Awakening to the Father’s Love

The spirit of the modern age has counseled our hearts in a terrible lie: God does not love us, and we are wholly unacceptable to him. This lie is like a shadow over the hearts of men. A new and just-born child seeks his mother’s loving face and tender touch. So what becomes of the child left alone, untouched, and never consoled in his cries? He grows up spiritually deformed, with thoughts gone mad and a heavy, broken heart. 

Of course, I said at the start that this is a lie. But it is a lie that came to us at the very dawn of our existence. The serpent whispered to our first mother that God does not want the best for you—he is a liar. Our first parents believed the lie and acted upon it to devastating consequences. It wasn’t the lie that deformed them but the acceptance of it. When we acquiesce to the untruth, in a way, it begins to shape us.

But love—true love!—it is the only power sturdy enough to deface this terrible lie and to render it impotent. 

But you have mercy on all because you can do all things, and you overlook the sins of men that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned (Wisdom 11:23 & 24).

If our many inglorious sins accuse us, if they tell us you are unworthy of God’s love, you deserve to be cast off and forgotten!—if we use the discourse of our human imperfections to buttress the lie that we could never be loved and accepted by God— then here in sacred scripture, we have a greater power to contend with:

You overlook the sins of men that they may repent. For you love all things that are…

In the harrowing misery of our sins, we face a truth almost too wonderful to bear….God is merciful. But what is mercy? What is it to me? How does mercy function in my life? Like this: When our sins accuse us, and that old lie would cast us into hell, we throw ourselves headlong into the open wounds of Christ. 

To accept the lie is to reject the Savior. For in His loving gaze from the cross, we are changed if we will but allow it. Our sins and our perceived unworthiness—no longer define us. Because Christ came to save us; because we exist, we are loved by God: “For you love all things that are.”

If God loves all that exists because he made it, our existence betrays the lie. It instead sings of God’s love. That we keep on existing means that we are sustained, at every moment, by God’s love!

How could a thing remain, unless you will it? (Wisdom 11:25).

Love is the most potent weapon of our time. It can defeat any enemy and conquer any fear, “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). A world starved of an awareness of God’s love is selfish and full of strife—it is a place where many lies about who we are, thrive. But we may ask why God does not solve this problem with increased love. He has made the first move. The first principle of love is that it must be free. Freely given and freely received. God, ever the first to act, gives us his love freely. But it must be accepted and trusted. 

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins (1 John 4:10).

Can we trust Jesus to explain God’s love to us? We must remember that he said in his authority as the Son of God that “whoever has seen me has seen the father…the words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” Jesus gave himself up for us as an act of love to save us from the perilous path of rejecting our place as God’s image-bearers. In so doing, Jesus fully displayed the love of the Father. 

Becoming aware of the Father’s love for us is a fatal blow to the lie that we can never be lovable. We are now convinced that by our very existence, we are loved. Because we were imagined by God and spoken into existence. In the Son, we have the perfect example of love—Jesus, giving up his life for us. Now we must abide in it. 

So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16).

The final step, of course, is to give it away. A heart so full of the love of God can only produce more of it. We love God back by giving him our whole lives, a “blank check,” so to speak. “Do with me what you will!” we may cry. And, of course, we allow this love to seep into the lives of everyone around us. Truly, we “love because he first loved us!”