An Extension Of God

There is an impression in the world today that God only loves Christians. We've encountered this through innuendo and assumption in a very liberal and sinful society. I've encountered it in myself with the attitudes brought on by a strongly Pentecostal upbringing, and I have found it to be an attitude that is hard to get rid of in many people.

The way this usually works out is that God doesn’t love anyone I don’t love, and the human inclination is to not love anyone who is not like me. That makes God’s love an extension of myself, instead of the way it should be, with me as an extension of God and His love. I have much to learn about God’s love. God is love; I am not. I am the one who needs to change. I am the one who needs to learn to love like God.

“God is love” in 1 John 4:16. God is synonymous with love. How could God not love His entire creation? It is His nature to love.

“God so loved the world that He gave...” according to John 3:16. The tragedy of God’s love is that it is not universally received. John 1:11 says, “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.”     What a tragedy. Do you think God feels that tragedy? I think that is why the prophet Isaiah called Him a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem because He wanted to gather everyone up and bring them to Himself, but they would not all come.

How is it that God being God would create a world where His love was limited by the free will of those He created, making Him appear helpless to do anything about those who would reject Him? I honestly don't know how this works, but I do know God feels these feelings because He has expressed them in through His living Word handed down to us.

My point today is not to where these discussions often lead, but to capture some of the nature of God in His love for us and suggest that we should at least share in these same attitudes and emotions. We should be governed more by the tragedy of those who reject God’s love than in their judgment or their wrong doing.

Do we weep or do we condemn? I have caught myself shaking my head in judgment and condemnation, and God told me to stop. Stop judging and weep instead. That’s what God did, and He even has the right to judge and will someday. The cross has put that judgment aside so that He can love. Can we do any less?
So if you love like God, you will love and hurt at the same time.