Chapter 12
I Have Loved You
So what is God’s feeling toward those who reject
him and commit wicked acts and are all together evil? Doesn’t God hate wicked
people? After all, many of us have heard all our lives that God burns people in
hell forever and ever, and if you didn’t hear that, then you heard that God, in
His wrath toward the wicked, destroys them as a punishment for their
wickedness. Is this really the truth?
Let’s start with a little history. 2,500 years
ago the people of God had in a great degree lost their identity. There was a
lack of true religion. They had a form of Godliness but had denied the power
thereof. Even the priests had lost sight of their calling and saw religion as a
drag, and had despised the worship and service of God. If this was the
condition of the priests you can only imagine what the condition of the people
was. They had lost sight of their calling as the people of God and had
forgotten what it meant to be the people honored with a covenant, and entrusted
with the law of God. They had been commissioned to carry the news of a messiah
to the world! They were to show God’s law as perfect and able to make the life
happy and filled with joy, yet instead they served no more but to turn people
away from the belief of the one God. Such was the condition of the people of
God in the last book of the Old Testament.
If you read the first chapter of the book of
Malachi, your first thoughts might be “how terrible, what a sad ending to a
great people.” God had led them through so much and even after bringing them
back from Babylon they had fallen again. “God must really have some stern
rebuke for them this time!” But what are God’s opening remarks to such a sad
generation.
“I have
loved you, saith the Lord.”[1]
Is that a surprise that God would open up a book
written to such a demoralized generation with His love?
God starts this book out with a plea; He is
seeking to draw the people’s attention to His love. God is love is the theme of
the Bible, and it is fitting and no accident that the very last book of the Old
Testament starts out with this line, God loves! He desires to see us love Him
like He loves us! He wants to see our hearts in our religion, not focused on
the things of this world, but on His redeeming love and mercy. His hand is open
to us if we just accept His love and allow our hearts to fall in love with our
God and creator Jesus Christ. God is summing up the entire Old Testament in
this book, and it starts with His love.
God proceeds after this verse to proclaim just
some of the things He has done for His people in preserving them as the true
inheritors of the Promised Land. You see, it wasn’t that they were not offering
God their tithes and offerings; it wasn’t that they were not worshipping Him.
It was that they had lost sight of the character of God. They had lost sight of
the glorious love of God! They professed God, they claimed to worship Him, yet
they did not love Him. How can you worship a God who is love if you do not love
back? Malachi 3:6 says,
“For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye
sons of Jacob are not consumed.”[2]
Why
were the Israelites not consumed by God’s wrath? Because God is the same
forever! God is full of mercy and He is not willing that any should perish!
This is the message of the last book of the Old Testament, the love of God
toward fallen humanity, toward those who have rejected a relationship with Him.
How did God relate to Adam and Eve
being the first of humanity to fail? How did God relate to the ones who caused
the first pain, the first death, and the first heartache? How did God treat
those who destroyed the tranquility of creation and gave in to the lie of
Lucifer? Let’s go there and see. The Genesis account states that after they
fell, Adam and Eve,
“…heard
the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and
Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the
trees of the garden.”[3]
This is one of the most beautiful
depictions of God’s care for humanity that can be found in the Bible. Adam and
Eve heard the voice of God walking in the Garden. Jesus had come to commune
with mankind. You see Adam and Eve knew the voice of God, Jesus was their
friend, and the Bible seems to imply these visits by God were a regular thing.
Jesus comes in the cool of the day, as dusk begins to settle on this world, God
descends to walk with His creation.
“And
the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?”[4]
We must notice a few things that God does not do
on this visit. God knew that they had given in to temptation and had listened
to the voice of the adversary of God, but He did not descend down in a whirlwind
of fire to strike fear into the hearts of His creation. He did not come down
with an accusation or a stern rebuke for Adam and Eve. He simply comes to walk
with Adam and Eve, and when He finds them not there to greet Him, as they
normally would have, He simply asks, “Where are you?” In a calm loving tone,
God calls for His friends to stop hiding. God knew where they were! Don’t for
one instant think that the one who holds the universe in His intellect did not
know exactly where Adam and Eve were, yet He did not wish to call them out, or
embarrass them or scare them into telling the truth, He simply asks them to
come to Him.
God’s dealings with Adam and Eve are fair,
loving, and non-judgmental. He draws us to Himself, we the ones who have
rejected Him, killed His prophets, despised His character, and sought to Kill
God Himself through Jesus Christ. God says to us,
“…Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.”[5]
God did not seek to strike Adam and Eve
down for their rejection of Him. He did not kill them in anger; He simply
allowed them their free will. God, in love for His friends, allowed them to
choose their own path even though that path led to death. The natural result of
destroying that living breathing relationship with the Holy Spirit is death.
God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate of the tree, not because
God would kill them for their disobedience, but because the natural result of choosing
to be apart from God is death. A created being cannot exist outside of the care
of God. We are dependent on the gifts of God for life, and without Him, our
life withers away, for He is the sustainer of it. Every “judgment” God gives in
this world, is not a judgment from God at all, but the natural result of our
own free will. God does not give bad things, ever, God does not punish, God
does not judge, we judge ourselves; we punish ourselves by the choices we make.
