God's love...based on who or what?

Does God love us based on who he is or on who we are?

If by who we are, we mean what we do or don't do, no. This is not the grounds by which we are loved. Nothing we can or will ever do will cause God to love us.

As well, our doing (i.e. trying to gain God's acceptance through our actions) is binding and enslaving since we never perform perfectly. Being loved regardless of our failures (in contrast to trying to earn it) is freeing. 

If who we are (our identity) is based on what we do we will never do enough to gain what we need, i.e. we can never do enough to earn God's love.

We need perfect and infinite love because we were designed to be loved perfectly and infinitely. We can never secure this for ourselves through our efforts. 

The good news is we don't have to. Christ did this for us. Now, as his children, we are called to abide/be/dwell/ exist in this reality. 

Only as we abide in his love, do we become loving. The more we abide, the more loving we become.

Being leads to doing. Doing can never lead to being, i.e. Being fully loved leads to being loving. Being loving never leads to being fully loved.

"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing...As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." - Jesus speaking to his disciples at the last supper. John 15:4-6,9

Is there anything about us that God loves? 

Yes, there is, but it has nothing to do with our doing anything. It has everything to do with how God made us, i.e. who we are...our being. (For more on this click here) 

We are in his image, i.e. like God, and he loves this *about us. Why? Because only image bearers are we able to enter into and fully participate in the beatific love of the Father, Son, and Spirit and reflect that infinite relational love back to him OR have God's kind of love for his other beloved image-bearers, along with the rest of His highly valued and beloved creation. 

(Let us remember that after each act/day of creation, God said it was good. And when he finally created mankind (male and female), the crown of his creation, he said it was all very good).

So going back to the original question of whether God loves us because of who he is or who we are, both are true. But the latter is based on and springs out of the former. So in this sense, God loves us because of who God is first and foremost.  Because there is infinite love between the Father, Son, and Spirit, there is infinite love for us, His image bearers.

If God were not who he was first and He had not made us the way we are there would be no love for us. No love within God first and therefore no love going out to all of creation. 

Everything is rooted in and grounded on God being Father, Son, and Spirit in a blissful and loving relationship from all eternity past. And we who have been created in his image are able to fully participate in this beatific union.

"And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent...

I made known to them your name, and I will continue (by His Spirit) to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." - the very last words (verse 26) of Jesus during the last supper right before his arrest and crucifixion. John 17:3, 26

* in fact both we and Christ are in the image of the Father. Christ is the eternal image and only begotten Son. [ Col 1:15; Php 2:6; Heb 1:3 ] We are the created image and adopted sons and daughters in Christ. This is why Christ's is called our brother.

For a further discussion on being vs doing click here. 

Taking action… doing before being?

There is a lot of talk in the church about doing certain things to advance the kingdom or how we must discipline ourselves to do so. But is not all of this fruit i.e. not something we do but something that is produced in and through us?

There's often very little talk about how we are moved to action i.e. What moves us and causes us to act, to do, to bear fruit? Seeking to take action/bear fruit without understanding the cause of it would be synonymous to taking a car on a road trip and trying to push the car down the road before understanding the importance and necessity of filling up the tank.

We are not the fuel that drives the engine, God is. So we must understand how we can "tank up" before we ever talk about how to drive the car, turn a corner, or the value of using a map once en route. We must understand what it means to operate and walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh.

The picture given in Scripture is we must be (abide) before we can ever do. We must be in the presence of God and abide in his love before we can ever bear fruit. Without him, we can do nothing i.e. the car goes nowhere.

For a fuller discussion click here. 

The greater our sin the greater his Grace

When we are most ugly and unlovely, God is loving us most.

How so? 

It requires more love to love someone when they are most unlovely than when they are most lovely i.e. To love us at our worst involves a greater love (commitment to love) than loving us at our best (Just think of your own experience in loving someone angry, ¹hostile, fearful, untrusting, bitter, or anxious versus someone thoughtful and kind). 

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Paul an apostle of Jesus. Rom 5:6-8

So how can God do this... how can He love the unlovely? Because God's love has nothing to do with our performance. It is based entirely on someone else's performance. God himself through Christ!

That commitment of love was made a long time ago (Eph 1:4-6) and the decision and follow through on it is already completed i.e. "it is finished (John 19:30)." Therefore nothing we do can add to or take away from God's love, nothing!!! If we are His child, His love is secured for us and is now fixed on us no matter what! (Rom 8:31-39) 

Why? Because it is secured by someone else's efforts not our own. And not just anyone's, but the efforts of none other than the perfectly loved and lovely, perfectly faithful, and obedient eternal Son of God. The love God has for his Son is now the very same love he has for us. Let this sink in!!!

As we come to recognize this is the kind of love God has for us as his children; a love that, in the above sense, is more intense and steadfast the more unlovely we are, this love... his love, begins to transform us. The more we "get it" the more we change. 

To put this in practical terms, think of one of the areas you struggle with most. Anger, gluttony, anxiety, fear, lust etc...fill in the blank. Whatever it is, think of the last time you blew it in this area. How did you feel? Dejected, rejected? (Not by God. That, my friend, is all in your head, not in God's heart. More on this later). 

