Does God Love Me Just The Way I Am?

We've all heard this phrase thrown around, "well, God loves me just the way I am."  This claim is an interesting one and, although this cliched idiom has been asserted by more than a few harlots, under the current climate of diminishing love to a near-emotional reaction from its loftier senses and purposes, it warrants a critical consideration.

At the onset, it must be ascertained as to what sense this statement is being made.  If in saying "God loves me just the way I am" we are meaning God has bestowed His great loving grace upon me whilst I was still mired in my slough of sin and transgression, then by all means, this statement is not only true it is profound and powerful.

On the other hand, however, if in professing "God loves me just the way that I am" I mean to say that God accepts and is content with my current wretched state, than by no means can this be acceptable for this would be to disregard the holy and righteous character of God Himself.  He is loving.  But this comes out of the reality that we are so horribly miserable in our sin.  After all, if we were already acceptable and pleasing to Him, He would not have had to die on a cross!

The truth is that God loves us so much that He desires something more for us, He demands that we be discontent with who we are currently with the understanding that our pilgrimage presses us on to perfection.  We should not think that God would tolerate anything less for us–now that would be un-loving!

Think of the man who loves His car.  Although he loves his car no less when it is full of dirt and grime, it is that same measure of love that compels him to repair it when it is broken, scrub it when it is dirty, and to keep it properly maintained.  To say that he 'loves his car just the way it is' would be to betray the intensity of his affections for his car.

In a similar though far-greater sense, God loves us just the way we are but He is not content to leave us in our sorry states.  He purchased us at a great price–the blood of His Son–that comes with the expectation of reparation.  He does love us the way we are but, thankfully, He is not content to leave us this way!

Romans 3:22-25–All Justified by Grace, Received by Faith

Romans 3:22b-25a: "For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith."

This passage of Scripture is often used as the great equalizer to remind us that we are all on the same footing of righteousness.  It is a righteousness unearned and unmerited; it is the righteousness of God's grace of redemption through the blood of Christ.  But this passage is brimming with theology not just about how short we have all fallen in contrast to the glory of God, but even more so does this verse highlight the great merciful grace of Christ Jesus.

As a good exercise, taking each component of this verse as it is may render some rich understanding.  Consider then:

–For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,...–

–and are justified by His grace as a gift,...–

–through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,...–

–whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood,...–

–to be received by faith.

Amen.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10–He is Strong While We are Weak

2 Corinthians 12:9-10: "But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong."

My usual procedure is to take a verse or a specific passage of Scripture and briefly explain it or relate it to current life.  However, this passage seems to speak for itself.  To be honest, this passage stopped me in my tracks today and I wanted to share it with y'all.  I pray that it speaks to you too!

The Progress of Pilgrims

John Bunyan, in his perennial classic The Pilgrim's Progress, explains the Christian life as a holy pilgrimage along a long, narrow road leading to the Celestial City.  Throughout this pilgrimage, the Christian pilgrims encounter mired bogs of disbelief, mountainous crags of fear, valleys of shadowy death, castles of doubt, and cities of vanity, all created by Satan to steal away weary pilgrims from their intended destination for eternal damnation.

Every so often, the travelers run into one of the perils of their pilgrimage and they are faced with some trial of faith.  However, without fail, as each of these trials concludes and the worn pilgrims continue on their journey, they are comforted by some sort of oasis, by which the travelers are met by other pilgrims who pull back the veil and teach the pilgrims about the reality of the world and Satan's continuall attacks.  These encounters are like salve for the pilgrims and encourage and equip them to continue on to the Celestial City.

The point is that as Christians we are traveling as pilgrims through this world, called to travel along that narrow way which is faith in Christ Jesus.  However, our travels are not without pitfalls and distractions all poised by Satan to pull us away from our King and to eternal condemnation.  Yet through all this, we must rest upon the sure promises of God made to us through Christ.  We can depend on the blessings of promise that God has given to all those who claim Jesus is Lord.  We can have confidence for this pilgrimage because we know that God has secured the way by the shed blood of His Son.

