God Loves Y-O-U

Have you ever worked in the garden? Do you like it? Or do you have a family member who likes it?

My mom loves it. I watch her tend flowers and food plants. She loves getting her hands in the dirt. She spends a lot of time reading up on each plant and studying what it needs, and then she carefully plants and tends a garden of vegetables, flowers, vines, and shrubs. Each of those plants is just a mass of cellulose and other things that make them grow — but they all have different personalities. Each needs different amounts of water, sunlight, pruning, or other kinds of special treatment. When Mom has the time to care for her garden, it’s big and lush and beautiful.

In the Bible, we see that while Jesus was on Earth, he took the time to interact with people the way my mom tends to her plants. He invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. He told the woman at the well all about her dramatic romantic life. He touched outcast lepers. He openly talked to women (gasp!) when it was basically unacceptable to do so. His buddy John leaned up against his chest during dinner, but no one else did that. When Lazarus died, Jesus wept, and he interacted differently with Mary than he did with Martha. When he interacted with Peter, he treated him differently (not better or worse than, but differently) than Thomas. He was patient with Thomas when Thomas doubted. When Peter was acting a fool, though, Jesus said, “Get behind me satan!”

Do you have a sense that the Father doesn’t see you but instead sees Jesus? You’ve been taught a version of that. Before you were cleansed by Jesus’s blood, your whole being was living in opposition to God’s love and law, so it was impossible for you (in your sin) to stand before God. But that’s not the whole story. Though Jesus’s blood covers your sin and makes you righteous, it was never meant to wash away your personality!

Section 1: Your new adoptive identity

A. The gospel is for everyone and for YOU

(This section is taken liberally and sometimes exactly from Kelly Kapic’s book You’re Only Human, chapter 2. I’ve put his work in italics.)

Has anyone ever interpreted the message of Christianity to be the following?

1) God is holy and loving.

2) You are a sinner.

3) God hates sin and can’t be in sin’s presence.

4) Don’t worry. The cross brings good news because now (by faith in Christ) the Father no longer sees you but looks at Christ and his cross (instead).

Trent: This brief gospel pits us and our sin against God. We are “sinners,” meaning that we are constantly in the purposeful habit of sinning actively. God hates us but somehow tolerates us because we disappear behind his perfect Son.

Kapic: “This is not entirely false, but it could definitely be tweaked. It makes us “imagine God’s acceptance of us like we’re attending a party with our older brother, Jesus. Our presence is tolerable to the host because we tagged along with someone he actually likes, Jesus…” [we experience God’s love as mere toleration toward us. In this version of the gospel, you disappear. God doesn’t want to look at you. Or maybe he just can’t.]

“Some traditions place so much emphasis on our identity as “sinners” that we leave no room for our deeper identity as the ones whom God designed in his own image to experience life in fellowship, or to experience his original delight in us ourselves, with our particular spunk, our personality, our difference… we absorb the idea that God thinks and acts only in terms of obligations… we can misperceive God’s love, as we misperceive that of our parents, as consisting largely of self-imposed obligations.”

Trent: A better version of that brief idea of the gospel is this:

1) God is holy and loving.

2) You were created by him, but you have sin in your heart.

3) God hates sin, and people with sin in their hearts can’t stand in God’s holy presence.

4) Don’t worry. The cross brings good news to you now, because (by faith in God’s finished work on the cross of Christ) all of your sin — past, present, and future — has been done away with. You now stand before God as a beloved and adopted child in his holy family…just read Ephesians 1! It says you are adopted, chosen, predestined, and sealed with approval by the Holy Spirit! You have been indwelt by God’s Spirit, and you are now God’s sons and daughters by the finished work of Christ! God no longer has wrath stored up for your sin that you sometimes even still commit because, by the work of Jesus on the cross, you have been clothed with his perfect righteousness. You still stand there, not standing behind Jesus, eclipsed by him, but you yourself are clothed in Christ’s righteousness as if it were a robe around your shoulders! Because of that, you appear before the Father as the perfect, wonderful, particular person he made you to be!

The gospel reveals to us that our primary relationship to God is no longer one of sin/forgiveness, as if we were a constant criminal and God was our constant judge, but one of acceptance in Christ. It’s by his work (and love), according to Hebrews 6:14, we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness.” This means that the punishment has already been paid! When we come to God with our sin, it is not as convicted criminals needing pardon from death row, but as children in need of our Father’s help and correction.

Before Adam and Eve sinned, they were in need of God’s help, love, and presence. When Christ comes back to reign forever, we will be living in a similar, sinless world, and still be in need of God. This is one of Kelly Kapic’s major arguments throughout his book — our sin is abolished in Christ and we no longer live under sin’s rule or under the condemnation brought on by our own sin. Since Christ did away with our sin once for all on the cross, we can interact with him as renewed creatures, children of God by faith. But Christ’s death and resurrection didn’t undo our great need for God. Think about it: what do you really have that at some level was not given to you?

