God Demonstrates His Love

God shows [demonstrates] his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8

Notice that "demonstrates" is present tense and "died" is past tense. God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The present tense implies that this demonstrating is an ongoing act.

The past tense implies that the death of Christ happened once for all and will not be repeated.

Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.
1 Peter 3:18


...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame...
Romans 5:3-5

(The goal of everything God takes us through is hope. He wants us to feel unwaveringly hopeful through all tribulations).

Suffering >> Endurance >> Character >> Hope

How is that possible?
...because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:5

God's love has been poured into our hearts.
The tense of this verb means that God's love was poured out in our hearts in the past (at our conversion) and is still present and active.

God did demonstrate his love us in giving his own Son to die once for all in the past, for our sins. But he also knows that this past love must be experienced as a present reality if we are to have patience and character and hope.

Therefore, he not only demonstrated it on Cavalry; he goes on demonstrating it now by the Spirit in our hearts. He does this by opening the eyes of our hearts to taste and see the glory of the cross and the guarantee it gives that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.