(Sunday Cast) Loving Freely As We Are Freely Loved (Joshua 23:11; 1 John 5:3) (Love)

Today’s verse reminds us that when the Son of God was killed on the cross it came as no surprise to His Father. And Jesus’ death connects directly to the gospel, because the same authority that governs world leaders also governed the cross of Christ. Jesus was not a victim of Roman politics. He was not caught off guard by Pilate’s decision or the Sanhedrin’s betrayal. It was God’s will to hand Jesus over to the political power of His day. It states this in Acts 2:23: “according to God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.” The death that looked like the world’s greatest injustice was by contrast the world’s greatest act of God’s will. God planned the world’s redemption through the execution of His own Son. So is God surprised when a world leader dies? No. We trust in God who is able to bring His purposes out of any circumstance like the death of a leader that seems out of control. We cannot see how but we can trust the One who “is able to accomplish far more than anything we can think of or imagine.”.(Eph 3:20) He has done this before. He will continue to act because He loves this world. He died for it.