Next time you find yourself failing in the area you struggle with most, make yourself (choose to) think in the midst of that struggle, "God is loving me right now while I am in the middle of this. He is loving me in my sin and in my struggle!" Then make yourself think of why he is 100% with you and for you, loving you at the very moment of your failure, and what Christ did so the Father doesn't turn away but is always seeking, pursuing, and loving you, as much as ever (in a sense more than ever); that Christ died for that very sin you are in the middle of. Your specific sin helped put him on the cross. This thinking is what the Bible means when it says "reckon" these things to be true. 

Romans 6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live (present tense) with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also (in the exact same way) must consider (reckon in the KJV) yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

How will this "reckoning" affect what you are struggling with? My suggestion is if you really "get" his love (i.e. believe he loves you the way he says and has already proven) it will cause that sin's pull to lose its grip as it's happening. If it doesn't, it is only because you don't truly believe He really loves you as He claims (and proved) and is loving you in and at that moment of your turning away from trust in Him. That He already knew in advance how, when, and where you would fail him, and he went to the cross anyway. 

Are we getting better or worse? BOTH!

God's love for us wasn't just before we came to Christ but also now that we are in him... And in a sense, even more so. How? As we mature the awareness of our need for God's love increases (our objective need for it, however, remains constant and never changes, as well as its availability. This is a constant and settled reality because of Christ). 

But as we mature, our actual sin/unbelief/distrust truly declines over time (i.e. our faith increases resulting in greater faithfulness/obedience) while our subjective awareness of our sin/unbelief/distrust increases. Or to say it another way, we are getting better in one sense but getting worse in another, at the same time. And this trajectory continues until we go to be with him. 

Our sense of increasing dependence, need, and appreciation for the grace of God also increases (the need itself is and has always been constant, our sense of that need does not; it grows over time).

As we mature in our faith we become more keenly aware of the various areas of our rebellious distrust we still subtly cling to, as well as God's grace extended to us in that rebellion. It's not that these (our rebellion and God's grace) are new areas. They were always there, we just weren't as aware they were. They are only new to our awareness of them. 

That is not to say sin/distrust/unbelief/unfaithfulness does not matter (or to say it positively, whether faith matters), it does. Rom 6:1-2  But we are talking about God's disposition of love towards us in our sin, not our subjective experience and participation in that love i.e. our rebellious distrust of God does not change his actual love for us, it only changes our experience of it.

God's objective love and our subjective experience of that love are entirely distinct even though connected. One is always true and constant (his objective love) while the other (our experiencing of his love) comes and goes according to our faith i.e. our trust (our resting or abiding in it) that His love is there, never-ending, uninterrupted, no matter what we go through or how we feel. 

For a further discussion on our participation and experience of God's love click here. 

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¹Loving our enemies is a very radical idea and totally contrary to our broken, rebellious, and distrusting nature. But Christ calls us to love our enemies because this is exactly what he does and who He is. He is seeking to make us more like Himself i.e. to conform us to his image. 

 The deepest and greatest love is always sacrificial. GOD IS LOVE. 

The mechnism of change

The primary process or mechanism by which we change is twofold:

1. Realizing the full extent of our brokenness 

    and 

2. Realizing the full extent of God's love in spite of it. 

We should pause and reflect on these two realities continuously. We will not gain the full benefit of understanding these otherwise.

The more fully we see these the more we change. This is an ongoing never ceasing process until we go in to eternity.

In addition

To see each fully requires seeing the other. One does not occur without the other.

We cannot appreciate and understand the fullness of God's love until we know the full extent of our brokenness and our constant, ongoing need for His love 

AND 

We cannot face or fully admit the full extent of our brokenness until we understand the fullness of his love.

These are like a loop. One feeds off the other and vice versa. We are constantly going back-and-forth between these two as if in an ever expanding upward spiral, gaining a fuller understanding of each as we advance upward in increasingly greater trust of his love for us.

Also a secondary but key part of our growth is understanding we are still in Gods image even though greatly marred. The importance of this is recognizing that we are worth loving i.e. lovable... Able to receive, experience and participate in his love. We are broken but that is not saying we are useless or worthless. We are redeemable and worth being redeemed or God wouldn't have made the effort to redeem us.

For more discussion on this click here.

As broken as we are we still can receive and give love back to God and in turn reflect that love out to others to his glory i.e. drawing attention the greatness of God. 

We are *responsible i.e. "response able." We are able to respond (and do respond) in love to God when we receive his love for us.

We are valuable precisely because we are like God and therefore able to have a conscious and deliberate relationship with God. We can be and indeed in Christ, we are the sons and daughters of God and the brothers and sisters of Christ.

Thinking we can be our own god is our problem. Being in Gods image and all that this means, is not. It is a key element of our actual worth.

* Responsible:

2. Able to discharge an obligation; or having estate (property-that which we are in possession of) adequate to the payment of a debt (obligation). - webster's (1828)

#Lovely #Lovable #Responsible #ThoughtsAboutGod #ThotsAboutGod