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Simply Loved

Before we look at works, it’s important to understand the love of God toward us. It’s vital to understand that works do not create God’s love and gaining favor is not the purpose of our works. What makes God love me? Nearly every person has asked this question. Most people go through life hoping they are doing enough to merit God’s approval. Even those who know that God’s grace is unmerited may still struggle with living like it in their everyday life. This knowledge needs to make the six-inch journey from the head to the heart.

When people fail, they feel they have disappointed God. In their weakness, they either do something they know is wrong, or don’t do something they know they should. The next thought is the perceived angry stare of God.

When Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? What did God do? Did God say, “You blew it,” and then turn His back on them? No. Did God hide from Adam and Eve? No.

Adam and Eve hid from God. They fell short of God’s glory intended for them when they bought into the false promise that if they rebelled, their actions would make them like God, to know good and evil. When they committed themselves to pursue the lie, their eyes were indeed opened. And what was the first thing they saw? When they knew good and evil, they saw their own nakedness and shame. Shame drove them away from God. After the fall, Adam and Eve recognized their own inability to measure up to God’s perfect character, and they no longer felt welcomed in God’s presence.

This is what happens in our lives when we recognize our inability to measure up to the standard of God’s character. Just as with Adam and Eve, God pursues us as we attempt to hide from Him. And His goal is not to punish, but to cover our sin and restore fellowship with us.

Anyone who attempts to merit God’s favor by perfect living and perfect works has missed the point of the Father-child relationship. I love my kids. Even when they fail me, I still love them. When they rebel, I have to deal with their behavior, but I still love them the same. There is a strain on our relationship if they are misbehaving. When this happens, it isn’t love that is lost, but the fellowship.

We falsely measure love and God’s favor based on our immediate circumstances. If I feel pain, God must not love me. If I sin, God must not love me.

Peace, comfort, prosperity, and happiness are not the evidences that God loves me. The evidence God loves me is the cross. I need no more proof than this – a holy God cared enough for me to step into the world as a humble man, fulfilled the requirements of the law, and then bore the penalty of the consequences of sin on my behalf.

People try to come up with illustrations to explain God’s love, but they all fall short. For example, there is a story about a drawbridge keeper who took his son to work. His son wandered out on the bridge and a ship came by. As the father was raising the drawbridge, he saw his son had wandered onto the bridge and then had to make a decision. If he kept raising the bridge, his child would be killed, but the people saved. If he rescued his son, the ship would hit the bridge and the passengers would die. To save many passengers, he sacrificed his son.

There are many variations and for some people, it conjures up emotions of sacrifice. But the story is fundamentally flawed. First, God wasn’t caught by surprise. Nor was the son an unexpected victim. Nor do people pass by in safety, saved from a death they knew nothing of. According to scripture, God chose us through Christ before the foundation of the world.[1] Jesus said He willingly laid down His life and it was for this purpose that He came into the world.[2]

There is no adequate illustration to explain the love expressed through the cross. Indeed, we need no illustration. The cross is the picture of God’s love. And once we pass through the cross, we’ve passed from the existence of death in the flesh to the new life in the Spirit. As John 1:12 puts it, through Christ we have the right to become children of God. Someone who has been born into God’s kingdom by the Spirit is a child of God. Sons and daughters don’t have to merit their relationship with their parents. The closeness of that relationship is affected by our maturity, but the love God expresses toward us is not.

Consider this passage from John 15:14-15

 ¹⁴ “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
 ¹⁵ “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

This is not a new concept, though it was not well understood until after Jesus revealed the Father. Jesus made the statement, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”

Most people look at our heavenly Father as a stern disciplinarian that only shows up when He is taking something away, scolding us, or punishing our shortcomings.

Others look at God as though He is a chummy buddy. You see t-shirts with phrases like, Jesus is my BFF. How can our relationship with the Father be like a friendship, yet without demeaning God to the level of a pal who has no more influence on our lives than a friendship among peers?

Friendship with God isn’t complicated, but can be understood. The Bible says that Moses spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend.[3] Yet the relationship God had with Moses wasn’t always this way. Moses began in fear, but as he walked with God, the relationship grew into friendship. And that friendship didn’t exempt Moses from obedience and even rebuke. God still held Moses accountable when he disobeyed.

To better understand how God can be the authority over us and yet a friend, let’s look at the human relationship God compares His relationship to. Fathers. This comparison would apply to both our parents.

A child begins life immature and incapable of making wise choices. Infants need constant care and nurturing. As children grow into the next stage of life, they look at the attention they’ve received and begin to expect everything to be a self-centered experience. Children are a joy to parents when they are responsive, but when they pursue the things they cannot do or have, conflict arises. Love isn’t dissolved, but the relationship can be strained.

The back and forth relationship continues through adolescence. But something wonderful happens when kids reach maturity. The parent becomes a friend. As children begin to adopt values and responsibilities, the requirements of parenthood eases, and the two become much closer.

