The Freedom to Love

Welcome back to Essential Grace!  I hope you and your loved ones enjoyed a joyful and peaceful Christmas.  My family and I sure did.  We were blessed to have our entire family together on Christmas Eve, including all the grandchildren.  There is nothing like watching the excitement and anticipation of little grandkids ready to open their presents.  Even better is getting big smiles and hugs from them as they say “Thank you” and “I love you.”  That certainly makes it all worthwhile.

Just prior to Christmas, I posted an article explaining how God’s grace frees us from the guilt and shame brought on by sin.  We also saw that Jesus willingly went to the cross, “scorning its shame.”  (Hebrews 12:2)  This was the grace of God in action.  Why would he do it?  That’s what we will be exploring in this article.

To understand why Jesus went to the cross, we first have to understand the heart of God.  From beginning to end, a story unfolds throughout the Bible about a God who passionately desires to share His love with those whom He created.  We see His love for Adam and Eve as they walked with Him in the Garden.  He breathed the breath of life into them.  He provided for them.  He even gave them the responsibility to rule over His creation.  

And even after they sinned, we still see His love for them.  In what may have been the first act of grace by God to man, He dressed them in animal skins so they wouldn’t have to live in a covering of fig leaves.  Even driving them from the Garden was an act of pure grace and love.  If He hadn’t, they may have eaten the fruit from the Tree of Life and lived forever in their sin and shame.  (Genesis 3:21-24)  There would have been no hope for restoration otherwise.

And that’s what the story of the Bible is about from that point on – God’s mission to restore what had been lost.  To repeat a point I made last week, living with guilt and shame can have tremendously adverse effects upon our ability to have a healthy, flourishing relationship with God.  God knew we needed to have our sins completely forgiven, otherwise we would never get beyond our guilt and shame.  And if we could never get beyond that, we would never truly understand His love and be capable of loving HIm in return.

Jesus illustrated this important point in what was perhaps his greatest parable – the story of the Prodigal Son.  Found in Luke 15, we see the younger son leaving his father and brother with his share of the inheritance and living a wild and reckless life.  He finally hits rock bottom and is living a life of regrets.  He decides to head back home, but to demonstrate how shame can impact relationships, he’s not returning home as a son.  He is so ashamed of how he’s lived and how he has dishonored his father that he’s certain his father would never have him back as his son.  So he’s prepared to beg his father to allow him to be like one of his hired servants.  That’s what sin has done to him.  He now sees himself as being worthy to be nothing more than his father’s servant.

But that’s not what the father sees.  As he spots his son returning home, he runs after him and gives him a huge bear hug and kisses him.  He doesn’t even respond to his son when he protests that he’s not even worthy to be called his son.  Instead, he calls for his servants to get his son dressed in the finest clothes and to prepare a big feast.  He doesn’t see another servant; he sees his son.  He doesn’t treat him with contempt; he showers him with love.  The father has been aching to celebrate the return of his lost son.  It doesn’t matter what it will cost him.  It only matters that the relationship has been restored.  

That’s the point of the cross.  It didn’t matter what it cost God.  It only mattered that our relationship with Him would be restored.  That is grace in its purest form.  That is a love that is radically different than anything we experience in the world.  God knew that we could never truly share in His love as long as sin and shame stood in the way.  So He freed us from the power of sin so that we could be freed from guilt and shame.  He freed us from guilt and shame so that we could be free to know His love.  That’s exactly what the father in the parable did.  He overcame his son’s guilt and shame with incomparable love.  Without it, restoration would have been impossible.  

Once we start comprehending the love of God, once it begins to captivate our heart, we can’t help but love Him in return.  We must remember as John declared, we love Him because He first loved us.  (1 John 4:19)  Paul is the perfect example.  As Saul, he hated the church and anyone who followed Jesus.  He was a leader in the effort to destroy the church.  He even participated in the arrest and deaths of Christians.  But then came the love and grace of Jesus Christ.  He was so spellbound by it that he experienced the most incredible transformation a person could ever experience.  He went from being a murderer to becoming someone willing to sacrifice everything for Jesus.  Why?  As he said himself, it was the love of Christ that compelled him.  (2 Corinthians 5:14)  He was now free to share the love of God.

The same transformation that Paul went through awaits anyone who desires it.  It’s not the law that leads to that transformation.  It’s not self-effort that leads to that transformation.  It’s not even religion that leads to that transformation.  It is God’s love and grace and only His love and grace.  Nothing else compares to it and nothing else can free us from sin and shame.  And when His love conquers our sin and overcomes our guilt and shame, we are free to know His love.  Restoration is complete.  It’s time to live in the relationship with God that He has always desired.  It’s time to grow in His love and grace.  You’ll never be the same.