Because You’re Mine

Ephesians 2:4-5

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We like it when people that are close to us tell us that they love us. And sometimes we ask the question, Well, why do you love me? And we maybe want them to say things like, I love you because you’re so beautiful. I love you because you’re smart. I love you because you’re funny. I love you because you’re exciting to be around. We often like to hear those things because they are compliments.

But what if somebody instead said, I love you because I choose to love you or I love you because you’re mine? Well, they maybe seem kind of impersonal and maybe not so romantic, especially if we’re expecting that from a romantic interest of ours. But which is it? Would we rather hear that someone loves us because of all of these traits and qualities that we have that they like? Or would we rather have them say that they love us because they choose to love us or they love us because we’re theirs?

You know, if we think about it, if someone’s love for us is based solely on the way that we make them feel, or maybe some attributes that we have right now, what happens if those attributes go away? What happens if a few decades from now we ultimately lose our beauty? Or what if we’re not so funny anymore, or not so exciting or not as smart as we once were? We might wonder if their love is based on those things. Well, will that person stop loving us? In some ways, it’s more comforting to know that someone’s love is not based on those things, but based on their decision, their choice of loving us.

And I think of a love that a parent can have for a child. Especially think about a mother, a mother who has carried a child in her womb for a long nine months, and the child is born and she is attached to that child completely. She has love for that child not just because she thinks the child is cute when many mothers do, and not because that child is doing so many wonderful things for her, but because that child is hers. That child belongs to her. She has such a connection with this child. And we often will see this even in society too, as we think about a child that maybe grows up and maybe can turn to a life of crime and maybe commits a horrific crime in society, gets so angry and despises that person. Well, what do we see of their mother? The mother still shows love for her son, right? Even in the worst of circumstances, because she has chosen to love this child no matter what.

You know, when it comes to God, sometimes we might think that God should love us because of the things that we do for Him. Well, we’re so faithful to you, God. I regularly go to church or I give an offering to you or I read my Bible or pray to you every day. We think that that’s the reason God should say that he loves us. But instead, God tells us this in His word. In Ephesians chapter two, it says this

But God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! (Ephesians 2:4-5)

And it reminds us that we had nothing to offer to God. We were dead in our trespasses. That’s the way we come into this world, unable to do anything good for him. But what did God do? Well, because of his mercy. Because he saw our fallen condition. Because his heart went out to us. He had compassion on us and what he knew we deserve for our sins. He loved us, and he sent Jesus to suffer and die for our sins. But furthermore, as the apostle Paul writes, he made us alive in Christ. He brought us to the knowledge of the truth. He created faith in our hearts to trust in that Savior Jesus, not because we earned or deserved it in any way, but because of his grace and mercy for you.

This is incredibly comforting when you think about your relationship with God. You know, if his love for you is dependent on what you do, there’s going to be times when you fail. And you might wonder, well, how could God possibly love me? But because God’s love is based on His decision to love you and based on his mercy and who he is, we can be confident that that love will never fail, no matter what we do, no matter how we hurt him, even though we don’t want to. God always loves us and he always welcomes us back, forgiving our sins when we confess them to him and assuring us that we are his own dear children, not because of what we have done, but because of what he has done for us in Christ. Amen.