This is why Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I’ve commanded.” When a Christian matures and begins to adopt responsibility and then values what is good, the closeness of our relationship with God blossoms into a close friendship. The friendship does not nullify the commands, but rather causes us to appreciate the commandments of God. We appreciate the word because we see value. Our temporal self-centered perspective shifts with the understanding of the eternal perspective.

When I live as though eternity doesn’t matter, I am not valuing what God values. The Lord then has to focus on correcting behavior. Eternity does indeed matter. God’s goal is to guide each person’s life into maturity so the kingdom can be in our grasp. Our Heavenly Father / child of God relationship is either focused on walking the path of this life together in fellowship, or getting us off the destructive road of the flesh and onto the eternal path of the Spirit.

Some children mature earlier than others, and some never mature at all. An immature adult who continues to make foolish choices still grieves his or her parents. But that doesn’t mean they are no longer family.

Let me use a story to illustrate this. A foolish son approached his wealthy father. He didn’t love the relationship. He only valued what his father possessed. To his father’s grief, he said, “I don’t want to wait until you die. Give me my portion of the inheritance so I can leave and make my own way.”

The family business was looked upon as a hindrance to his life’s ambition, and he was sure he understood the world and knew better than his father. The man tried to give good advice, but the son was stubborn and unwavering. Though the father knew the consequences of the choice, he gave in, sold enough of his business to divide the inheritance to his son, and let him set out on his own.

It was difficult watching the young man walk away. It was hard to tell which hurt worse, the fact that he knew his son was heading for disaster, or the fact that his son didn’t return his love. The young lad didn’t even recognize how everything in his father’s life was born out of love for his children. He could only see correction, having to do things he didn’t want to do, and being oppressed by what he thought were meaningless rules.

The father could have used the inheritance as a tool to keep his son under control, but a forced relationship wasn’t what he wanted.

For years the boy lived like a king. He had many friends and spent his money living it up. One day he went for more money and found the coffers empty. The parties ended and he began struggling to get by. The friends he had spent his money with turned their backs on him and left to find other sources of amusement.

Things grew worse. The area fell under a drought. A year rolled by and the drought became a famine. Farmers had no crops, so he couldn’t find work in the area. In his desperation, he took the worse job imaginable. He took a job feeding pigs and hogs. The young man was a Jew, and the Jews could have no dealings with unclean animals such as swine. But what choice did he have? There were no other jobs to take.

Food became scarce and one day as he was feeding the pigs, the hunger pangs got the best of him. The rations he could buy with his meager earnings wasn’t even enough to feed him. He scooped out a handful of the slop and ate the food intended for the pigs.

When his belly was full, the realization of his situation hit him hard. The paid servants of his father’s house had enough food to spare, but he was living among the pigs and eating what was not fit for human consumption. Suddenly he came to his senses. He would be better off sacrificing his pride and returning home. He would apologize for the cruel words he said to his father, and express how he was not worthy to even be called a son. If his father would just give him a job as a servant, he would be better off than in this place.

The old man peeked down the long and dusty road leading up to his vineyard. As he worked and checked on the other workers, he often passed by this road. Each time he would look to see if by some chance his son would come home. Sometimes he would stop and watch the road for hours, wondering about the fate of his son. After making his rounds, he wandered to the road again and stopped to watch.

This day he saw something different. Off in the distance a figure walked toward the family home. He thought the walk looked familiar and he strained to see. The emaciated man hung his head down as he walked, but there was no mistaking the stride. It was his son!

The old man cast off all dignity, and sprinted down the road toward the lad. At some point, the boy heard footsteps and stopped. He dropped to his knees and called out to the father, who was still running down the road. “I’m not worthy to be called your son,” he cried out. Before he could finish his prepared speech, his father reached him and fell on his neck with joyful tears.

For a long time he ignored the foul odor of his son, but when the two arose from the ground, the father called for the servants to bring clean clothes and a ring for his finger – the ring given only to those called family.

I’m sure you recognize the story. It’s often called the prodigal son. It’s the story Jesus used to illustrate God’s love toward us. The truth is that to some degree, it is every son and every daughter. It is a picture of God’s perfect love toward us, and it’s one of the richest illustrations in the Bible.

What did the son do to become worthy of the Father’s love? Some would say repent, but that misses a significant part of the story. Each day the father watched for his son’s return. The love was already there. The young man was loved, even while he was filthy, rebellious, and living among the swine. He couldn’t experience that love until he repented, but the father loved him even while he was in rebellion.

After returning, the older brother showed just as much resistance as the younger one had previously done. Though he didn’t rebel and demand his father’s money, he did miss out on experiencing the fellowship of love. When he heard the music and celebration, he was angry. He refused to come in to be part of the fellowship, and the father had to come out seeking him. “Look at what I have done for you,” he said to his father. He looked at his labors and compared himself to his brother. He thought his brother was unworthy to have such favor with his father. He was right in that regard. Both sons were unworthy, both sons were loved, and the father pursued both of them with the offer of fellowship. The Father’s love was never based on worthiness.

