Does God Love Naughty Boys

When I was a teenager, a neighbor of mine reached out to me. He was a pastor, and he saw that I wasn't growing up in a Christian home, and he invited me to come have breakfast with him and his family. And as I sat at the kitchen table with his family, he asked us to bow our heads while he gave thanks.

And then he went around the table and prayed for each member of his family. Then he prayed for me. It was the first time anyone had ever prayed for me.

This man gave me my first job working in his Bible bookstore. He gave me my first Bible, which I still have today. He prayed over me and whipped real tears over me because he loved me with the love of Jesus.

He wouldn't let me go to hell. Well, I began attending his little church, and during a revival meeting, this pastor led me to Christ. He won me to Christ with the love of Christ, the love of God.

Echoes down through the corridors of time. In Jeremiah 31.3 we read, The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with love and kindness have I drawn thee.

I like the old gospel hymn, Victory in Jesus, for it says, He loved me ere I knew him, and all my love is due him. God drew me with the cords of his love. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

That word propitiation has a two-part meaning. It means appeasing the wrath of God, and it means being reconciled to God. That's what Jesus did on Calvary.

He was crucified on that ignoble tree as my sin substitute. Galatians 3.13 declares, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

Jesus suffered and died because of his love for me. Galatians 2.20 tells me so, who loved me and gave himself for me. Some Christians say that you can't tell a lost sinner that God loves him because he doesn't love him.

But my Bible says Jesus loved a lost sinner. He loved the rich young ruler. In Mark 10.21 it reads, Then Jesus beholding him loved him.

I like what G. Campbell Morgan said. He wrote, God loves in spite of sin. Many years ago, a lad in a Sunday school class in England asked his Sunday school teacher, Does God love naughty boys? And the teacher said, No, certainly not.

Oh, the unintentional blasphemy of telling a boy that. If God did not love naughty boys, he never would have loved me. Listen, friend, I believe salvation is in the hands of God and not man, but also believe that way back yonder in the eons of eternity, God sat down in heaven and one day he took out his pen, if I may so speak, and he wrote a love letter to fallen man.

And he wrote the following words, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Then when he got through writing that, he handed that love letter to his dear son and Christ took that love letter to Calvary and signed it in his very own blood. The gospel of Jesus Christ is God's own love letter to a world of fallen sinners.

Jesus loved me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so. One day I finally came to Christ and was saved because I could no longer resist him. Does God love naughty boys? He sure loved this naughty boy.

I heard an old, old story how a savior came from glory, how he gave his life on Calvary to save a wretch like me. I heard about his groaning, of his precious blood's atoning. Then I repented of my sins and won the victory, oh victory in Jesus my savior forever.

He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood. He loved me ere I knew him and all my love is due him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.