Jesus Loves You (Part II)

            This is Part II of trying to break the phrase, “Jesus loves you” down and giving it some weight rather than having it be the cute cliché that many people see it as!  I’m going to be looking at the word “loves” today and breaking that down and why it’s significant and relevant to our lives.  If I was good with technology, maybe I’d say “click here for Part I”, but I kind of just put letters in blue and underlined them and you can try clicking as much as you want, but nothing’s going to happen.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  Maybe if you take the time to click over one blog post, you could read it.  I also apologize for the passive aggressive attack on you to compensate for my technological impairment.

 

            So far we know that Jesus isn’t just a historical figure, and is more than a man.  He’s a divine being with the capacity to love in a personal way. But what does that mean?  Jesus loves you.  We all know about love, and those of us who grew up in church know that pastors always diss the dating-relationship kind of love and then say how God’s love is better than your loser boyfriend or girlfriend kind of love.  You’ve probably heard that, and if you’re like me, it doesn’t do a whole lot for you.  When you’ve been single for 17 straight years, there’s nothing better than the perfect, imaginary relationship that you’re going to have someday (not dissing you, future wife!  Just using literary hyperbole in order to prove a point!).  So what does it mean that Jesus loves us? 

            I think one of the best ways I can put this into something that’s relevant is to dispel what you functionally think of this love.  More often than not, we live life like Jesus tolerates us as long as we’re good.  We live like Jesus resents us for asking Him for stuff, like He rejects us for failing again.  Like it was never really His choice to die on the cross, that if He knew who He was dying for that He’d go back and never make that whole propitiation, justification thing happen.  What a waste of time for a bunch of losers.

  

            It is for this reason that we go crawling through life, never praying, only reading our Bible out of our self-righteous duty, only going to church to appease Jesus, who commands us.  Who demands of us.  Who expects from us.  And just like that, we’ve put Jesus into the background and put our acts and our duties and our righteousness in the foreground.  It’s then that we screw up and feel like Jesus doesn’t love us anymore, because the only reason that He tolerated us was because we were being good.  We wonder why so many Christians get discouraged and depressed and don’t feel like trying to remain holy anymore, it’s because we’ve misspoken the whole Gospel!  We say that salvation is by grace alone, and then act like you better be good, because God’s got a short string and could blow up at you at any moment. 

            Which is why Jesus’ love for us should be REVOLUTIONARY.  It’s why Jesus love for us should be MIND-BOGGLING.  Every single facet of God’s holiness should scream to our insufficiency and worthlessness, but every single facet of God’s love screams to our heart.  One thing that I can promise you is that you will never, ever, ever have a worthwhile relationship with God if you always think of God as a mountain that needs to be climbed in order to reach righteousness.  God is not a mountain to be climbed or a bar to be exceeded, but is a Father in pursuit.  He’s not a standard of goodness, not a line that needs to be crossed, but a being who is chasing your heart out of the overflowing love that He has for you. 

            There’s a verse in the Bible that says that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”.  And to be honest with you, I’ve never ever gotten that verse.  It kind of seemed pointless to me for a while, because it seemed really obvious.  “It is for eggs that I went to the store to get eggs”.  “It is for pizza that I ordered a pizza”.  Well of course it’s for freedom, what else could it be, right?  Recently though, I feel like maybe I got a breakthrough.  This verse is significant because of the end goal that is implied.  It is for FREEDOM.  God didn’t set us free so that we’d like Him more.  It wasn’t to gain some street cred among the angels.  It was for our freedom.  This is what SCREAMS of God’s love for us.  That His end goal in dying on the cross, His end goal for coming down to the earth, His end goal in His pursuit of us is for our benefit!  Now, does it glorify God to set us free?  Yes.  Is the chief end of creation to glorify God and lift Him higher?  Yes.  But for what reason did Jesus die? For what cause did He sacrifice Himself?  It is for our freedom that Christ set us free.  It’s for our well being.  It’s for our benefit.  He chased us because He loved us, and He loved us because He is good! 

            So may we be covered in His love for us, may we realize that we are sufficient in His grace, that He loved us so much that He couldn’t sit idly by.  May we know Jesus’ love for us and may our futile attempts at being good enough drift into obscurity.