The "Intolerable Complement"

"God loves me."

Never before had these words sent my mind whirling in such a state of utter confusion.

"God loves me."

It's a concept that many, if not most of us, have grown up with. I can't even remember hearing those words for the first time. The fact has just always been there. Maybe the first time you heard it was in the simple children's song,

"Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

And so it does. The Bible tells us so over and over again. Genesis through Revelation paints a beautiful and puzzling picture of a powerful Creator pouring forth love on His helpless creatures. Not a terribly hard concept to swallow, right? If you were to make something, you would have a sort of love for it too. A painter loves his painting. A sculptor loves his statue. A writer loves his novel.

A Creator God would love his creatures.

But the story doesn't end with the creation. That's merely the beginning. What follows ruins the whole rosy picture. It is what makes a loving God a hard doctrine to accept. It can be summed up in these two life-changing and earth-shattering words: we sinned.

As the Psalter states:

"I have sinned against Thy grace,

And provoked Thee to Thy face.

I am evil, born in sin;

Thou desirest truth within."

And here's where the idea of "love" begins to get sticky. My emotions on this point are hard to express. It's like having a suitor come to you and say that he loves you passionately even though you've repeatedly hurt and disappointed him. It's unaccountable. How can we begin to explain such a phenomenon?

C.S. Lewis described it as "the intolerable compliment". He says,

"We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little."

Oh, are you grasping the truth of those words? Do you see where my confusion is originating? How could the God of the universe, the God adored in heaven by perfect angels, the God who was and is and is to come.......love me? Love His filthy, sinful creatures with a love so great, it caused Him to work out a perfect plan of redemption, at great cost to Himself, that we might be called children of God? Wow. To borrow again from C.S. Lewis, "...and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces." Amen to that.

But I believe my confusion is due to my looking in the wrong place for an answer. I'm looking at me. My sin, my selfishness, my filth.

But turning my eyes away from myself, and placing them on my Savior where they belong......ahhhhh. It all begins to fall into place. The redemption story was never meant to be about us. It is not a sign of our worth. It's quite the opposite, actually. It is a sign of our total and utter depravity. If we were worthy, we would have no need of a Savior.

The beauty of our God, the depravity of our hearts, the hope of our salvation....it can all be summed up in these weighty and profound words:

God loves me.

posted by Lydia