Revelation 1:5-6 “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.

John begins this little word of praise with “to him (that is, Jesus) who loves us.” I want you to notice something about the word “love” right away. It is in the present tense. John says, “To him who loves us,” as in “right now.” He does not say, “To him who loved us,” as in “thousands of years ago when he was still alive.” Jesus is not merely a great hero from the past whom we study as a part of history. Jesus is just as alive as your living friends and family members today, only he loves you more. Even though we have never seen him with our eyes, he is someone that we know and love personally, only he loves us more. Jesus rose from the dead, body and soul, and is very much alive and well at this very moment, loving you more than anyone else ever has or can.

Of course, you knew this already. But let these words sink in. When the Apostle John first wrote them over 1900 years ago to Christians living in what is now Turkey, he was writing to people who might have wondered whether they were really true. The Church was going through some terrible times. The Roman Empire was rounding up pastors of churches in some parts of the empire and beheading them or sending them away to exile. John himself had been exiled to the island of Patmos. Under such conditions it would have been easy for Christians to wonder whether Jesus really was alive and in control. Even if he was, did he really love them anymore? They needed to hear, “Jesus loves you right now.”

What about you? Jesus loves you right now, but I suspect you could come up with (so-called) evidence to the contrary. A few years ago I received a phone call from a man who asked me, “Where can I find a gracious God?” “Jesus shows us God is gracious,” I told him. “But where can I find him”? He was convinced that God did not love him, that God’s promises applied only to other people who had happier lives. In a single year, his wife had left him and taken the children, he had lost his home and his job, and he was left with nothing. In his heart he was agonizing over whether Jesus really loved him anymore.

This is why your pastors come calling when you are in the hospital, or when there has been a death in the family. We need to hear that Jesus loves us right now, even when he has decided to take that child who seemed too young to die away from us, or that husband, wife, friend, or family member we always leaned on suddenly isn’t there anymore. Jesus still loves you, right now, even when the doctor tells you the pain isn’t going to go away. In fact, it’s likely to get worse.

Or how about after you or I have committed the “Big One”? Or how about the steady stream of ordinary sins we churn out like a factory running at full capacity. our assembly line steadily turns them out, each one an unimaginative copy of the other. Once again this week I deserved to go hell. Most of the sin looks a lot like last week’s. Shouldn’t God get tired of it? Don’t we make ourselves impossible to love?

But there is one thing steadier than my sin, and that is Jesus’ love for us. More than anything else it is that love– the same love with which he loved me yesterday, the same love with which he loves me today, and the same love with which he will love me when I have passed from time into eternity– it is that love which invaded my heart and conquered this piece of real estate for his kingdom. Jesus is our king because he loves us, today and always. Surely, he deserves our praise!