Do You Feel Loved by God?

From Gospel Translations

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Some of you reading this need to feel loved by God again. You don’t feel loved right now, at least not in your worst moments. You might know that you’re loved by God, but you struggle to really know it (and even more to feel it). Something is clouding God’s love for you — different clouds in different stories.

I want you to feel how loved you are in Christ. So let me take you to the most familiar verse in the world and show you four loves in John 3:16.

1. God Loves the Unlovely

The first love is God’s love for the unlovely. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son . . .” When you hear Jesus say that word world, what do you hear? Do you hear world and think of places like Kenya, Japan, and Brazil? Or do you hear world and think darkness, wickedness? “For God so loved sinners, that he gave his only Son . . .”

The former is certainly and beautifully true — God does love and redeem men and women from all tribes, tongues, peoples, and languages (Revelation 5:9–10). But the main point in John 3:16 is that God loves the unlovely. He loves sinners.

What kind of world does he love? He loves the world that despised and rejected him. “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). We didn’t just do bad things; we loved bad things. That’s the world Jesus sought. That’s the world God loved. We were evil people — plotting evil, doing evil, savoring evil — and yet God loved us, even while we hid in the dark. God loves the unlovely.

2. God Loves His Own

Second, God loves believers. He loves his own. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God loves believers by sparing us death — the worst death — and giving us the very best life imaginable.

How does God come to love believers, though? Does he send his Son into the world and then wait for someone to believe and therefore love? No, there’s more to this love. A few verses earlier, Jesus says to Nicodemus,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . . That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” (John 3:3, 6–7)

Anyone can be amazed by a man who heals blindness, turns water to wine, or reads people’s minds. Something profound, something spiritual, has to happen for someone to see those same signs and worship — or, in the words of John 3:16, to see what Jesus did and said and believe. We must be born again.

And how does that happen? Jesus explains, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). You can’t predict, much less control, the Spirit. It’s like trying to herd the wind. No, God gives life to whomever he chooses; that’s the point. This love doesn’t wait for a response. This love goes into the darkness and brings the dead to life through a new and greater birth.

So, when I say, “God loves believers,” I don’t just mean he loves those who love him. I mean he actually gives us any love we have for him. God loves those who believe — everyone who believes — with a life-resurrecting, eyesight-restoring, love-awakening love.

3. God Loves His Son

This third love is the love on which the others hang. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The sentence doesn’t make sense unless the Father really, really, really loves his Son.

This love from eternity past was so sweet, so intense, so pure, that it spilled over in a universe. God made the world to share the love he enjoys within the Godhead — Father, Son, and Spirit. This is how Jesus prays:

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. . . . I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:24, 26)

God has always loved his Son and will always love his Son.

And yet to really show the height and width and depth and glory of this love, the Son had to die. If sinners were going to not perish but have eternal life, if we were going to know this love and enjoy this God, someone had to die for our sin. That someone was the Son of God, the Son we meet in Jesus — fully God (God enough to make galaxies and move mountains) and fully man (man enough to sweat and bleed and die).

God so loves his Son. And yet as much as he loved him — infinitely and immeasurably — he gave that Son, that Treasure, his very Heart, so that you could be his forever.

4. God Loves You

God loves the unlovely. God loves believers. God loves his Son. And finally, God loves you.

As John relives the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, and as he hears Jesus say to this confused and curious Pharisee, “The Son of Man [must] be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15), John can’t help but jump in and say, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” You can almost see him turning from Jesus and Nicodemus to us and asking, “So do you believe? Do you see? Will you turn from your sin and step under the waterfall of this love?”

If you believe, all four of these loves are yours. God gave that precious Son for you on the cross. Jesus’s body was broken for you. His blood was spilled for you. The wrath that was meant for you fell on him. What more does God have to do to prove his love for you?

Does he have to heal that sickness? Does he need to send a husband or a wife or a child? Does he need to give you that job? Hear this: God doesn’t have to answer that prayer to prove that he loves you. He doesn’t. In Jesus, he’s already proven it. Behind all the clouds that keep you from feeling loved by God, there’s a blazing, irresistible, unstoppable love — bigger and hotter than the sun. He loves you. He loves you. He really loves you.