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 ¹about us. Why? Because only image bearers have the capacity 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, who are like Him i.e. 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 because we too are created for this love.

"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." - these are the very last words (verse 26) of Jesus during the last supper right before his arrest and crucifixion. John 17:3, 26

¹ 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 that we are still in God's image, even though greatly marred. The importance of this is recognizing that we are worth being loved i.e. lovable... which makes us 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 a way 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 to 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. But we receive it when we believe it i.e. believe He made a way to restore us back to Him in and through Christ. And this way is the evidence of His infinite love. 

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 God's 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

Unable yet still accountable

Christ said the greatest commandment is to love God with everything we have and are... and our neighbors as ourselves Matthew 22:36-40.

However, how can we be accountable for not being loving when we don't have the ability to be loving on our own i.e. without God? Joh 15:4-5,12

We may not have the ability within ourselves, apart from God but...

1. We are still in God's image with the capacity to receive and return love.

2. We are offered free access to God - the source of infinite, eternal love - in, through, and because of Christ. 

Through this access to Him, we can be empowered to do what we are designed and called to do. 

When we have access to God in and through Christ and participate in His infinite love, we are empowered to love and be loving as we were designed to and have the capacity to be. 

This doesn't mean we will do so perfectly or consistently, but this is no longer required since Christ assigned his perfect record of obedience to us. We are now under grace, not God's law. We are received by God as perfectly right (righteous) before Him, when we are not practically in our day to day conduct. 

But to operate at our greatest potential is to operate according to God's design/will i.e. to follow God's direction to love Him with all we are and have and each other. 

Now it is our choice to accept or refuse God's perfect, infinite, and unrelenting love. Though we are not forced to accept God's love, the lack of fruit (our not being loving) due to our refusal to accept God's love, is our responsibility i.e. to refuse to receive the love God freely offers and thereby unable to love others as a result, is a choice we have made and will be held accountable for. We may not be able to love sacrificially on our own, but we are freely offered the resources needed to love as we are called to when empowered by the Source of infinite love. Access to this love is offered to whoever will receive it. 

Our not being able to give to others what they need is not because it's unavailable to us, but simply because we refuse to receive it ourselves, so we might have it to give to others.

This would be like coming across someone starving and not having any food ourselves to give them. But you have been told there is someone who freely offers all the food both of you will ever need, yet you refuse to accept it or tell others because you distrust the one offering the food or you are unwilling to explore the validity of the offer.

However the result of your refusing to receive what is freely available is you are also unable to give to others what they need (you can't give what you don't have), when you could have done so, if you had only believed and accepted the offer.

This is a choice you and I are fully responsible for. Everything necessary for us to have full access to the Source of life and love - the hard part - has already been done for us and fully taken care of. It is now up to us to believe and receive it.

"The Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come.'

And let the one who hears say, 'Come.'

And let the one who is thirsty come; 

let the one who desires take the water of life without price." 

- Rev 22:17

For a discussion on how everything depends on God and us click here

For a further discussion on the necessity of choice click here

For a further discussion on being free yet also bound click here

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#Unable #Accountable #Faith #Love #ThoughtsAboutGod #ThotsAboutGod

What is growth part 2

Growth for a believer is becoming who we already are. It is coming to the place that our experience matches our status.

As a child of God we are fully loved yet we often don't sense being fully loved.

God is fully present yet we often don't sense his presence.

God is always working for our good yet it often appears he is not.

Why is this?

·        Part of it is simply because we still live in a broken world full of pain and suffering. No matter how close we draw near to God this will be part of our existence until we leave this world. That is an external issue and the reality of our existence in a fallen world. 

·        Part of it is we don't truly believe or understand our glorious status as his beloved children. This is an internal issue and the reality of our limitations and our distrust of God. 

·        Part of it is we don't trust God fully and are still inclined to be our own god, seeking to gain a sense of meaning and purpose and love from anything and anyone other then from the one where it is truly found i.e. God himself. This hinders us from experiencing the love of God, already completely secured for us in Christ. This too is an internal issue and the fruit of our fallenness. 

The solution?

Know who God truly is and how he sees you as his beloved and precious child (this is an ongoing process we will never stop pursuing or reach the end of).

Know who you truly are as a creature designed for infinite love that can only be truly satisfied in a relationship with your infinite Creator (this too is an ongoing process you never reach the end of).

• For a fuller discussion on God's objective love verses our experiencing it subjectively click here. 
• For additional thoughts on growth click here.

God exalts us when…

Before God can exalt/advance us he has to sufficiently set us back/tear us down i.e. Humble us.

What does that humbling process look like? 

We have to come to the place that we fully recognize we are not the source of love, of life, of our identity (we are in his image not ours), our ability, of anything.

Our very existence and breath comes from God. 

We must know this not just in our heads but in our hearts; at the core level of belief/trust.

Even our trust is only as good and as strong as the object of that trust i.e. God himself. If we do not understand the greatness of God we will not and cannot have great faith/trust.

We are creatures and all that we are and have comes from our Creator...not some things...everything!

If we are to experience all that God offers, we must recognize God is behind and in everything offered. God himself is ultimately all that we need.

"...when I am weak, then I am strong."  - Paul an apostle of Jesus. 2Co 12:10b

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. - Jesus Joh 15:5  

"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." - James an apostle of Jesus. Jas 4:10  

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything... for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.' "-  Paul the apostle to the Greek philosophers in Athens. Act 17:24,25,28

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! 

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 

"For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" 

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." - Paul an apostle of Jesus. Rom 11:33-35

#Humbled #beingexalted #Advanced #ThoughtsAboutGod #ThotsAboutGod