Kapic: [We have to start] affirming our creaturely [need of God] as a good quality rather than an evil to be overcome… we must confess that God loves ME and not just Christ INSTEAD OF me. His love is not driven by ignorance [like He doesn’t see you] but by [his delight and purpose in seeing you as his own lost sheep who needs a shepherd to take care of you]. He likes how he made you, and his overflowing love now pours out toward YOU, his creature he’s made particularly… he wants to rescue and renew YOU!

As a believer, you are in Christ, and Christ is in you. You are secure by the power of the Spirit who applies the finished work of Christ to your life. He enables you to grow and blossom as the real you, which involves communion with God and with your neighbor. If you were no more than a copy of a single pattern, just like everyone else, we would not have a communion but an echo chamber. You are connected but distinctive, adding your unique voice and actions to the universe. God delights in you as you use the particular gifts he has given. You are a child of the King. You are an irreplaceable member of the body of Christ. God wants you to flourish as the particular YOU that you are, to enjoy his creation and to enjoy him. That is your calling and privilege as a particular human creature he made and delights in. This is crucial for recapturing a healthy embrace of our creaturely limits. He doesn’t just love a generic world or amorphous humanity. He loves YOU. And he even likes you!

B. Ephesians 1 love

Listen to what the Bible says about the love God has for his people in Christ Jesus. I’ve emphasized words that are the NEW STORY OF YOUR LIFE if you have placed your faith in Christ and repented of your sin.

Ephesians 1:3-19 CSB (my notes)

3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. 5 He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ 10 as a plan for the right time—to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.

11 In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, 12 so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory.

13 In him you also were sealed (irrevocably stamped) with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. 14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.

15 This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.

When we realize the Ephesians 1 love God has for us in Christ Jesus, we can stop living in a relationship with God that is primarily or only judicial (I’m a “sinner,” and he’s the “judge”) and start living in one that is primarily familial (I am an adopted son of God by the finished work of Christ, and he adores me!). We still come to God to repent of our daily sins, but realize through the finished work of Christ that “sinner” is no longer our identity. Through Jesus, we are now “son” and “daughter,” if we have placed our faith in his saving work.

Section 2: God's love for you specifically

A. God is definitely the God of the whole worldwide community of believers (his church). But the Lord also made and knows you individually.

Listen to these excerpts from Psalm 139:

1-4, “Lord, you have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away. 3 You observe my travels and my rest; you are aware of all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it, Lord.”

13-16, “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. 15 My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.

B. He is YOUR God.

Not only is he the God of the community of Christ-followers all over the globe, but he is also YOUR God:

David often talks to the Lord in the Psalms from a place of personal relationship. He brings his own shame and grief, his need, his joys, and his sins to the Lord directly, as David and not as just an anonymous member of the church. Listen to Psalm 31:7 “I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen MY affliction; you have known the distress of MY soul…”

Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body,[a] I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Notice the amount of I and me phrases! Jesus came to claim for himself an eternal bride in the church, but he also came for Trent! And you! And your dad! And your sister! He has a relationship with the whole community as well as each of us individually!

When you realize the Ephesians 1 love God has for you in Christ Jesus applies to YOU specifically, you can live out of the awareness that he sees YOU as a particular person, but covered with the righteousness of Christ! You haven’t been deleted, overlooked, or absorbed into the person of Christ. Walk, therefore, in the joy and peace that comes with knowing God wants to be around you, wants to know you, and loves you deeply.

We already know what we do communally to connect with Christ — we sing songs and learn together on Sundays! We have Bible studies, D Groups, Grow Groups, internships, and other things, but what about individually? What if you learn better from doing, but your friend learns better from reading? Is his way better than yours?

C.S. Lewis has something to say about individuality and God’s love!

“… Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The [mold] in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you — YOU, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes (and not someone else’s) shall behold Him… Your place [with God in eternity] will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Section 3: Pursuing Christ in an individualized way

I spoke with a guy recently about how he sometimes feels guilty when he doesn’t make time to read the Bible daily. He, like so many others, sees people around him having a daily “quiet time,” and then (probably unintentionally) expecting him to do the same thing in the same way. While daily or very frequent Bible reading is really important (it’s God’s book telling us about who he is!), it’s NOT necessary for your “quiet time” to look the same way or be at the same time as other people’s. You might get five minutes in the Bible and memorize a verse to meditate on, while your friend reads for an hour but can’t remember a word she read!

Let me ask you this: What’s the point of even having a quiet time? Isn’t it to learn about Jesus and draw closer to him? Telling someone to draw closer to Jesus the exact same way we do is like telling a man to have the exact same schedule with his wife and kids that we do with ours — it probably will have benefits, but it’s also probably not THE ANSWER for them.

C.S. Lewis on individualizing our pursuit of Christ:

“It is right and inevitable that we should be much concerned about the salvation of those we love. But we must be careful not to expect or demand that their salvation should conform to some ready-made pattern of our own. [Some protestant sects have gone wrong about all this, having] a whole [program for spiritual development] marked out, the same for everyone, and will not believe that anyone can be saved who doesn’t go through it ‘just so’. But (see the last chapter of Problem of Pain) God has His own unique way with each soul.”

