that person is rejecting God’s promise of a better life. A person who rejects God’s promise doesn’t deserve a place in His kingdom.
God knows that we make foolish choices from time to time. A foolish choice would be to put all our hope in this life. But to prevent us from making this foolish choice, God uses suffering and evil and pain and so on to keep us from making this foolish choice. God knows that if we make the foolish choice of hoping in this life, we will do great harm to ourselves. We will be shut out of God’s kingdom. Is this what we want for ourselves?
Again, if God didn’t love us, He wouldn’t try to prevent us from making a foolish choice such as this. The truth is He wants to save us from this world. Our world doesn’t have a bright future. God wants to spare us from our world’s not so bright future. Isn’t that a sign that God loves us? I certainly see it that way.
The ultimate sign of God’s love for us is Jesus Christ. Jesus died for us. If He hadn’t, our sins wouldn’t be forgiven. And if our sins wouldn’t be forgiven, our hope of a better life with God would be in vain.
What’s remarkable about God’s love for us in Jesus is that God didn’t stipulate that we had to get ourselves in order before He would send Jesus into our world. Paul says in verse 8 of our text the following: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In spite of our sinfulness, God sent Jesus for us. He didn’t say, “Once you guys clean up your act, I’ll send my Son.” He knew that we couldn’t clean up our act. He had to clean it up for us. Now, if God didn’t love us, He would have left us on our own in our sinfulness. And if He would have waited for us to clean up our act, He would have been waiting forever because we can’t clean up our sinfulness on our own.
I hope we see that our God is truly a God of love. Things may not always go the way we want them to go in life, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us. There is no denying that there is a lot of evil and pain and suffering in our world. But just because there is doesn’t mean that God isn’t a loving God. God uses these to bring us closer to Him which is what we ultimately need.
God intends to show us more of His love for us. In the end, He will raise us from the dead. He won’t leave us to rot in the grave forever. That’s not in His plan for us.
In the meantime, may we rejoice that God does indeed love us.