NOTHING CAN STOP GOD FROM LOVING A SINNER

(A series in the book of Isaiah: Chapter 8)

When God is with us who can be against us.

This statement sometimes becomes a too common statement that we miss the intensity of its meaning. This statement is an enduring promise of God towards His people.

We have already been studying that Isaiah’s context is about the backslidden condition of God’s people, and God’s unceasing call for repentance and unceasing declaration of hope. The people of God had just repeatedly rebelled and put God to the test. Their stubbornness and continuous mistrust in God was already subject to God’s abandonment, this is in our human eyes.

Let us see what is God’s perspective in this matter. Isaiah chapter 8 continued to the proclamation of the coming Immanuel. Immanuel, the coming deliverer, that will never be born out of greatness but rather out of humility. Immanuel will be from a very humble beginning that people will just see Him as a commoner. He will just be like a common person—no pomp, no pride, no glory.

In this chapter, God again declared His love for His people. Amidst their idolatry, He still gives them enough reasons to love Him back. This is the reason that the statement, "When God is with us who can be against us," became so precious because one event that God declared this phrase was in the time when God's people were in a very horrible situation of sinfulness. His defense was not because His people were good but because He just simply loves them. Indeed, is there anything that God stop God from loving? So here is what God declared through Isaiah, Isaiah 8:10,

“Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted;

propose your plan, but it will not stand,

for God is with us.”

Wow! God is still with His people in the middle of their idolatry. Another evidence of His love is that He repeatedly showed Himself and His abilities to care and love for them, Isaiah 8:13,

“The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,

he is the one you are to fear,

he is the one you are to dread.”

He even teaches them how to discern truth from deception. The people of God have abandoned consulting God in their life’s troubles and circumstances. God in His patience, told Isaiah, that is found in Isaiah 8:20,

“To the law and to the testimony!

If they do not speak according to this word,

it is because they have no light in them.”

Wow! Friends, this is just love that could never be understood. What we understand is that if people are bad and really bad they don’t deserve our time, our talk, and even our pity. They choose their lives like that then let them suffer the consequences. However, in this chapter, it is a direct contrast to what we see right. We can’t even understand how can someone still spend time with someone who is not willing to listen. The love of God for us sinners is indeed beyond our understanding.

The love of God is too deep and too wide for us to ever understand. Looking at the Cross the greatness of that love culminates. The very Creator of the universe died for you and me, who many times deliberately are governed by our own sinful ways.

Yes, friends, God has love too deep and too wide to understand and He is able to include us in the circle of His love. Our sinfulness can never stop God from loving us. This is just so incomprehensible!