 

This is Love: 1 John 4:9-10

1 John 4:9-10: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

The social networks are currently abuzz over current legislative affairs with slogans like "love is love."  Love has been reduced to a subjective ordeal, removed of all its substance and weight.  In this relativistic world love has been deified while God has been reduced.  The truth, however, is that a god-less love is no more love than a water-less pool is a lake.  We must be clear that love apart from God is, in fact, not love; it is a counterfeit.

By definition, given us throughout Scripture but especially and directly here in 1 John, is a theological matter.  There is no escaping this reality.  And while this is an inescapable truth, we must also add that love is an active theological reality.  It is God's love for us that, it turns out, affects and empowers our ability to love for it is God's love shown for us in His Son that perfectly exemplifies true love.

Jesus is the utter and ultimate love.  It is His life and death that stands as the quintessence of love in the finest most profound sense.  God did through His Son what no man could due for him or herself: He redeemed us from sin and saved us unto eternal life.  Love defined is thus both self-sacrificing as well as wholly compassionate.  In other words, love is doing for another what that other could not be able to do while not expecting any sort of recompense in return; purely out of love.

Hence, when we speak of love with an eye on its highest order we should not ever remove God and what Christ has done for it is Christ who has defined love for us.  Love should not be allowed to wander Christ-less as if it is a singularly human endeavor, lest we forget that the human version is but a shadow of the eternal one.

Christ is the Radiance of the Glory of God

Hebrews 1:3: "He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power."

We live in a current cultural climate of idol makers in which gods are manufactured by cleverness and creativity without much care.  We've made gods of our minds, our egos, our heros, our villains, our athletes, our humanitarian interests, and our political agendas.  But when we hold up our manmade gods to the scrutiny of honest analysis and critique we recoil with defensiveness and vociferousness, as in recognition that our straw religions have been found out and our propensity towards the corporeal has been weighed as nothing less than idolatrous sin.

Jesus Christ is the imprint of the nature of God, the Word of God incarnate, the creating and sustaining power of God Himself.  Any item, person, place, idea, or cause, no matter the virtue involved, is but a pale shadow compared to the great radiant glory of God that is Christ Jesus.  He alone is the great imprint of God to whom we worship and to whom we praise.  It is to His image and likeness that by the Holy Spirit and through faith we are to be conformed and transformed to reflect.

This is the beautiful truth of Christianity: that our Savior is God Himself and He will Himself form us into bearers of His image which, as it were, is who we were meant to be in the first place.  Praise be to God that He has overcome our deficient flesh so that we could bear His image by becoming an image of our deficient flesh while maintaining His perfect radiance!

Last Note on Dying to Self (at least for a while...)

Over the course of the past week, much has been said about the prospect of being dead to sin in order to be made alive to Christ.  And though it has never been a profitable exercise to overfill a brimming cup with words upon words when so few would seem more effective, it is also not very fruitful to try to live to Christ while remaining stuck in the sloughs of sin, kind of like trying to skip a stone across a mired bog as if it were a lake.  For fear of this risk, one final note seems prudent.

What does it mean to die to self?

The difficulty in all of this is the obvious paradox: how can I be dead to my flesh when I am still so obviously alive in the flesh?  The answer is a matter of primacy, of ownership, of personhood, of motivation more than a matter of logistics.  To die to self means that we will no longer give ascension to the whims of our flesh and its lusting desires.

The point here is: What has the priority in your life?  If it is the impulses of the flesh and its temporal fickleness, than your flesh is still alive and is impeding on your obedience to Christ.

Think of the wheel of a car.  In this case, the car is a life.  Who is driving?  Is it hunger? Sex? Passion? Money? Power? Friends? Anything that drives a life that is not an earnestness for Christ and His glory is evidence that the flesh is the one calling the shots.  This is, in plain terms, idolatry.  We are born ingrained with idols of ourselves.  It is only as we are put to death that those idols are destroyed and we are able faithfully serve and worship God fully.

It is thus not a spiritual matter per se to speak of dying to self to be made alive in Christ.  Rather, it is a matter of Lordship: who has the power to tell you what to do?  Dying to self is the only assurance that we are made alive to Christ for only after we eschew our personal interests in faithfulness to God's interests will we actually receive our right and true motivations that we have been made for.  In this sense, dying to self is not a suggestion: it is an utter necessity for the Christ follower.