Wednesday, May 06, 2009

God Likes Me


There is a phrase that I’ve struggled with, but only recently have found the guts to say:

God likes me.

Wait. Don’t click away from this page yet. I’m not about to jump onto the Let-God-Be-Your-Valentine bandwagon any time soon, and I won’t quote any Hallmark cards. Promise.

The truth is, I’m usually very much repulsed by phrases like “God likes me,” or “Jesus is my homeboy,” or “Yay God!” because they seem…so…irreverent. They make it sound as if God is my cheerleader, my boyfriend, or my equal. Yet in reality, the Psalms state that He is the One “who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke,” and Isaiah said that the angels around His throne have an extra set of wings just for shielding their face from His blindingly-bright holiness. God is not my equal, and I don’t want to downplay Him by adopting a phraseology that forgets who He is.

At the same time, zeal for recognizing God’s holiness and immutability can’t replace our knowledge of His love. I’ve read books on God’s praiseworthiness that repaint His love as duty. They say, “God’s love for you is solely a choice He’s made to stick by you even though He doesn’t like you much," just like a man who stays married to his wife because it’s right, though he loathes her—it doesn’t make sense.

God does love because it’s His choice, He does love because it’s His nature, and He is revolted by our sin. Even wimpy human psyches can process that. The part of His love that gets incomprehensible is the extravagance--the idea that God actually has affection for us, and ties up His happiness in our own.

I really appreciate what Tim Challies wrote on this recently:

"I thought about this a short time ago when I was considering how God feels about us, how he feels about me, how he feels about all of his children. I guess I often go through life thinking that God is generally displeased with me. I see my sin, I see my failings, I see my heart. At the same time I see from Scripture God’s majesty, his holiness, his perfection. And when I put these together I suppose that God must be looking at me with at least some level of disgust….

But I’m starting to think that I’ve had this all wrong….Maybe it was my recent studies in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Maybe it was my reading through the prophets, seeing how God hates sin but loves his people. Maybe it was just talking to my mother who came to this realization, I think, long before I did. But somehow I am starting to see that God hates my sin but that he loves me. God despises the evil that lurks within me, but is extravagant in his grace. He actually, really loves me.

And maybe in that way God isn’t so different from the pastors I see at conferences. He loves us. He loves me. And more than that, he’s proud of me. He isn’t petty, filling his mind with all those things I’ve done wrong, but rather he is gracious, seeing all those evidences of his grace in my life....Maybe we can be so careful in (rightly) understanding God’s hatred for sin and his desire for holiness that we forget about his great love for us despite the sin that still pollutes us. Maybe we forget that God truly does regard as children—children he not only loves but children he also genuinely likes."

I’m realizing that love that doesn’t like the beloved is only a step or two higher than contempt. Real love finds something to love in the beloved—and if the beloved has nothing to even slightly admire, the lover sets to work—to make in the beloved something admirable.

God loves you. He loves me. It wasn’t my charms (ha) that caused His love. I’d say with election before the foundation of the world, He preceded any charm. I was a wretch when I claimed me and am wretched still. But He’s working in me, loves me still, and loves what I will one day become.

J.I. Packer explained it this way:

“God was happy without man before man was made; He would have continued happy had He simply destroyed man after man had sinned; but as it is He has set His love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by His own free voluntary choice, He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness shall be conditional upon ours. Thus God saves, not only for His glory, but also for His gladness….The thought passes understanding and almost beggars belief, but there is no doubt that, according to Scripture, such is the love of God.” (Knowing God, page 113)

It’s flabbergasting—and would sound utterly man-centered and arrogant if it weren't written clearly throughout the Bible. You are a sinner, and God hates sin, but He does not hate you. In fact, He's for you.

"Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to You, O Lord, belongs steadfast love." (Psalm 62:11,12a)