Now, it is true that the Lord hates sin, but the great news is that He loves sinners. If God hated all sinners and He only allowed absolutely perfect people into heaven, then we would all be doomed, because the Bible says in Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Not one of us can stand before the King of this universe and say, "Ok, you can let me into heaven now. I'm completely blameless; there's not one thing you can hold against me!" No, we could never even come close to saying something like this. But even after all the bad and evil things we have done, God still loves us with an everlasting love and He wants to forgive us of every sin.

It may be hard to understand, but this is the greatest truth of all time! 2 Peter 3:9 says that "the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." God loves everybody, no matter what their past has been like, no matter how they are living their life presently, and He wants every single person to be saved. But just how did the Lord demonstrate this love? What did He do to make salvation available? Look at 1 John 4:9-10 "God showed how much He loved us by sending His only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins." The Lord allowed His Son Jesus to come down and die for our sins to prove to us that He cares about us in such a remarkable way. Never has there been a demonstration of love greater than the cross.

Isaiah 59:1-3 tells us that our sins have separated us from the Lord, but because He loves us so deeply, He was willing to see His only Son suffer and die in order to bridge that gap of separation that was between God and the human race. As Jesus hung upon that cross, bearing the sins of the entire world, He experienced that separation from His Father that comes from the darkness of sin (Matthew 27:45-46). Jesus took the punishment that we deserve so that we don't have to be punished (Isaiah 53:3-12).

But if our disobedience and sin hurt God this much, how could he possibly still love us? It's certainly not because we deserve this love or because we have earned it in any way. All that we have earned is the wages of sin. This is spoken of in Romans 6:23, which says: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." In reality, we don't even deserve to be alive right now. It doesn't matter how hard we have tried to make up for it, the fact remains: We have all sinned. But the verse goes on to say that God has something tremendously better to offer: the gift of everlasting life! And this is all made possible because of what Jesus did for us through His death, burial, and resurrection.