Whether we run from God and miss the joy of the relationship, or we work ourselves to exhaustion, we have the exact same need. To the people around us, a laboring Christian may appear spiritual. But in reality, both the wanderer and the legalist have the same need. The symptoms may be different, but both have the same problem. Both also have the same solution.

What kept the prodigal son from enjoying fellowship with the father? He followed his own ways. He suffered the consequences of his actions and he squandered his inheritance, but he was still a son. All he needed was to receive the father’s love that had been there all the time.

What kept the legalistic brother from experiencing fellowship at the end of the story? He looked to himself, his labors, his lack of failure, and his superiority. Rather than meriting love, these became a barrier to love. All he needed was to accept the fathers love and join the fellowship.

Just like in the parable of the prodigal, our church culture has the same problem. It’s easy for the one who is at their wits end to realize their need, but it’s hard for those who feel they have merited something to recognize their own need. This is why Jesus told the spiritual leaders of his day, “The prostitutes and sinners will enter the kingdom of God before you.”[4]

Like the son who thought he stood on obedience, the spiritual leaders Jesus addressed were standing outside the fellowship and scorning the sinners – those who had done what they would never do. They then scorned Jesus for treating them like family. “Why does he eat and drink with sinners?” they complained. In their eyes, the lowlifes weren’t worthy of fellowship, so they excluded themselves from Jesus’ company.

The good news is that whether we have stayed in the congregation of the behaving, or have wandered far away from God, His love remains true. Our heavenly Father wants you to experience true fellowship with Him.

Think about an earthly king or dignitary. When the President arrives, people are intimidated. When I was in the military, we had high ranking generals visit from time to time. Everyone panicked when the general came to town.

One time a general visited our base and walked around to see the soldiers in daily life. He walked up to a soldier washing mud off his boots with a hose. “How are you doing, soldier?” he said.

The soldier casually said, “Fine,” but then he looked up and saw the stars on the officer’s collar. He snapped to attention, still holding the hose in his left hand while saluting with his right. Water poured out of the hose, and doused the general.

He looked down at the stream of water hitting his leg and calmly said, “You can drop your salute. And that hose, please.”

It was good for a laugh, but illustrates how intimidating authority can be. When a high ranking officer walks through, many people act as though they are afraid of the person, but what do you think his children do when he walks in the door? Unless he’s a cruel man, his kids aren’t intimidated. To them, he’s just daddy. The same is true for every king, emperor, and world leader in history. Those under his authority may live in fear, but most likely his children run to him and climb into his lap.

This is the picture we should have of God. He is God, ruler of heaven and earth, and one day every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. But to us who already know Him as Lord, He is also our friend and father, and we His children.

Though we stray, we are not disowned or cast down. When we’re entangled in our failures, He picks us up and restores us to the fellowship. Like a loving father, God corrects us to protect us from eternal consequences, but He also never ceases to love us as His children. And as we mature into obedience, we are no longer limited to looking to Him as a toddler does. We learn to be responsible and live in the promise, “You are my friends if you keep my commandments.”

Obedience is not to gain favor. Obedience is not to make God love us more. Obedience is the result of us loving God who first loved us. Obeying out of fear misses the whole point. And it misses the mark. When someone loves another, they want to do the things that please the other. Love isn’t trying to merit someone’s approval. I love my kids; therefore, I do things to please my kids. I do it for no other motivation than as an expression of affection and to see them enjoying life.

How my children respond does not change my love for them, but it does affect the closeness of our relationship. A child who reaches out to her father will have a closer relationship than the child that rebels or simply stands aloof. It’s not the love that is different; it’s how a child responds that makes them closer or more distant. In the same way, how the Christian responds to God and His word affects how close their relationship with God will be.

This is not an abusive relationship we have with God. An abused spouse may do something that pleases her husband, but it’s out of fear, not love. When two people love each other, they give to each other. The gift isn’t payment, nor does it require payment. A gift ceases to be a gift when payment is expected.

If you serve God out of an obligation or because you think God will owe you a return favor, it isn’t love. God first loved you and expressed that love through the cross. Because He first loved us, when we recognize that love, we express our love to Him by the things we do and the way we act.

People who repent because they are afraid of hell have missed the whole point. In fact, that is human repentance. It becomes mankind trying to rescue himself by changing his own mind. True repentance is responding to God’s call as He draws us to Himself. It’s a call to fellowship, not to flee hell. God so loved you that He gave of Himself through the Son to reconcile you to the fellowship He created you to live in. If you so love God, you’ll give your life to Him as an expression of love. Then you have both sides giving to each other, and true fellowship begins.

God first loved you, so the only thing preventing the fellowship of love is your willingness to receive that love and to abide in love by given back with a life obedient to His commands which flow from His nature.

[1] Ephesians 1:4

[2] John 18:37

[3] Exodus 33:11

[4] Matthew 21:31