What happens when love grows cold? There is this journey, this course that we are on and it is taking us somewhere. And our passage says that we all as a human race are on this same course—this same destination—together, toward the things that are making us dead. And we also saw last week that some people have gotten off of that course leading to spiritual death and have been raised into new life by God. After the sobering introduction, our passage takes a hopeful turn, revealing to us that rich, great and immeasurable are God’s love, mercy, kindness and grace to those who are dead in sin. As we look around in our world today and often in our own hearts, we are compelled to ask: what has happened to all of those things? Love, mercy, grace and kindness? Where have they gone? Maybe they are gone from your life as well, gone from your home. Gone in how we treat others, how we treat ourselves or how others treat us. But the good news this morning is that we can know from God’s Word—no matter how we have experienced God, no matter if we are doubting God’s love or discouraged by our world, no matter if we are unkind to others, or unkind to ourselves—we can know from our passage this morning that in a loveless, merciless, graceless, unkind world—in which sometimes we are the worst offenders—the God of the universe doesn’t just possess those things. But He is immeasurably rich and lavish in all of those things which are in such short supply today. And that truth, which the Bible calls the good news or the gospel, is more important today than ever before. And that may sound like exaggeration. But if we don’t have love, kindness, mercy and grace it may actually be the end of the world.
