Monthly Archives: September 2024

17…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph 3:17–19.

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. (Anna Bartlett Warner)

There are two ways of thinking about God.

The first way is “transactional”. This is the way of Cain. The way of Esau. This is the error that Israel fell into over and over.

It is the thinking of the slave: “If I do things right, I’ll get what I deserve. If I mess up, I’ll get beaten.”

God hates it, because it is a denial of who he is. It makes him into a petty pagan god, dishing out favors to the right kind of people.

And we read all of scripture through those lenses.

“If only those people had made better choices”, we say to ourselves, “better things would have happened to them.”

We do this because we are terrified of bad things happening to us. And ultimately we only trust ourselves to make the choices to protect ourselves.

We will shelter our kids.

We will build bigger barns.

We will eat right and exercise.

We will make right choices.

There isn’t anything wrong with those, except this – we don’t really trust that God loves us and will take care of us as he has promised. So we need a backup plan. That would be my own strength and ability.

After all, we say, “The only one I can really trust is me”

But this is not the God we serve.

The second way is the way of love, a God who seeks and saves, a redeemer who loves us so much more than we can possibly imagine. It is the way that we can only see when God finds us wandering and alone and scared.

Look at Israel. God delivered Israel from their bondage – but they refused to embrace that love, because it required trust. So they made gods that they thought they could control.

If they had the control, then they could protect themselves from enemies, from hunger, from thirst, from wild animals.

And God said, “I will never leave you or forsake you. I will lead you to quiet waters. Be still, and see the salvation of YHWH.”

But they would not. “What if God doesn’t come through?”

And that same error is made by so many. 

If I mess up, God will curse me. If our country messes up, God will curse it.

We have to get rid of sinners, aliens, lay-abouts, single welfare moms. immoral people. Paul calls this way of thinking “the flesh”, because it is natural to human nature.

We have to work hard and take hard stances…Because deep down they view God as an angry, harsh, taskmaster waiting for us to step out of line so he can gleefully cast us into hell.

Popular celebrity preachers take great joy in talking about how happy God is to rid the earth of people like us.

But the flesh always has the same result”

19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Gal 5:19–21.

It is why we continue to read of the immorality and betrayal of the preachers of the flesh. Do better things, and God will bless you.

But there is no power there. There is no power to change the heart in the law. The power of the flesh always results in tyranny and oppression, as Paul attests.

But scripture says this”

16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (Jn 3:16–17).

I was taught to have contempt for this verse. I heard far more sermons on how God can’t mean “everyone in the world” then I heard about the love of God. That is sad.

But Paul’s prayer for his friends in Ephesus was that they might know the amazing, astounding love of God –  so fierce, so powerful, so unyielding, that it has no conditions, for Jesus paid them all already.

So that we can rest. I mean, truly, truly rest.

We no longer have to live in fear and hate. We no longer have to fear that we might pray wrong, and have God zap us.

We no longer have to fear that we might screw up, and God will say, “See. I told you Sam was no good.”

I have spent too much of my time worried that I might get something wrong. So I memorized the answers I was supposed to have.

I parroted the things I was taught, afraid of stepping out of line.

We were afraid that if we raised our kids wrong, or if they read the wrong books or listened to the wrong music, that they would step out of God’s love.

And we forgot the astounding, amazing, infinite love of God.

Read Paul’s letters. Is it actually possible to think too highly of God’s love?

But you can only see it when you reach rock bottom. You can only see it when you are afraid, fleeing, lonely, broken, sinful.

Until then, you think that you deserved God’s love somehow. Unlike those gay fellers. Or those Haitians. Or those women. Or those hippies.

Sure, God can love them too – but only if they cut their hair, learn our ways, learn our language, quit being gay…

And if they don’t, then God will gleefully rid the earth of them so that people like me can  live without being bothered by the likes of them.

If you think this through carefully, you will finally understand the rage of Cain and what caused him to kill Abel. How can God accept that guy?

Or the rage of the Pharisees against Jesus. “How can Messiah eat with those loose women? those tax collectors?”

And then you say, “But Jesus didn’t leave them that way. He changed them… he confronted them”

But the truth is that Jesus loved them before the foundation of the world. His love made them lovers, and he sought his bride and is bringing her home.

It was not the law that made them lovers. It was love. Finally someone who got them, who listened, who loved them as they were, who heard everything about them and still loved them.

“We love him, because he first loved us”.”

And we will always, always, always feel ourselves unworthy of that love. We will always feel that we don’t deserve it. That we didn’t earn it, that we aren’t good enough.

And that is the nature of love. All of that is true.

He didn’t say, “If you do the right things, I will show you my love.”

He says “I came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

That’s you.

That’s me.

And he has found us. And every day he says to his bride (That’s you, if you didn’t get that),

Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women. Song of Solomon 2:2

And his bride responds – (again, that is you, if you didn’t get that):

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Song of Solomon 2:3

Sit in his shade. He is the God of Manna. He provides all that we need, because he loves us, not because we earned it. He is returning us to Eden, with the trees laden with fruit that line both sides of the river of life!

Stop thinking like a slave, and think like a child.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!

Every day in eternity you will meditate and know and feel the love of Christ and never exhaust it!

He loves us. He delights in us. He takes joy in us. He sings over us. He makes us beautiful because he clothes us in his garments and washes us by his blood and spirit.

And he crowns us with jewels and gold and precious stones, far greater than anything we can imagine.

But, “The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegrooms face. I will not gaze at glory, but on my king of grace.”

This is love. This is the vast, unmeasured, boundless, inexhaustible sea of love.

Don’t turn that into a petty pagan god, issuing crumbs from his stingy fingers as long as we perform right.

Instead, rest in his love.