God loves rebels, not rebellion

God loved us in our rebellion from the very beginning. Why? 

Because: 

1. He is love and 

2. He also seeks to honor us - as bearers of His image - and our freedom to choose (even if it results in us not choosing Him and causing harm to ourselves and others). 

But what is the significance of this kind of embrace and pursuit of us?

By ¹pursuing and loving us in our rebellion (i.e. as sinners) God wins us back to himself while still allowing us to maintain the dignity of ²our choice (we freely rebel but also freely turn to Him in trust and away from that rebellion). In this way God - over time - wins us over to submitting to Him freely, out of love, gratitude, and trust (vs obligation - which can never satisfy anyway), while also allowing us to retain the dignity of choosing Him as dignified and glorious bearers of His image.

But The Bible tells us that God chooses us, not the other way around. How does that work? 

Though God ³chooses to awaken us to his love, it is still us doing the choosing after we are awakened and see that love - i.e. we are spiritually dead and blind due to our rebellious unbelief - and in His mercy and love He opens our eyes and reveals Himself as He truly is; glorious, beautiful, and trustworthy in every way. 

In doing so, He does (did) not override our will but opens (opened) our eyes to see his love. Once we see it, we willingly, gladly, and freely choose to pursue Him.

Our problem isn't our wills but our blindness. Our eyes must be opened to see Him (and ourselves) ⁴truly as He is (and we are).

When we pray for God to change us we should not pray he overrides our will but enlivens it by revealing his love to us more fully so we might fall more in love with Him and freely, willingly and gladly pursue him more faithfully.

Love and trust are tied together. The more we see his relentless pursuit, love, and commitment to us regardless of our ongoing rebellious distrust (even as His children) the more we trust in and pursue his directions (will) for us.

In this same way, God calls us to also love others - to love them as He has faithfully loved us in our

ongoing rebellious distrust of His love. Without seeing and basking in His love for us it is impossible to love others in this way.

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¹In order for God to do so, our rebellion and all its destructive consequences had to be addressed. God can not simply ignore destructive behavior. It must be accounted for. 

But God perfectly addressed this Himself - in and through Christ - so that when we accept His solution and provision, He is free to now pursue us only out of love - as if we never rebelled (or are now rebellious). Once we are in Christ, He only has love for us, not condemnation and contempt. He approaches and embraces us completely and only with love and total acceptance.  He looks upon us as righteous in the same way he looks upon his Son. 

He still addresses our rebellious unbelief, but as a loving Father does an immature child and not as our judge seeking justice for an injured party. Christ became the injured party so we no longer have to pay for the injuries we cause others (though we still may experience negative consequences of our poor behavior and choices).

²If it is to be genuine love on our part, it must be free and not coerced or programmed. Love that is coerced is not love at all. Programmed love is a contradiction of terms.

We draw closer to God because we choose to but we choose to because He reveals His beauty (attractiveness) to us which stirs in us a desire to pursue Him. If we are not attracted to Him, we can simply ask Him (a choice we are responsible for) to more clearly reveal Himself to us as He truly is. That is a prayer He always says yes to if we are sincere.

³We may bristle at the idea of God choosing some to follow Him, but not others. However, did he not choose Abraham and his household among all other peoples and only him? And after this, he also only chose Noah and his family to enter the ark and be saved from the flood. We do not bristle at these stories or consider them unfair, but see them as God showing mercy to the ones he called to obey. 

Was God being unfair to those he did not choose? No. He simply allowed others to continue on the path they were already on and had freely chosen. God was not being unfair to others by choosing Abraham and Noah. He was being gracious to Abraham and Noah. So it is with everyone he calls to Himself. None of us deserves His mercy and kindness, yet He extends these to some of us rebels nevertheless. But we are no less rebels.

I propose that a reason God does not choose to open everyone's eyes to see His love is it causes those he does awaken to appreciate His love more, i.e. if God had not opened my eyes I would have gone into eternity without Him. 

This isn't a theory, it actually happens, and if not for the grace of God, there I also go. This realization causes me (you) to appreciate His love in a way I (you) would not have if eternal separation from God - the very Source of love and life - wasn't a very real possibility. This results in those He awakens to experience His love to the greatest possible extent. 

To most fully appreciate good, the possibility of evil must also exist and be a real threat.

⁴And who are we? We are rebellious and broken image bearers of God, whom He loves, values and seeks to restore - like an old, very rusted and corroded machine that got lost and left to the elements. We no longer functions properly (if at all) because of all the dirt, corrosion, and rust. God knows the true value of this machine and that all it needs is to be taken apart, cleaned, grinded, filed, sanded, buffed, polished and reassembled to operate as good as new again.