Jesus Loves You (Part I)

            I apologize for a multiple-part blog.  It gets pretty intense and people wonder why I’m long winded.  Someone once wrote to someone else and apologized “for writing such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one”.  So I’m going to write a lot because being concise is hard.  I appreciate your grace.  I think some of these ideas have the potential to change your (and my) life.  So don’t walk in here for a theology lesson, but to apply truth to your life.

Jesus loves you.  Perhaps one of the weightiest ideas of all history has been condensed to a trite cliché that people mainly use as a passive aggressive way to vent their anger at the car that’s cutting them off.  The same phrase that has the ability to change everything about a person, the whole lifestyle, the whole mind-frame, the whole outlook, has been transformed into something different, lesser, worse. 

I know this is so because for the past couple days I have been contemplating this phrase and its relevancy, and not once have I been reduced to tears.  Not once have I dropped to the ground in sheer awe of the magnitude of such a phrase.  Not once have I called a friend and just wept with joy at the power of this statement.  Why is this so?  I’m claiming that this phrase could be the most significant piece of knowledge in all of human history, and yet I’m coming at it as if it were a science project or a math problem.  Why am I seemingly unmoved at what I call the most powerful piece of knowledge there is?  I think it’s because we as a church and a body of believers have taken the single greatest piece of knowledge there is, “Jesus loves you”, and have made it a trite cliché to say when people are depressed.  We’ve stamped it on so many T-shirts, mints, bouncy balls, and cross necklaces, that it has become almost irrelevant. So my goal with this writing is to go through the phrase “Jesus loves you” one word at a time and try to convince you of its significance and worth!

The first word is “Jesus”.  I think this is the part that turns most people off from the concept completely.  Who’s Jesus?  If I held a sign on the street saying that “Joan of Arc loves you”, people would think I was crazy, she’s dead and thus unable to love.  If I posted a Facebook status that said, “Bill Gates loves you!”, people would deny it.  Either Bill Gates is a creeper, or I’m lying about the affection that he has for you.  You’ve never hung out with Bill Gates, so for him to express his undying love for you would be taking things slightly fast.  A DTR or conversation over coffee would have been nice before he starts telling everyone how deep his affection is for you.  If I told you that the Tooth Fairy loves you, you’d think I was ignorant.  Because the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist (sorry to my large 4-year old audience; you had to know at some point), she is incapable of love (sorry to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for designating the Fairy a “she”.  Nothing personal).  It’s nonsensical and absurd to tell someone that Joan of Arc, Bill Gates, or the Tooth Fairy loves you. 

Which may be why this phrase has lost some of its potential impact.  Without clarifying the nature of Jesus, Christians have told thousands of people that a historical figure loves them.  A dead man can’t love.  Neither can a distant and unknown or imaginary one.  And so why is the historical figure of Jesus separate from other historical figures?

The answer is a doozy.  If I sound crazy for writing all this, I apologize.  Sometimes you look at the words you’ve written and feel like a lunatic scribbling conspiracies on his walls.  What’s different and better about Jesus that makes him capable of personal love?  Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he wasn’t really just a historical figure.  Not that he didn’t exist, but that he has existed for quite some time.  Not that he didn’t live on earth with the rest of us, but that he also made the earth, and life, and the rest of us.  I don’t think Jesus was just a historical figure like Joan of Arc or Napoleon, I think he was and is a preeminent figure, an everlasting and all-mighty figure.  Not just a God that makes but that also loves.  If Jesus was God, that’s significant.  If Jesus was a God who loves, that changes everything.  If Jesus was God whose only mission on the earth was to love and die on account of love, then I should be on the ground sobbing right now.  If there is a God who not only loves but also sacrifices Himself to show love, that means that love isn’t a cute cliché, a nice idea, or a happy thought.  It means that love is powerful and real and can actually change things.  If love prompted God to die, then perhaps love has the power to do the same for me.  Perhaps this love that has been shown can also be received and can also be emulated.  Which changes everything for me.

Because of the fact that Jesus is a preeminent, all-powerful, all-loving God and not merely a historical figure, I have HOPE.  The fact that Jesus died on a cross puts some weight to the phrase “Jesus loves you” as the fact that He rose puts credibility onto it.  This phrase suddenly doesn’t become trite, but instead turns into the most powerful phrase of history.  The God of all power sacrificed His power for love.  The God in control gave up everything.  This is hope.