Many of us feel that we are unloved by God. If this is so,
this chapter is for you!
Many of us feel that we are unloved by God. If this is so,
this chapter is for you!
Firstly, God is not robotic. If God’s love is no more than
an obligation or decision to behave in a certain way towards His people, it
would be difficult to see the glory in such a love. Instead, His love can be
partially understood because we are created in His likeness. Therefore, we
should expect that His love is passionate since our love is passionate. We
become sick when our love isn’t reciprocated.
When God sees His people chasing after other gods He too is
tormented, since He is jealous for our welfare. Therefore, Paul warned:
·
…I do not want you to be participants with
demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot
partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the
Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Corinthians 10:20–22)
Besides, He actually suffers as we suffer:
·
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and
the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed
them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:9)
During the times of the Judges, Israel continued to turn
from their God. This caused Him to turn from them. But eventually, He could not
bear their oppression any longer and sent His judges to rescue His people:
·
…For the LORD was moved to pity by their
groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. (Judges 2:18)
Love is also the greatest command, the goal of all His
commands, the icing on the cake. This tells us about what is His ultimate concern:
·
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall
love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law
and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40)
He demands love from us because He is love and wants us to
partake of His love. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise that God is love before
all else, and the Cross is the greatest demonstration of His love:
·
God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified
by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if
while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much
more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans
5:8-10)
The Cross was also the time of Christ’s greatest glory:
·
And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for
the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of
wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears
much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this
world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:23–25)
The Cross is the ultimate testimony of the nature of God. It
is this testimony that God is love and not a deceptive sadist as my depression
and panic attacks had been telling me! A sadist would never suffer and die for
our sins!!
The life of Lot reminds me of God’s love. In many ways, he
had been a spiritual failure:
·
He chose to dwell in one of the most sinful
places.
·
He entertained angels but wanted to speed them
off early in the morning before they could see his town, Sodom, for what it
was.
·
He was willing to give his two virgin daughters
to a rape mob.
·
He allowed his daughters to get him drunk on two
successive evenings so they could bring forth babies by him.
However, his sins did not disqualify him from God’s love:
·
and (God) delivered righteous Lot, sore
distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked (for that righteous man
dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul
from day to day with their lawless deeds) (2 Peter 2:7-8)
How are we to reconcile these two apparently opposite
portraits of Lot? The same way we reconcile the perplexing portrayals of faith
we find in the “Hall of Fame of Faith,” and those found throughout the Bible,
like:
·
By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on
dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.
(Hebrews 11:29)
By faith? Israel had been in rebellion against their God as
they heard the Egyptian chariots approaching them and indicted Moses for
bringing them out of slavery. However, in the depths of their heart, God
perceived a tiny mustard seed of faith, and that was enough. He also perceived
the same faith in the heart of Lot.
The same thing pertained to Abraham’s wife Sarah who laughed
in disbelief when this barren 90-year-old woman heard God’s promise that she
would give birth the following year:
·
By faith Sarah herself received power to
conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who
had promised. (Hebrews 11:11)
By faith? Underneath, God perceived an element of faith in
Sarah heart.
King David was the “man after God’s
own heart” (Acts 13:22). However, he had committed adultery and then killed her
husband to cover his sin. Then, he engaged in a cover up involving others in
his sins. As a result, his first child by Bathsheba died. He named the second one
Shlomo (“peace” in Hebrew) probably in hope that there might now be peace and
reconciliation between he and God. However, the Lord had His own name for
Solomon:
·
Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and
went in to her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he called his name
Solomon. And the LORD loved him and sent a message by Nathan the prophet. So he
called his name Jedidiah [meaning “beloved of God’], because of the LORD. (2
Samuel 12:24–25)
Paul had been the worse sinner. Not only did he kill
Christians, but he also forced them to renounce their faith in God. However, he
too had been forgiven and was called to be perhaps the greatest evangelist and
church planter:
·
though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor,
and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in
unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love
that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am
the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the
foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to
those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:13–16)
Our God graciously and lovingly doesn’t want any of His
precious children to be lost. In many cryptic ways, He reassures us that no one
will ever pluck us out of His steadfast arms, not even our multitude of failures.
He is the good Shepherd. It is on the love and care of this
Shepherd that I meditate daily. How else can we stand!
2 comments:
If God is tormented when we go after other gods, it means we can manipulate God's emotions with our behavior If that is the case, God needs us because He is insecure about Himself.
That is not the God the scriptures portrait. If I were you, I would be careful not to make God into your own image and likeness.
The face of God is Jesus Christ. To those who rejected Him, He let them, but He never went after them. They needed Him, not the other way around. Lastly, God's jealously is holy, not human, and not weak.
William.
He made us in His image. We therefore can suppose that we can understand Him somewhat through our own image and experience.
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