The Campbell-Whites
Declare His glory among the nations…
God won’t love you any more…
God will not love you any more than He already does right now. Let that sink in for a minute. God’s love for us does not grow or change. He does not love me more now than He did yesterday and He will not love me more (or less) tomorrow.
The full measure of God’s love is directed toward you right now. You are fully and completely known and fully and completely loved.
God does not sanctify us, form and transform us, and make us holy in order to make us lovable. He does not prune and discipline, guide and grow us in order to make us worthy of His love.
We are worthy of God’s love because God decides we are worthy. He decided that mankind was worth the time and attention and sacrifice at Creation and He proved it in the life death and resurrection of Christ. Remember, Christ proved his love by dying for us “at just the right time…while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:6-8). Our worth or “worthiness” is determined by our Creator. God alone chose the price that needed to be paid for our ransom and it was a high price. The price was paid through Jesus Christ because of God’s love for us.
Remember the story of the prodigal son? In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus tells this story…
A much beloved son asks his father for his portion of the inheritance early (the equivalent of telling his father he wished he were dead) and then sets off to do his own thing and live life on his own terms. It’s fun for a while, but then it all goes downhill and he ends up feeding pigs just to survive—and it’s not working… he’s tempted to eat the pig slop. At this point the son wakes up and realizes how good he had it at home; he remembers how even his father’s servants are treated well and cared for and he decides to go back home and ask to be taken back in.
Now here’s the truly beautiful part of the story.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”
There are a couple of important things to note here. First, the Father was watching for him, hoping for his return, waiting for him. Second the Father ran to him. The one who had been wronged ran and embraced the offender. Here’s where it gets really amazing. This was told to a Jewish audience. Feeding pigs, eating with pigs, having anything to do with pigs automatically makes you unclean—sinful. “Clean” people, righteous people, good people, didn’t embrace (or touch, or eat with, or associate with) unclean people. Why? It made them unclean. But this father does not care. He runs to his son, wraps his arms around him, effectively taking the sin upon himself and then covers his son with his own cloak and places his ring on his son’s finger. He then orders a celebration feast because his son had come home.
This is exactly what Jesus does for us. The minute we turn, he is there. Jesus took our sin upon Himself and covers our shame with His righteousness. He restores the relationship and makes us right with God. And!! And He places His seal on us, claiming us as His children. The love has nothing to do with our actions or behavior and everything to do with who God is. So what about our behavior?
Would a father who loved his son that much have been okay with his son continuing to feed pigs or live in any way that diminished who he really was? No way! That life that the son turned from was not good enough for his son.
God sanctifies us, cleanses us, makes us holy—grows us in Christ-likeness not in order to love us, but because He loves us.
Because God loves us, our Lord, the Author of Life, has decided that remaining in sin is just not good enough for His children. God wants us set free from fear, anger, bitterness, anxiety, hopelessness, addiction, selfishness, pride, lust, and all the other things that hold us captive and tie us up. These things are not what He wants for us… because He loves us.
God wants us to live in complete freedom, in complete joy, in fullness of life. He sanctifies us and molds us into the image of Christ to make us true versions of ourselves—the self our Creator intended for us to be. The Lord’s desire for holiness in us is the culminating expression of God’s love for us. As if mercy and salvation were not enough, God goes further and offers us the grace of healing, wholeness and completion, and it begins, not in eternity, but right now.
So, when it feels like the pruning is painful or the refining fire is too hot, on the days it seems like you will just never “get there,” remember this: if you trust Jesus for salvation, you have already arrived where you are meant to be… you are in God’s hands. The hands that formed you are the hands that love you.
And what does Jesus ask of us? He asks us to remain in Him and in His love. He asks us to abide there, to make Him our home. Remaining involves the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; it means that the Holy Spirit will convict us of our sins and we must respond by confessing and renouncing those sins and walking in a new way. “Jesus loves you” means that God will keep working on us. And that’s a good thing.
God is still forming us and working on us because He still loves us.
The Campbell-Whites 
Well. God’s timing. Earlier this week I found myself lamenting over “how far I have to go”. God immediately asked me, “To go where?” The ensuing “conversation” reflected some of what you have posted here.
He showed me that my focus was on me and my supposed failures instead of on Him and who He is. He reminded me that I am seated with Him in the heavens, that I am fully and completely redeemed.
Yes, I run the race well. Yes, He will finish the work that He has begun in me. There is a continuum in that sense. But ultimately He is the beginning and the end. Until then I am always His child. I am…enough. Because I am loved.
Thank you for the reminder.
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