Amazing Love! How Can It Be?

Paul’s gospel proclaimed a God who is for us. He was for us before we were for him. He reached out to us while we were still estranged, hostile, and sinful, going to extraordinary lengths to draw us back. The Father and the Spirit offered up their only beloved Son to die for us. The Son accepted the will of the Father and the Spirit and obeyed this fate, becoming one with us and dying for us. This tells us that God loves us, and loves us before he does or is anything else. God is love all the way across and all the way down. This is the extraordinary and highly counterintuitive message of texts like Romans 5:5–6 and 8, although we have seen how it permeates almost everything else that Paul says elsewhere in his letters.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 139