Editor’s note: This is a reprinted column from Jack Purcell’s “On the Journey” archives. It originally appeared in The Star in 2013.
Do you love a good mystery? Well, you are in luck because you are right in the middle of a tremendous one.
There is a holy, righteous, all-powerful God who can’t stop loving us, as weak and prone to sin as we are. I mean there is no stopping him. He is totally obsessed with us. He just can’t help himself.
If he weren’t God we might send him for therapy so he could pay several thousand dollars to get over you. Yes I did say “you.”
What should God do? After all it is one of those, “from the other side of the tracks” relationships, isn’t it? I mean really now, who would pick you for God to be madly in love with? Nobody knows better than you the things that create the chasm between perfection and imperfection, between holiness and sinfulness.
What, in fact, do you bring to the relationship that would cause the God of the universe to say, “Nothing could keep me from loving you?”
Well, this is, indeed, a complicated mystery. There are, in fact, multiple mysteries going on at the same time. Let us look at two of them.
The first would be the obvious – why is God so obsessed with us? The second mystery is, why is the answer to the first mystery so difficult for people like you and me to understand?
Let’s do a little detective work. The apostle Paul makes this statement in his letter to the Christians in Rome. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
– Romans 8:38-39 (NIV) Paul is considered a reliable source in these matters, but is there something that Paul knows that would allow him to be comfortable in making such an outlandish statement?
For that we turn to his letter to the believers in Colosse in which he says, “To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” – Colossians 1:27 (NIV)
Here we have a mystery upon a mystery. It is, Paul says, Christ in us that is our hope of glory. Mystery solved. It is Christ in us that is the reason God loves us so passionately.
As a believer you have God’s spirit living inside you, and because of that you are no longer an unholy, sinful, weak-willed human being. You are now a person who God calls holy and righteous because you have been made new by the presence of the Holy Spirit living inside you.
For this reason, God cannot stop loving his children and he just keeps showering his love on them day after day. So mystery number one is solved.
Now, how about number two?
The reason people have so much trouble accepting the answer to the mystery of God’s love for us is because we are so used to having to prove ourselves. Performance earns acceptance in most of our experiences.
We look at our behavior and think, “Look at me, I can’t be holy.”
But God is not judging us on our behavior. God’s economy operates on the value of Jesus’ shed blood at Calvary.
Our performance does not fit into the love equation. So, slide over Sherlock. The mystery is solved. God loves us because he can’t help himself.
When he sees us, he sees Jesus. Bask in it and freely give it away.
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