May 5, 2024 -- Various Texts -- One of the most important questions I've ever received

Dear Struggling Follower of Jesus:

Thank you so much for reaching out. That must have taken a lot of courage. Your honest question , “Can God really love me?” requires an equally honest answer.

First, know that everyone has sinned and falls short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). This is important to understand. If someone doesn’t know the need for God’s forgiveness, nor realize the depths to which that healing forgiveness is needed, then the rest won’t make sense.

Second, it is God Himself Who can rescue the sinful. “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for our sins to deliver us (literally, to rescue us)  from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to Whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3-5)

When does sin infect us? What happens when sin infects us?

Well, sin is with us from the moment we are conceived (Psalm 51:5). This is true for every person, except for Adam and Eve, and Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve were created without sin, they were good. They chose to sin and rebel against God. So, the result is that all their children and subsequent descendants are stained with sin from the moment of conception onwards. Jesus is without original sin, that is, inherited sin from Adam and Eve because His conception happened at the command of the Holy Spirit. The stain of inherited sin was kept from Him.

When sin infects us, then the image of God in us is severely damaged. When Adam and Eve were created, the image of God in them consisted of true righteousness,  true holiness and true knowledge (Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:10). In Adam we have fallen from true righteousness, true holiness and true knowledge. The point is no one can fully know oneself unless one has been reborn in the image of God. Sin stained the sense of self. The sense of acceptance. The sense of what one is like or what one should be. Sin pervades all of life. Those who are not walking with God will always have a sense of incompleteness, a sense that things are not right or good or going as they should. This awkwardness, called dissonance, is the grace of God, disrupting sinful patterns and calling people to look to Him to find true peace.

When anyone understands this, then one realizes every single person who ever lived, except Jesus, has been so infected by sin that one’s judgment, reason, emotions and spiritually are in severe need of God’s rescue. Rescue that Isaiah puts this way:  3 He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord! 4 Trust in the Lord God always, for in the Lord Jehovah is your everlasting strength (Isaiah 26:3-4 NLT).

Can God really rescue any sinner?

Look again at Romans 3 “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22b-25a ESV).

Everyone has sinned.

Everyone needs Jesus Christ to set aside God’s punishment on our sins, because our sins have been punished on the Person of Jesus Christ. Those who believe in Jesus, the One Whom God Sent, receive Jesus’ purity and even as Jesus was punished, having taken on our impurity and wickedness.

Everyone’s sexuality has been affected by the Fall. A long time ago I heard a counselor say “normal is just a setting on the dryer”. I chuckled. There are all kinds of ways in which we can dishonour God with our bodies. The point is, when God takes hold of your heart and mind, all things begin to change. There is a restoration of God’s image: true righteousness, true holiness and true knowledge.

Righteousness is making God’s way your way. The Scripture is the teaching on this.

Holiness is the submission of self to God and the desire to carry out the commands of God.

Knowledge is distinguishing between the advice of the world (which is in rebellion against God) and the advice of one’s old nature (which will pull against God, even Christians struggle hard to stay on track with keeping God’s way their way) and the advice of the Devil. The Devil is that old liar who used to have free range in our heads. When the knowledge of God enters the head and heart, then one will ask the very question you have been asking, Follower of Jesus “can God love me this way?” The honest and direct answer is no. If one remains in sin, accepting sinful practice as the way of life, then sin is the Master, not God.

The better question, is: Can God give you peace to live within yourself as He recreates you?

This might seem impossible. But read this:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolators, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” I Corinthians 6:9-11 ESV

Struggling Christian, it is not just those who struggle with trans-feelings , or homosexual fantasies, or gossips, or con-artists who can be rescued by God. Look at the list. It shows that all sins before God are sins that require His rescue. And look at the verb tense in the last two sentences “such WERE some of you” and “you were washed”. It is a past tense with continuing effect in the present. God has purified you and He will continually purify you.

Ultimately the question is this: do you love your life and therefore you will chose to live without God or will you hate the chains that bind you in your sexuality, or whatever sin has a hold on you, and will you choose to let God transform you from the inside out? To truly love your life is to hate it and turn from the emptiness of it and submitting every area of life to God, so that He will bring new life to you.

Paul is writing to people who struggle with old patterns of sin. They were struggling in that they’d expected Jesus’ victory would mean there is never a pull to old sinful way. Read on. There is hope because God rescues people, from whatever orientation, whatever sin, whatever in-born inclination to sin they had. Theft. Lust. Reviling. Addiction. Sex. This is the True Power of God. He is greater than all your sin, all the brokenness of your past, by His Spirit living in you, all the temptations can lose their power.

Does that mean a person never has to fight against the old temptations and old sins? No way!

An athlete has to keep training, eating right, and sleeping right and will fight the urges to binge eat and quit practicing, but keeps fighting those temptations because the goal is in mind.

So, too, a Christian, knowing the pleasure of God, knowing the hope and joy of belonging to God through the accomplished work of Jesus, will always have to fight temptations. Some temptations find their source in the stuff which the world throws up at them. Other temptations are pitched at you by the Devil. TBH, temptations can arise from one’s own old habits and laziness will trip you up and try to stop you in your tracks, keeping you from the work of living for Jesus.

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” Philippines 3:14-15. See the work involved in this. One must put to death the old nature. One has to put to death the lies which are repeated in the soundtrack of your brain, the old tunes you’d listened to and begin listening to God. Make Scripture reading your highest priority. Listen to see what God says about you—who you are in Him. Know that others are praying for you. Others are honoured that you dared to share this struggle. Others have the same depths of battling that you have, just in different areas. All those who wonder “do you think He loves me?” can hear the loud, clear, wondrous answer of the Bible: Yes! He will defeat the sin in your life that is slowly killing you and He loves you enough to teach you the true and strengthen you to live for Him.

Ah, Dear Struggling Christian, keep asking hard questions. Keep searching for the help of God and the advice of Christians who love God.

May God the Father strengthen you by the Holy Spirit so that you will live in the power of Jesus’ reconciling work. Shalom to you.

Richard

https://youtu.be/UV8bv4QuDtM?si=E67FlGf3lDb5NUN6 “Behold our God”