Delivered Over for You
/Delivered Over for You
by Jon Buck
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
- Rom 8:32
The Bible teaches that God loves His people unconditionally. But for all of us, there are time when that can be hard to believe.
In moments of suffering, or times of fear, or seasons of loneliness, Jesus can seem like a distant reality. We’ve known and loved Him, and our heads know that He is good and that His goodness is over our saddest moments. And yet, it can be hard for us to truly experience the reality of His love when life is filled with sadness or suffering.
However, this isn’t God’s design. In our deepest moments of loneliness, sorrow, or suffering, God wants us to trust that He loves us, and to walk by faith in that reality. Only when we are trusting His sovereign love can we begin to understand His purposes in our suffering and how those purposes are for our good.
So the great question remains…how can we know that God loves us?
The answer is found at the cross, of course, because God has demonstrated His love in the death of His Son for sinners.
But this reality runs all the way back through the life of Christ to the night of the first Christmas. Paul tells us that God didn’t spare His Son, but delivered Him over for us.
He didn’t spare Jesus the humiliation of poverty, but delivered Him into it.
He didn’t spare Jesus the weakness of a physical body, but delivered Him over to human life.
He didn’t spare Jesus the sufferings of normal family relationships, but delivered Him into them.
He didn’t spare Jesus the sufferings of working hard to provide for his needs, but delivered Him into the curse.
He didn’t spare Jesus the sufferings of rejection and loneliness, but delivered Him into them.
He didn’t spare Jesus the suffering of being murdered unjustly, but delivered Him into the hands of His killers.
And ultimately, He didn’t spare Jesus the suffering of bearing the weight of your sin, but delivered Him over as a once-for-all innocent sacrifice.
How do you know God loves you beyond a shadow of a doubt, and how to do you trust that truth? Because God didn’t spare Jesus, but delivered Him over for us!