Gift of Grace #11 - The Love of God
Description
In this message from Romans 5:6–11, Kurt Bjorklund unpacks what makes God's love truly remarkable—it's unconditional, undeserved, and unending, given not to the worthy but to the powerless, sinful, and hostile. If the love of God has started to feel like background noise, this message will help you experience it in a way that genuinely changes how you live.
What Does It Really Mean to Be Loved by God?
There's a reason familiar phrases can stop landing. We hear them so often they fade into the background—like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon, their words reduced to a gentle, meaningless murmur. Kurt suggests that for many of us, "the love of God" has become exactly that kind of phrase. We've heard it so many times that it no longer moves us. Or worse, we quietly wonder whether it applies to us at all.
In a recent message from Romans 5:6–11, Kurt walked through what Paul actually means when he says God loves us—and the picture that emerges is far bigger, and far more personal, than most of us typically allow ourselves to believe.
A Love That Doesn't Wait for You to Deserve It
The heart of the passage is Romans 5:8: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Kurt points out that Paul doesn't just say this once—he builds to it carefully, using four specific words to describe the people God chose to love: powerless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies. This isn't an accident. The progression matters.
God didn't love us when we were trying harder. He didn't wait until we cleaned ourselves up or figured things out. He loved us at our worst—when we were, in Paul's words, actively hostile toward him.
Kurt draws a helpful contrast here. Receiving a gift when you're comfortable and stable is pleasant, but it doesn't change your life. It's like a hundred-dollar bill when the bills are all paid—nice, but not transformative. But receiving that same gift when you're completely underwater, when everything is about to collapse? That's a different experience entirely. That's closer to what Romans is describing. God's love wasn't extended to people who had it together. It was extended to people who had nothing to offer and no way to earn it.
A Love That Doesn't Depend on Your Performance
This is where the message gets genuinely countercultural. Kurt quotes author Herbert McCabe: "God's love doesn't depend on what we do or what we're like. Our sin doesn't change God's attitude toward us—it changes our attitude toward him."
That's a significant reframe. Most of us, if we're honest, operate as though God's approval of us fluctuates based on how we're doing spiritually. A good week means we feel close to God. A bad week means we assume some distance has opened up. But that's not the gospel. Romans 5:7–8 makes the logic explicit: people rarely die even for someone genuinely righteous. Yet Christ died for sinners. The sacrifice wasn't earned—it was given.
Kurt references the famous scene from Saving Private Ryan, where a dying officer tells the man whose life he saved to "earn this"—to live in a way worthy of the sacrifice. It's a moving moment in the film, but Kurt is clear: that is not the Christian message. Jesus doesn't pull us from the wreckage and then tell us to justify the cost. The love came first, without condition, and nothing we do retroactively earns it or diminishes it.
A Love That Doesn't Run Out
Romans 5:9–11 extends the argument forward in time. Paul writes: "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" The logic is a kind of "if this, then certainly that." If God loved us enough to reconcile us while we were enemies, how much more will he sustain and complete that work now that we're his?
Kurt draws on Warren Wiersbe to articulate what this means across the full span of a life: "Totally apart from law and purely by grace, we have a salvation that takes care of the past, the present, and the future. Christ died for us. Christ lives for us. Christ is coming for us."
The love of God isn't something that carries an expiration date. It doesn't evaporate after a moral failure or a season of doubt. The same grace that initiated the relationship sustains it. God did the work, is doing the work, and will complete the work.
Moving from Snapshot to Experience
Kurt closes by acknowledging an honest tension: even after hearing all of this, the love of God can still feel abstract. Like photographs of the Grand Canyon—they're true, they're real, but they don't fully capture the thing itself. So how do we move from knowing about God's love to actually experiencing it?
Three practical entry points emerge from the message. First, lean into the snapshots—the specific verses and moments where the truth of God's love is clearly stated. For some, that starts with acknowledging sin and trusting Jesus for the first time. Second, lean into worship, especially in moments of recognized brokenness. When we sit with our powerlessness and experience grace in the middle of it, something in us shifts. Third, express the love you've been given. There is almost certainly someone in your life who is difficult to love. Choosing to love them anyway isn't just an act of obedience—it's a window into understanding what God did for us. As Kurt puts it, "When you love someone who is difficult, you're acting like Jesus."
