The light of love and the one who least deserved it

I was listening to a streaming discussion about Calvinism, and commentary related to a tape being played of someone criticizing it by saying that they heard a lot of theological discussion and verses about the sovereignty of God, but they didn't hear a lot of talk about God's love. My wife was listening with me and she mentioned that she agreed with him to some extent: that she feels like a lot of theological talk comes apart from a discussion about God's love, and so people who are hurting and tired that come to this just have no interest in hearing it, and in fact it serves to place a heavier burden on them. And this placed a weight on my own heart. After all, I certainly have not felt like that about the teaching and preaching that has greatly impacted my own life. The words of men like Matt Chandler, John Piper and Charles Spurgeon have always come to me, not as an intellectual, dry talk about theological issues, but as hot, passionate love notes to a God that authored their very existences, who transformed them from people who were focused on themselves, their own comfort and desires, into men who were willing to sacrifice all that for the sake of giving glory to Jesus and pointing others to Him. And I realized that I needed to do a better job of being that same person, of not simply being a knower and explainer, but of being a lover and an example of how much Jesus has shown me His immense love for me.

My life before His life was poured out into me was one that had begun in church, but in which I feel like my ears were not open to hear. I know truth was spoken, and my parents especially sought to gently, lovingly bring us up in a Godly way and point us to Jesus. But even as I managed to conform my external life to a pattern of religion, to a way of talking and acting that seemed good and right, my unseen life was one full of addiction to selfishness. Self-righteousness ruled my life and thoughts, desires to pursue my own way and my own pleasures drove me; as I grew older I found a growing addiction to and desire for pornography that would not be satisfied. I was self-centered, and even moralistic statements I might have made were not because I understood the real significance of who God is and what it meant for His Son to have come to die for my sins, but because I believed deep down that the way to please God was to be able to hold on to an intellectual position. My eyes were closed to the reality that the life I lived, and the thoughts I allowed into my head, were a complete insult to the God I paid lip service to.

But God is rich in mercy, and it was His mercy that began to take away the things that I had used to tell myself that I was good enough on my own, in my own head. My success in school, in music, in life in general eroded, and I was left feeling frustrated and tired. I was getting along just enough, and I was sick of it but I knew no other way except to just continue as I had. Then one day almost exactly six years ago, God opened my ears, and I heard for the first real time the Gospel of Christ preached--not that I had not heard it before, but that it was in that moment that the Spirit spoke directly to me, in words of conviction, of love, of a desire to lead me into the true joy of really knowing Jesus.

And things happened in a series, quickly at first to let that first seed fall, and then afterwards slowly as the new life planted within me began to grow and flower. First, God gave me a mirror in the form of His Word: my ability to hang on to a belief that I did not really live out didn't make me commendable. It made me a functional atheist. It was really irrelevant what I thought about God, if my heart hated Him and wanted to pursue wickedness and selfishness. He showed me how I had acted in an evil manner in the way I acted in secret, and in the way I acted publically: not simply my porn addiction but the way I dealt with my friends, with strangers, with people online and in real life. No longer was I able to look at another and think "I am superior," because God broke that down: I was the chief of sinners, undeserving of anything except death.

But that was only the beginning, and the next part is why the preceding section is seen as mercy: He showed me how much He loved me. I was able to see the examples in the Word of mighty men and women of God...who really, weren't so mighty. They were broken people, just like me, who struggled with their sin and ached for a closer relationship with their God, who made mistakes and were reconciled. And God forgave, God loved, God transformed, not because they had done anything to make themselves better, but because it was His good pleasure to do exactly that. God's love extended so far that He sent His Son, who deserves nothing but ultimate praise and worship as the Creator and the Word of God, to become a man born to the lowliest station of life, to live the life I could never live and die the death I deserved to die, because He desired to adopt into His kingdom sons and daughters who knew that love and desired Him above all things.

And in having my eyes opened to that love...I broke. I wept openly and praised the Name of the Living God that He would ever make my life anything other than a display of His justice...instead, He made it a display of His mercy. He made it a moment to show His incredible forgiveness, His love and goodness in working out His desires to adopt and redeem me. Again, not because I had deserved it, not because I memorized enough verses, or knew the right things, or acted the right way. Certainly not because I could hold and defend an intellectual position, but because it was His pleasure and desire to glorify Himself by loving me more than I could ever deserve. And that is why I love God, it's why I love the doctrine of God's sovereignty and His rule over my life...because I do not deserve it, but He has worked it anyway. I pray for more and deeper roots, and I pray that I would be seen as a gentle, nail-pierced example of that love, to my wife most of all.