A common perspective floating around the church for far too long is the concept of ‘deserving.’ While point blank references are made to the astonishing truth that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” there is not and never was any mention in the bible about deserving or not deserving God’s love. We simply cannot earn it. When we receive the forgiveness Christ alone offers, it is implicit that even in our sin-besotted state, we are considered worthy of being saved, deemed worthy of pure love. In of ourselves, we are utterly incapable of removing the indelible mark of sin: its essence is death, chaos and the absence of all light and good. Yet: God not only can but has removed our sin, and if we are inclined in any way to think our actions aid and abet this process, we may be tempted to look through the lens of ‘deserving versus undeserving.’ If anyone is deserving of God’s mercy, then all are deserving. And if none are deserving, the inverse is true. I would suggest that the true issue is eligibility. Are all eligible? Yes, and yes–regardless if the offer is redeemed or not.
Perhaps one reason for the misconstruing of God’s true love for us is we are constantly expecting it to come to us on our terms. Truth is the perfect standard or scale by which all other things are measured. We must allow our understanding to be informed, not the other way around. While Adam’s fall has affected all of us, it has affected us each differently. In the weakness of flesh, some have promulgated the belief out of morbid introspection and ignorance of what the word of God states that they are despicable beyond all remedy.
It is tragic when a person of faith who has not been liberated from the lie that God does not truly and deeply love them despite an inborn penchant for sin spreads this to others.
God is seen by some as an entirely different Being in the Old Testament; “the God of the Old Covenant.” Stories recounted of all the loss of lives at his command. And while it is true that the new covenant changed everything, what of the warnings and second chances he constantly issued to his wandering people whose clothing and shoes never wore out in 40 years; his mercy shown to the people of Nineveh and Sodom and Gomorrah; his setting apart of people like Sampson and Gideon and David, all weak in their flesh, yet notably ‘after his own heart?’
There is certainly consistency in the heart of God’s actions, even if the terms of the relationship changed entirely from the Old Covenant to the new.
Jesus left the home of heaven to join humankind on earth even to its most hellish dregs: that is evidence of Love. That truth must inform our thinking, and not the other way around. We were mysteriously with the journey that passed through sorrow and ended in horrific suffering—for the joy set before him. We are that joy. We are His joy. He wants to be ours.