-Love is a choice. Grace is given freely.
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
I’d like to ask, “Why? Why does Jesus love us?” The lyrics are correct. Jesus does love us. Loved us so much in fact he was willing to die for us, but why? Why would the God of the universe, Creator of all that is, love us?
I really struggled with this question and I did get an answer – Because. Jesus loves us just because. There’s no explanation for God’s love other than God made the choice to love us. It certainly wasn’t because we did something to earn God’s love. Far from it.
Is it because we’re special that God loves us? Paul, in his letter to the Romans, quotes King David from Psalm 14 – “There is no one righteous, not even one…” Paul goes on to say that we’ve all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So we’re clear we’ve not done something to cause God to love us. However, there is hope, according to Paul. We are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Jesus. Why does God love us? Because.
Because God made the choice to love us. And God gives grace freely.
So, when I say God loves us “because” what I’m really describing is grace. We can’t earn it. There’s nothing about us that is worthy of this kind of grace and yet God gives it freely if we ask for it.
To follow Jesus is to make the same choice – to love those around us “because.” Jesus tells us the most important aspect of Judaic law is to love God with everything we have – body, mind, heart and soul. I contend that if we follow this commandment, the second part, to love our neighbor as ourselves, will come naturally. To truly love God is to align our heart with God’s heart. This alignment produces compassion for others.
Love is a choice. Grace is given freely.
To step across boundaries of hatred, prejudice, shame, race, religion, sex and politics – to ignore all the labels we’ve created that poison our interactions – to step into a timeless divinity with God, and funnel the essence of God, to funnel love, to the people who cross our path today. This is following Jesus.
Jesus is a radical. His kind of love is so extreme they killed him rather than let him continue to spread it. And he makes an intimate request – to let down our defenses. Let the Holy Spirit come in and love us absolutely crazy.
I know it gets scary to think about losing that much control. To just let go. We don’t trust each other enough to do that, it’s that much harder to let God take possession of the wheel. We don’t want to have to let go of all the junk we hold on to. It might come in handy one day. And God says, “I’ve got you covered. Just let go, take my hand. I love you.”
Jesus put everything into his love. Everything. He showed us what it looked like to love the Lord your God with all your mind, all your body, all your heart and all your soul. And what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. He cut a pretty clear path to follow.
Can we demonstrate a radical love to a world full of distracted, scared witless, oppressed, poor, ugly, stinky, not-like-me-at-all people? Can we step across every boundary that separates us and give this radical love to those we encounter? Can we let go of the stuff weighing us down and allow God’s love to pour through us? Can we follow Jesus?
Love is a choice. Grace is given freely. God is love. All the time.
Peace.
Ray Morgan is pastor at Franklin Heights & Maple Grove UMC
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