— C.S. Lewis, Yours, Jack

A. What do I do with this?

Individualizing our pursuit of God:

I mentioned my Mom being a gardener earlier. A funny thing about that is she actually spends time meditating on God’s wonder and beauty and praying while she gardens.

Someone I know enjoys praying while he runs, and another enjoys praying while he kayaks. It’s a good moment where they don’t have anything to distract them, so they invite God into that time.

Still another one of my friends enjoys reading theology books and derives a great amount of joy from thinking deeply about God. That’s not my jam.

Better even than simply reading the Bible is first reading it, then MEDITATING ON it, and then APPLYING it.

Try this little experiment next time you open the Bible: Remember just one phrase or verse that helps you understand or love God more. Call it to mind several times a day… maybe every time you look at the time (you could put it on your phone background), you could just repeat it to yourself using something like “Jesus’s love is better than life” (from Psalm 63). (See Breath as Prayer by Jennifer Tucker for more.

B. You-shaped blessings

Give attention to things that only you seem to notice and give thanks to him that he made you to be distinct and intricate, that he sees and knows YOU! Those very things might be the very pathways that he wants to use to bless you, grow you, and use you in the lives of others!

Are there any blessings in your life that you notice that other people seem less excited about?

What about special “tips of the hat”? Have you ever stumbled upon a perfect verse at just the right time for a situation you were in?

What kinds of things get you excited about Jesus? How can you weave those things into your day so that you are “practicing God’s presence” more frequently?

C. Following Christ in the way we spend time with friends or family

Think about sharing things you learn from the Bible or trusted teachers/friends/family.

Experiment with taking some time away from some hobby that is not lifegiving to you (like social media or video games) and trying to replace it with time reading the Bible (for even 5 or 10 minutes) or checking in on a friend who is struggling with something. See how it feels!

Maybe it’s telling others about your faith.

Maybe it’s going for a run or a drive and talking to God about things in your life.

Maybe it’s having a deep conversation with someone about her life and trying to help her out.

If you like structure and routine:

There are things that ancient monks called “rules,” like a system of habits to live by… maybe you could look some up!

Maybe you’d benefit from writing down your schedule and trying to fit things in like reading a good book about spiritual development or listening to a good podcast (lots of good ones out there; just ask me or Darby or Caden!).

If you thrive in a creative space with less parameters, there are ways to express yourself creatively that can help you connect with God:

Writing a thank-you poem or song.

Painting something beautiful and giving thanks to God for his beauty.

I myself find that journaling my prayers and scriptures I’m thinking through is a great way to meditate on God’s promises, his love, his truth.

If serving is where you most see Jesus at work and feel connected to him:

Look for ways to serve the people closest to you.

Ask family, friends, or leaders about ways to plug in and make a difference.

Section 4: How do we love others individually?

A. How do we care for people as individuals the way God cares for us?

Think of a way you could serve or care for someone in your family or community in a way that’s particular to them. In other words, individualize your actions toward your family members and friends! A big tip is to anticipate the actual needs or desires of those around you and try to serve them by beating them to the punch!

Does Dad like a clean house? Clean up without being asked!

Does Mom enjoy taking walks with you? Ask HER to go for a walk!

Does your brother want you to wrestle him, often sneak-attacking you from behind? Sneak up on him for a change!

Does Grandpa like it when you call? Get on the phone!

Does your best buddy enjoy a good note of encouragement? Get busy writing!

B. How do we help others grow in their pursuit of Christ?

This is a little weirder of a concept for some people because they wonder, “How could other people NOT benefit from the exact same patterns of spiritual growth that benefit me?”

Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

If we all had the same interests, this would be easy.

Having different interests is a sign that we have different pursuits and personalities. That is, what works for you might work for me, or it might not, and vice versa!

Looking out for others’ interests includes trying to understand them and help them inside their own context.

How does my mom best receive love? I’ll do that!

How does my friend learn or grow best? I’ll help them find ways to pursue that!

What kinds of stories or activities get my buddy pumped up about following Jesus? How can I encourage him in that?

What about my own parents? What kinds of things really make them realize the love God has for them? How can I encourage them to pursue those things?

When you realize the Ephesians 1 love God has for you in Christ Jesus, there is nothing left to gain from others. We’re freed up to truly give out of the overflow of God’s love for us to others and expect nothing in return! The same love that we enjoy in Christ is the love we believe is available to anyone who turns to Christ Jesus in true faith and repentance!

*Great books that influenced this handout!*

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together.

Kapic, Kelly. You’re Only Human.

Lewis, C.S. Problem of Pain.

Ortberg, John. I’d Like You More if You Were More Like Me.

Ortberg, John. The Life You’ve Always Wanted.

Ortberg, John. The Me I Want to Be.

Welch, Ed. When People are Big and God is Small.