Many of us struggle with the thought of
forgiveness. Most of it stems from a wrong view of God. A way of viewing God
that makes Him out to be a God that is specifically looking out to see if we
have done wrong. We look at our future a bit like this picture above. We have this idea that God is comparing us to perfection right now and recording every wrong act we have ever done and weighing it against our good actions, but that is just not the case. So many people see God as a judge ready
to point the finger and condemn us to hours and hours of community service, but
in fact the Bible says something quite different. First off, we all know that
Jesus is our advocate right?
“My
little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”[6]
So
if Jesus is our attorney than God the father must be our judge right?
But Jesus doesn’t say that in John
5:22, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the
Son.” So wait, if the father judges no one, and Jesus is our judge. Than the
judgment is rigged! Our attorney is also our judge! So this paints quite a
different picture of God doesn’t it? God the father isn’t our judge, Jesus is.
So many times we see God the father as stern, and vindictive, and that the only
thing holding him back from destroying us is, “good” Jesus.
That’s not the case. Jesus and the father are
one in the same. Jesus says in John 14:9, “He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” Jesus also says,
“My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them
eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is
able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.”[7]
If
Jesus and the father are one and his character is love, than Jesus logically
must not judge us either, right? How can He and the Father be one if one does
something the other doesn’t do? Well, guess what we find that Jesus says in
John 8:15?
“Ye
judge after the flesh; I judge no man.”
And
again in John 12:47,
“And
if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to
judge the world, but to save the world.”
Jesus
is not in the business of judging us, or accusing us, He even says,
“Do
not think that I will accuse you to the Father.”[8]
So if Jesus does not accuse us, who does? The
Bible also says,
“For
if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”[9]
Our
own heart is the one that condemns us. We judge ourselves! We remember the
story of the centurion. In Matthew 8:8 he said,
“Lord,
I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word
only, and my servant shall be healed.”
Who
judged this man unworthy? He judged himself didn’t he. Who judged the Jews
unworthy of Christ? Acts 13:46 says,
“Then
Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God
should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge
yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”
The
Jews judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life. By our own life we judge
ourselves unfit for salvation.
What about the destruction of the
wicked at the end of time, when God’s wrath is poured out without mixture on
the wicked and they are consumed and burned up. That sounds a lot like
judgment. God does not allow the wicked to enter heaven. Not only are they not
allowed in heaven, but they are also ruthlessly burned for their sins. How do
we credit that to a loving God? First off, I would like to quote another author
who wrote on this subject, she says, “It is no arbitrary decree on the part of
God that excludes the wicked from heaven; they are shut out by their own
unfitness for its companionship.”[10] This is a daring and bold
idea. God does not have any rule that says a sinner cannot enter heaven. If
heaven would be a joy to anyone, then they will be there. You see heaven is not
a place. We have often accredited to reality the childhood stories and ideas of
religion that we were taught as kids. Heaven is not a place at all, heaven is
an experience, heaven is a relationship with an infinite God. Heaven is perfect
existence inside the mind of our creator.
The only reason why a sinner is kept from
entering is because that sinner has no desire to be there. Heaven, to a sinner,
would be a place of torment. To the sinner who has rejected God eternity with
God would be a place of eternal torture not a place of joy. God honors the free
will of each individual and it is that honoring of our right to choose that
heaven is barred to those who reject God.
The destruction of the wicked is much the same.
God cannot force the wicked to desire to be with him. They choose to reject the
very creator that sustains them. Let us not forget that it is the thought of
God that upholds our ability to exist. We live in the intellect of our creator,
and if we do not desire for God to have any thought of us or part in our life
whatsoever, you began to see the problem God is faced with. For God to give the
sinner what He desires, in accordance with free will, He must allow them to
pass into nonexistence, for the sinner cannot live outside the mind of God. The
final destruction of the wicked is God’s last gift to fallen humanity. So
hardened to God are they, that they demand to be released from creation.
In one final desperate act of love, God embraces
his creation one last time, and in that embrace, the sinner is consumed. Driven
by demonic hate for their creator, the love and mercy of a just God consumes
the wicked as fire would consume a piece of wood. It is not vengeance God
seeks, but love. God envelops them in His glory, seeking to give every living
thing the same treatment, and in that glory, the wish of fallen humanity is
granted, and they pass out of existence, as though they had never been. Outside
of the mind of the creation of God, there is nothing, for God is the only
self-existent, non-created one. We will cover this idea of sin and the
destruction of the wicked in the next chapter. For now I will end with this,
eternal life is a choice. You should never fear of accidently finding yourself
in what some people call hell. Just as eternal life is a choice, so is eternal
death or what I call, nonexistence. You have the power to choose what you
desire. The fate of your future is in your hands, only you can decide if
eternal life is going to be yours, God cannot determine it, Satan cannot
determine it, and neither can your pastor or your family or your friends. No
amount of evil you have done can exclude you from the kingdom of God, it is
your personal and informed decision that ultimately decides your own destiny. God
IS Love however, and He does desire you to accept the gift of life. Will you?