The gift of grace doesn't have to stay in the background. It's meant to be the thing that reshapes everything.
Questions for Reflection
Which of the four words Paul uses—powerless, ungodly, sinner, enemy—is hardest for you to personally identify with, and what might that resistance reveal about how you understand God's love for you?
Is there someone in your life right now who is difficult to love? What would it look like this week to love them in a way that reflects how God has loved you?
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Herbert McCabe (author)
"God's love doesn't depend on what we do or what we're like. Our sin doesn't change God's attitude toward us—it changes our attitude toward him."
Warren Wiersbe (author)
"Totally apart from law and purely by grace, we have a salvation that takes care of the past, the present, and the future. Christ died for us. Christ lives for us. Christ is coming for us. Hallelujah—what a Savior."
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God, as we're gathered in this moment, I pray that you would speak to each of us wherever we're coming from—whatever our recent past has involved, whatever's ahead of us. And I ask that my words would reflect your Word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Last year, I had a couple of friends invite me to go to the Grand Canyon with them. I had been to the Grand Canyon before. I had gone with my family several years ago. We had gone to the rim, stood there, and looked at it. You've heard maybe the old joke: it’s just a hole in the ground until you see it, and then you're like, “Oh, this is kind of cool.”
We had done one of the iconic hikes where you hike down toward the bottom and back up all in one day. And we had just seen a sliver of the Grand Canyon. But this invitation was to not just go to the Grand Canyon, but to start on one end and raft all the way down the Colorado River through the bottom of the canyon. It was 13 days, basically immersed in the Grand Canyon. So this was kind of a cool trip that I had a chance to take.
I took a few pictures on my phone when I was there. And even having gone and experienced it, my memory has faded a little. I look at the pictures and think, “Oh, that was nice.” But when I was there, it was incredible. It was one of those wow moments. I would even say it was worshipful—one of those moments where you just think, Look at what God has made.
I tell you this because I can show you pictures, but they are only snapshots of the experience. Even if you've been to the Grand Canyon, they don’t fully capture it. And if you haven’t been, you might look at them and say, “That’s nice,” but it still feels distant.
Today we’re talking about the love of God, and I suspect that for many of us, the love of God feels a little like those snapshots. We get glimpses of it, but it’s so big and so vast that most of the time we’re only seeing pictures rather than experiencing it.
Maybe you remember the old Charlie Brown cartoons. When kids talked to each other, their voices were clear. But when adults spoke, it sounded like “wah wah wah.” Sometimes I think that’s how we hear the phrase the love of God. We’ve heard it so often that it almost fades into the background.
We hear things like:
“God is love.”
“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.”
But sometimes it doesn’t inspire us anymore. Or maybe we wonder, Could God really love me?
We’ve been working our way through the book of Romans, and today we’re in Romans 5:6–11. In verse 8, Paul says:
“Christ demonstrated his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Throughout Romans, Paul has been explaining why we don’t deserve anything good from God. And yet here he says that God demonstrated his love for us while we were still sinners.
Let me illustrate it this way.
My mom died a little over a year ago, and in her last years she changed the way she gave gifts. Earlier in life, she would carefully choose thoughtful gifts. But about ten years before she died, she moved into what I’ll call the cash zone of gift-giving.
Any of you have a parent or grandparent who has done this?
She would go to the ATM, get a $100 bill, and on birthdays and Christmas I would get the same gift—$100. Now, don’t misunderstand me—I like hundred-dollar bills. Any gift is appreciated.
But eventually I got to the point where receiving $100 didn’t change my life. I didn’t open it and think, Wow, you must really love me. I just thought, That’s nice.
And for some of us, that’s how we experience the love of God.
We treat it like a hundred-dollar bill when we’re financially stable. It’s nice—but it doesn’t feel life-changing.
But what Romans is saying is something different. It’s not like receiving $100 when you’re fine. It’s like being completely broke—so underwater financially that you’re about to lose everything—and someone steps in and rescues you.
And even that doesn’t fully capture the love of God.
Romans has been telling us:
We cannot earn it.
Our goodness isn’t enough.
God has every reason to judge us.
And yet in love, he sent Jesus Christ to justify the ungodly.
