For God So Loved The World

When I look at a disarming little baby cooing and gurgling with innocence, when I see those cute little corners of its mouth curled upwards in a gummy grin, when those huge wet eyes sparkle at me from that oversized head - then something stirs deep within me. I melt inside and my own eyes become teary. It feels as though something in my chest is aching and straining to envelop that pristine little life form with a flood of protective love. I fall in love for a second or two with helplessness, and I let another being into my soul. Do you feel that way? I’ll bet you do. And there would be precious few who would feel otherwise.

It is a luxury that all bystanders have. They don’t need to be objective - they can bask in their own subjective feelings. It’s an indulgence that few would want to deny themselves, least of all me. I am a grandfather. Being a grandparent is its own form of revenge. We get to spoil our grandchildren rotten and then wave goodbye as their parents bundle them into the car, drive away and have to live with the consequences for the next 20 years.

The parents, on the other hand, have made a commitment that goes far beyond mere sentiment. They have undertaken to get out of bed in the wee hours to feed the infant; to listen to colicky screaming at all watches of the night from a set of lungs that know no reason, and refuse to be comforted - and which have a strength beyond their size; to change smelly diapers which would trigger the gag reflex in a wart hog. They have the honour to suffer through the tantrums of the terrible twos, the whines and incessant questions of seven year-olds, and the out and out rebellion of hormone crazed teens.

To hold fast in love in the midst of such warfare is not a feeling at all - it is a covenant of self-denial, self-sacrifice and "death". But it is out of this covenanted action that feelings of love are reprised. No parent who is hovering on the brink of choking the life out of the kid who just took the car without permission, and then wrecked it, would ever claim to be feeling love at that moment. But the choice to love would be the reason for their restraint, and is the basis upon which a deeper bond might be formed later, when a little time had passed, and after some growing had been done.

I wonder, then, what it means to be loved by God? Do you think He looked down from on high and thought how cute we were, how needy, how helpless and was touched so much by us that He decided to sacrifice His Own Son to offer us all a way of salvation? It’s a nice picture and one with which it is easy for us to identify because it is so human. It’s what we would like to think we would do if we were God.

Or is God more like the parent who has undertaken to do whatever is necessary, to suffer any and all pains in order to complete the job of bringing a new life to maturity. Did God start with the decision to love rather than the feeling of love? And if that is the case then how should love be manifested in us? Should it always await the feeling before acting? Or should it act selflessly regardless of how it feels?

When God so loved the fallen, sinful, rebellious, hateful world that He sent His only-begotten Son, do you think He was responding to something adorable in us? Were we the cause of His wet-eyed wonder? Or had He already committed to love us by saving us despite ourselves. Did He find us lovable or did He set His love upon us? When we had all gone astray and turned, every one, to our own way, when none of us sought after God, when every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts was only evil continually, did He see something worth saving in all of us? In some of us? In any of us?

Some modernists seem to think so. But I don’t think that God’s love originates in a feeling at all. I think it springs from His nature. It springs from a Being Who is the source of all love. It springs from a Being Who is also the source of all justice, holiness, mercy and faith. It is evidenced in the fact that while we were still rebels and God-haters, Christ died for us. He decided to love us because His nature is love. There was nothing lovable in us. Nothing cute, nothing endearing, nothing worthy. That needs to sink in with me. Maybe it does with you, too.