The wrath of God is simply the shadow side of the love of God for his wonderful creation and his amazing human creatures. Like a great artist appalled at the way his paintings

God loves the world so much that he will not allow it forever to wallow in the corruption and decay into which the rebellious human race has plunged it.

So what if it were true after all? What if the Creator, all along, had made the world out of overflowing, generous love, so that the overflowing, self-sacrificial love of the Son going to the cross was indeed the accurate and precise self-expression of the love of God for a world radically out of joint?

The only hope of success is the way of love as agape rather than eros. From this rival perspective, the secret of the search is not our "great ascent" but "the great descent" - of God toward us. Instead of the seeker finding love, love seeks out the seeker - not because the seeker is worthy of love but simply because love's nature is to love regardless of the worthiness or merit of the one loved.

The marvel of the Redemptive Reality of God is that the worst and the vilest can never get to the bottom of His love.

The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.

God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.

You can be courageous in admitting your sin precisely because God is richly abundant in his mercy. He comes to you in mercy not because you are good but because you are a sinner, and he knows that because of this condition, you are unable to help yourself.

The entire hope of fallen humanity rests on this one thing—that there is a Savior who is eternally steadfast in redeeming, forgiving, reconciling, transforming, and delivering love.

His love for you is never a result of your character; it is a clear demonstration of his.

In the busyness and self-centeredness of our lives, we sadly forget how much our lives have been blessed by and radically redirected by mercy.

This means he fights for us even when we have given up the fight. Our desire to follow him may weaken, but he will never give up or turn his back on us. He knows us because he made us, which is why he sent his Son to be for us what we could not be for ourselves and to do for us what we could not do on our own.