Reflections: Loved anyway

One of my pastoral counselling books suggests that a helpful way of trying to understand and help people who are going through difficult times is to observe whether they perceive of the world around them as essentially a dangerous, hostile place or a safe, friendly place.

Probably most of us experience a little of both in our lives. But you can imagine that coping with life’s ups and downs is generally more difficult for those who focus on the dangers and hostilities around them.

Being a Christian I believe that the world is both: dangerous and hostile, but also safe and friendly. What makes the difference is which reality I choose to focus my life on.

Being a Christian I recognize that evil is powerful – very powerful – but God is stronger – infinitely stronger!  

The simplest way of explaining this is that the God who created everything is a friendly, loving deity who, like a good, loving parent, desires only the best for His human children. God’s beautiful creation offers a friendly place for us to live and thrive.

God is love!

This is the heart of Judaeo-Christian faith – God is love. Not just that God is loving, but God embodies/is defined by love.

The Bible speaks eloquently of the awesome, amazing love of God.

Psalm 103: “Bless the LORD, O my soul … Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. The Lord is merciful and gracious … abounding in steadfast love ... the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting”

Psalm 118: “O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His steadfast love endures for ever!”

Psalm 36: “How precious is Your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.”

Lamentations 3: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end”

Jeremiah 31: “I have loved you with an everlasting love”

Isaiah 43: “But now thus says the Lord … Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. … you are precious in My sight, and honoured, and I love you”

The foundational understanding of who God is that the New Testament carries forward from the Old Testament is this declaration of the steadfast love of God towards us humans.

In the well known John 3:16 text Jesus tells Nicodemus why God sent Him to save the world: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” 

The good news of the Christian faith begins in the awesome love of God – not just for a few faithful ones – but for the whole world. God loved/loves the world!

I John 3: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God … We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

For us to truly perceive and receive God’s love we have to honestly look at ourselves and recognize that we are not deserving of this love. We are failing, ‘sinful’ human beings who regularly disappoint and hurt each other and God. 

But God ‘loves us anyway’.

Romans 5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us ... God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us ... while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son”

This is no different than any of our intimate relationships: the people that love us most know who we really are – all of our weaknesses and warts – but they “love us anyway.” As we do them.

We know love is real and deep and strong when it is bathed in grace. Grace forgives the failures repented of, assures the other that love still prevails, and thereby, in reality, deepens that bond of love because it is not blind to human frailty but ‘loves anyway’ in spite of it. God’s love, and human love that emulates Him, is an amazing gift of grace;

This kind of love – whether from God or from others – leads to healthy humility: I don’t have to nor want to pretend I am other than what I am – an ordinary person with normal weaknesses and failures who is “loved anyway” and who is thereby able to “love others anyway.”

Ultimately the love of God is our greatest strength, assurance and hope, now and for eternity. 

Romans 8: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

May you know how much beyond measure you are “loved anyway!”