Today I want to show you three snapshots of the love of God. They won’t capture the full picture—but they give us a glimpse.
1. God’s Love Is Unconditional
We see this in Romans 5:6, 8, and 10. Paul uses four different words to describe the people God loves.
First, verse 6 says we were powerless. That means unable—unable to do anything to earn God’s love. Then it says Christ died for the ungodly—people living without concern for God. Verse 8 says he died for us while we were still sinners—living outside the way God has called us to live. And verse 10 says we were enemies of God—hostile toward the things of God.
Notice the progression:
Powerless
Ungodly
Sinners
Enemies
And Paul says these are exactly the people God loved. That means God’s love isn’t conditional on what we do. This is hard for us to grasp because we live in a world where almost every relationship is some kind of love trade. Even in close relationships, there are limits. But God’s love is fundamentally different. He loved us when we were against him.
2. God’s Love Is Undeserved
Verses 7–8 say: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”
But God demonstrated his love in this: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
His love isn’t based on what we do. That means there’s nothing you have done that makes God love you more. There’s nothing you can do that will make God love you less. Author Herbert McCabe once wrote that God’s love doesn’t depend on what we do or what we’re like. Our sin doesn’t change God’s attitude toward us—it changes our attitude toward him. Often we convince ourselves that God only loves us if we perform. But that’s not the Christian message.
There’s a famous scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan. After soldiers risk their lives to rescue Private Ryan, the commanding officer tells him to “earn this”—to live a life worthy of their sacrifice. But the Christian message isn’t: Jesus died for you—now earn it.
The message is: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s love is rooted in something that already happened—not something you must achieve.
3. God’s Love Is Unending
Verses 9–11 say: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
Throughout Romans, Paul keeps returning to the idea of justification:
Justified by grace
Justified by faith
Justified by Christ’s blood
Justified through the resurrection
The point is simple: God did the work. Verse 10 says: “If, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more… shall we be saved through his life.”
God worked in the past, works in the present, and will work in the future. The love of God doesn’t evaporate because of something that happens later. Some people think: “God loved me enough to send Jesus… but if I mess up, he won’t love me anymore.”
But the gospel says the opposite. As Warren Wiersbe once wrote: “Totally apart from law and purely by grace, we have a salvation that takes care of the past, the present, and the future. Christ died for us. Christ lives for us. Christ is coming for us. Hallelujah—what a Savior.”
Experiencing the Love of God
Even after hearing all this, sometimes the love of God still feels like distant snapshots. So how do we experience it more deeply?
1. Lean Into the Snapshots
Scripture is full of them. Verses like: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” They remind us of the truth of God’s love. For some people, the first step is acknowledging our sin and trusting Jesus for the first time.
2. Lean Into Worship Moments
Sometimes we encounter God’s love when we recognize our own brokenness—our powerlessness, sin, or hostility toward God. When we experience his grace in those moments and sit with it, it can lead to transformative worship. That’s part of why we gather and sing. Worship helps us express adoration to God and reshape our hearts. Sometimes you may not know the words or feel like singing—but offering worship to God can deepen your experience of his love.
3. Express the Love You’ve Been Given
If God is love and God loves, then we are most like God when we love. Chances are, God has placed someone in your life who is difficult to love. When you choose to love that person anyway, you begin to understand—just a little—what it means that God loved you. When you love someone who is difficult, you’re acting like Jesus. And through that experience, God shapes your heart.
Conclusion
The love of God is vast. We often only see small snapshots of it. But when we lean into those glimpses, it begins to reshape how we live and how we relate to God. It moves the gift of grace from something we vaguely hear about to something that truly changes our lives.
Let’s pray. God, we pray today that you would help each of us not just to know about your love—not just to see snapshots of it—but to truly experience it. And as we experience it, may we be moved to worship you and to love others because of how deeply you have loved us. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Have a great week.
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AI-Generated Disclaimer
This transcript has been cleaned up and formatted with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). While every effort has been made to accurately represent the spoken content of the sermon, minor edits for clarity, grammar, and readability have been applied. The AI-assisted process may have introduced unintentional changes to phrasing or nuance. This document is intended as a general reference and should not be considered a verbatim transcript. For the original audio or video recording, please visit Orchard Hill Church’s official website or media library.
