He loves gays more than gays love gays. He loves gays more than gays love being gay. And he loves gays more than homophobes love hating gays. Simply, Jesus loves gays. (John 3:16)

Parents, friends, family, governments, businesses, schools and churches have at times failed to love gays. Jesus never has. And Jesus never will.

There is old folk song we sing at Vine Church called ‘Here is Love’, which is about the limitless love of Jesus.

Here is love vast as the ocean
Loving kindness as the flood.
When the prince of life, our ransom
shed for us His precious blood.

Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.

The beauty of the love of Jesus is that it is unlimited, unmerited, and unconditional. He loves us the way a good father loves their children, for we are all children of our Father in heaven. This is the good news which the story of Jesus speaks about.

God’s unconditional love for me doesn’t mean He approves of everything I think, do, or say. Every parent knows the difference. The problem with gays and straights is the way we look to our romances, or our work, or family, or possessions or something else, to give our lives meaning, to justify and save us, to give us what we should be looking for from God. It is not that we desire good things, but that we make good things into ultimate things. This idolatry leads to anxiety, obsessiveness, envy, and resentment. But the love of Christ, which we see in the story of his death for us, invites us to become part of a new story. This story is not one we write in order to give our lives meaning, or to justify or save us. This story is one which God is telling, and which justifies, saves and gives meaning to our lives because that is what our God gives his children. God accepts his children and provides a future full of hope. This story of love is not only our only chance for forgiveness, but our only hope for freedom. For what you love ends up owning you. And so we become slaves to our relationships, or slaves to our work, or slaves to our possessions. But there is a love, which when it ends up owning you, bestows liberating freedom, true meaning, and genuine salvation. (Matthew 11:29)

A friend of mine recently tweeted a photo of this T-Shirt with a guy bending his arm to try and steal love from a vending machine. Another friend replied, ‘u can’t buy or earn love! U also can’t steal it. It’s a gift!!!!’

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

(Eph 2:8–9)

Why not talk to a Christian friend and ask them what the love of Jesus means to them. Also you could read: Tim Keller, How Can I Know God.

John Calvin says that being a Christian is all about Jesus: ‘our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ.’ In other words, when we become part of the story of Jesus we enter into the multi-layered story of our salvation:

• our salvation— in his very name
• our untroubled expectation of judgment—in the power given to him to judge
• our protection, security, abundant supply of all blessings—in his Kingdom;
• our gifts of the Spirit—in his anointing
• our strength—in his dominion
• our purity—in his conception
• our gentleness—in his birth
• our redemption—in his passion
• our acquittal—in his condemnation
• our remission from the curse—in his cross
• our satisfaction—in his sacrifice
• our purification—in his blood
• our reconciliation—in his descent into hell;
• our mortification of flesh—in his tomb
• our newness of life—in his resurrection
• our immortality—in the same
• our inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom—in his entrance into heaven

Calvin concludes, ‘In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.’[1]