WHY

Isaiah 10:1-11:16; 2 Corinthians 12:11-21; Psalm 56:1-13; Proverbs 23:6-8

“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD - and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.”

“I don’t want what you have; I want you.”

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?”

“Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost.”

I am so thankful God did not consider cost a barrier to our salvation. He certainly could have. In His position, I would have. Honestly, I’m just not inclined to willingly sacrifice my son for any bunch of “sinners.” (The irony, of course, is being sinful ourselves, neither my son nor I can save anyone, including ourselves. Without Christ, we would all be headed to the same eternal destination.) Most “sinners” do not even see the need for, much less appreciate, others’ sacrifice. Going further, those who refuse to accept Christ as Lord and Savior usually could not care less about their “eternal condition.” Many just figure they don’t have one and so, have no need of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. But the Son died for them anyway. Despite all my study and teaching, there are still times I wonder why.

Why begins with the fact that disbelieving in the power of sin may make it easier to adopt a selfish or devil-may-care attitude toward life, but that attitude does not of itself validate the disbelief. What is, is. Our opinions on the matter change nothing. We sin, we die, we are lost without Jesus. God wants to change that. And a price had to be paid for it to happen. The fact that we may not suffer immediate consequences for our wrongdoings does not make them right or acceptable, either. It only hints of a grace far beyond our understanding. Such unmerited tolerance (“prevenient grace” for those interested in theological terms) is only a small, pale reflection of the grace the Father extends to those willing to be come His adopted sons and daughters. But it is what love does, even in the face of rejection.

Therein lies the real bedrock. God did not count the cost of sending His Son to die for a mostly ungrateful world because He is the essence of limitless love, and limitless love can afford any sacrifice. Moreover, love regards any sacrifice that brings hope to the hopeless as a worthy investment. I would have wanted a much higher, guaranteed return than God got. But I’m extremely glad He does not follow generally accepted accounting techniques and practices. The ledgers will never balance. We can never out give God. We can never out love God. The message of the Cross is we do not have to. We only have to follow Him.

Christ does not judge the way we judge. He does not judge performance. He does not even judge how or how much we love. His judgment, in essence, is based on how well we accept love. All the rest really stems from that one thing. Christ does not, and does not need to, condemn. We condemn ourselves when we reject Christ’s love. It is never a matter of getting Him to love us. That truly is a given. It is a matter of our ability and willingness (two very different things!) to open ourselves up to the idea that we need love, and then to the fact that we are loved, regardless of how we feel about us.

A book I’m reading, One Month to Live, presents a very basic and worthwhile truth. Our problem is not that we do not love God enough. Our problem is that we do not understand how radically and outrageously God loves us. If we truly got that, much in our lives would change. We’d be less grabby, and more generous. We’d be more understanding, and less bitter. But above all, we’d be more hopeful. We’d look forward to more, even as we invested more of ourselves into living out the present passionately and fully.

More than anything else in this world, Love wants to convey hope in a world where hope is in notably short supply. Hope is what Jesus’ ministry was all about, and hope is what the Holy Spirit lives in us to accomplish. We get so lost in the specifics, the how-tos. It’s tough not to fret about the future. But it is singularly counterproductive, especially when we allow the worry to distract us from the reality of the hope Christ provides.