Can True Love be Found in a Bottle?
“from generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him.” Luke 1:50
In today’s society, at least in the area I live, when God is spoken about at all He is usually easily dismissed. People seem to think that if God is love, which He is, then they have nothing to worry about. If God loves them so much then He won’t really care what they do. They love their kids no matter what they do so God must love us like that too, right?
In our fervor to make God more enticing and desirable to
others, I think the church has gone too far in focusing on ONE aspect of God.
It is absolutely true that God is love,
but that’s not ALL He is! God is also holy, just, and righteous. While we talk a lot about what God loves, I
think it is equally important to talk about what God hates.
God hates evil and sin, this is clear throughout the Bible. Knowing this, it
becomes clear that we have to pick a side. We can’t expect God to love us and expect
Him to allow us to do evil and remain in good standing with Him. Jesus taught
us that we
cannot serve two masters. At some point you have to decide what you truly
believe, what you are going to follow and base your life on.
Allowing ourselves to acknowledge that God is holy also
draws our attention to the fact that we are not.
That’s a scary realization. God loves us, but His justness demands fulfillment
as well. He cannot allow sin in His presence and thus, we are definitely not
all going to just go to heaven when we die. It’s a pickle. The Bible tells us
that God is not
willing that any should perish, meaning go to hell, but it also tells us
that at the Day
of Judgement God will sort people like sheep and goats, the righteous will
inherit the kingdom while the evil will depart into eternal punishment. So how
does this line up with a loving God? How could a God who loves us send us to
hell?
I’ve seen a great number of people get held up on this question,
but here’s the simple answer, He loved us enough to give us a choice.
If you’ve ever seen a rom com where the main character uses a love potion or
some derivative thereof to get someone to fall in love with them, they almost
all end up recognizing that forced love is empty, it isn’t love at all. They
desire to undo what they’ve done, and they want the person to choose to love
them. God loves us SO MUCH that He made a way for us to choose to be with Him
in heaven, despite our sin. In the ultimate act of love, He sent His only Son
to earth to show us the way to be with Him and then to die in our place, taking
the punishment we deserve. By this great act, Jesus made a way for us to be forgiven, to be
washed clean of our sin debt and be clothed with His righteousness
when we cannot achieve this on our own. If there were other, easier, ways of
making this happen then I can’t imagine Jesus would have gone through what He
did. Instead, the truth is, Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf is the ONLY way we
can be made right with God and, consequently, be with Him when we die.
Here's the Thing: We encourage our kids to think of
Jesus as their friend (what
a friend, Jesus is my
buddy), and He is, but He’s the kind of friend that you want with you when
you go someplace dangerous because you know He will keep you safe and all the
bad guys will be afraid of Him. He’s the kind of friend you look up to and respect.
He’s the kind of friend you want to make proud of you. When Mary talks about
the fear of God, she’s not saying she’s afraid of Him, she’s saying that she is
in awe of and has deep respect for Him. She sees her own humble, sinful
position before Him and recognizes her lack of a right to insist on anything. She
glories in His mercy toward her, the undeserved, unearned grace He has given to
call her to Himself. It’s this same grace and mercy that He shows to us.
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