God Loved Us First

April 11, 2025

1 John 4:19 says, "We love because he first loved us."

When our kids were little, we went to Japan on a mission trip. We were meeting our exchange student, Megume. While we were there, I met the president or director of Campus Crusade for Christ for all of Japan. His name was Yoshi. I asked him how he became a Christian. He said he was at university one day and someone shared with him the four spiritual laws tract published by CCC. The first law says God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Yoshi said, “We have over 600 gods that are worshipped in Japan. I had never heard of a God who claimed to love me. I just decided I’m going to believe in the God who says he loves me. He’s going to be my God!”

God loves everyone and has a wonderful plan for your life. Who does that include? Everybody. The good news is that God loves you. God loves Yoshi. And God loves me.

The bad news is that He loves my enemies just as much… but that’s not really bad news. Why? Because, we are all broken and messed up and in the same boat. God loves all of us. 

Loving the lovable is easy. Loving the hard-to-love is much much harder. The world teaches us to love those who make you happy. The world teaches you to love those who think like you. The world teaches to love until you don’t feel like it anymore. 

But, look at the life of Jesus. He loved the unlovely, and that's what got him in trouble with the religious fanatics. Jesus teaches us to love the marginalized and the outcasts. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. Jesus teaches us to love EVERYONE. 

In fact, as Jesus followers, we should be the most loving people on the planet. Why? Because God is love. Loving others brings God glory, because we are being like him. 

"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

We can love everyone, if we allow Jesus to love through us. It takes surrender on our part to let him do that. That doesn’t mean we have to always love what people do, but we do have to love the person, as followers of Jesus.

The truth is, you will never look into the eyes of someone whom God doesn’t love, and you will never meet someone who Jesus didn’t die for. That should make it easier for us to love any person we come in contact with, no matter how difficult. 

Oh, and by the way, God loves YOU.