We have all heard that ‘God loves you’ before, right? Blah blah blah. We hear it so much that it hardly moves us at all (if it even moves at all).
I am guilty of this.
But what does this actually mean? The phrase ‘God loves you’?
I think if we really grasped this truth, then it would change everything. Everything about us. Everything in terms of how we view God, how we view ourselves, how we relate with others, how we view our work, and how we view our world.
Unfortunately, the phrase ‘God loves you’ passes through one ear and out the other so often. It doesn’t move us. It barely means anything to us.
Most of us—if we are honest—believe that God ‘loves us’ just like we called to ‘love’ someone we don’t like or don’t even know.
In other words, we believe that God ‘loves’ us, but we don’t believe that God actually likes us, delights in us, and is crazy about us. In the book of Zephaniah (and all throughout Scripture), God literally says he dances over the thought of us (3:17). References like these in Scripture aren’t there to make our heads big, but to overwhelm our hearts towards grateful humility and outward confidence.
But don’t make a fatal mistake of distorting what this means: The amazingness of God’s ridiculous, unending, intense, full, maximal love for you—the emphasis of this reality is not centered in how great you are to have attracted such unbelievable attention from God; the emphasis is on how great God is that he gives you such wild attention in the first place. God’s attention of us does not primarily mean we are inherently amazing creatures. Rather, God’s attention of us means that God is an inherently amazing God. After all, we are human; he is God. After all, we are imperfect; he is God. After all, we are weak and fragile and changing and sinful; he is God.
Like the psalmist says, ‘who am I that you are mindful of me?’ This is not a proud declaration of the psalmist’s own stature; this is an overwhelmed exclamation of God’s amazing grace despite his pitiful stature in the scheme of the cosmos.
But why? Why does God feel so strongly about us? Have we earned such approval from God? Is there anything in us that would warrant this striking, mysterious love of God for us? No. If anything, we deserve it the least! We constantly reject him in our heart of hearts, claiming lordship over our own lives, rejecting his design for life and creating our own. Rather, God loves us, delights in us, and rejoices over us… simply because he does. And overall, Jesus is ultimate proof of God’s crazy love towards us—not our deeds. And getting those confused will make the biggest difference in the world. In fact, Jesus came to save us from how our deeds were wrongly the default way of relating to God.
WHAT ‘LOVE’ PRACTICALLY MEAN?
The big part—which I believe we so often overlook—however, is that this massive love of God for us in Christ supplies us our deepest longings in life: value, our self-worth, our significance, our security, our validation. Your worth doesn’t come from what you do or accomplish—for God or for yourself or for your business or family or whatever. Your worth isn’t determined by yourself. We live in a post-modern culture that proclaims ‘you define your own essence.’ Unfortunately, this is quite contrary to what we read in Scripture. Rather, your worth or ultimate essence comes from what Jesus has done and accomplished for you on the cross. The fact that God came down in the flesh, lived and died for you to make a way to Himself is proof—in and of itself—of how valuable, significant, and secure you truly are.
If he loves you, then that means that you are valuable. If God’s says you are valuable, then you are. And his actions prove it. And not just pithy actions either. We are talking incarnating, living, dying, and resurrecting for you to pay the penalty of sin you were condemned to die and provide the position of reconciliation He longed for you to have.
IMPLICATIONS
Furthermore, there are massive implications that come with this massive love of God. If we really believed that God truly loved us, then we would stop trying so strenuously to determine our worth and significance by our job, our relationships, our position, or our stature. If we really believed that God truly delights in us, rejoices in us, dances over us—only because of his sheer grace—we would stop trying so strenuously to locate our self-worth in what we look like or who we can become or what we can accomplish. We would no longer be a working so tirelessly for these things to give us what we truly need for satisfaction. We would no longer be slaves to these things.
So, what if God was our ultimate sense of significance, security, and self-worth? Well, that now means we can finally approach our jobs, relationships, money, looks, blessings, platforms, etc. not as an means to end… not as a god that will satisfy our deepest longings… but finally being able to treat them as what they really are: just jobs, relationships, money, looks, blessings, platforms. Now, we are freed from their control. They don’t rule our hearts. Let’s be honest: most conflict in life happens when we make gods out of others and things to satisfy us supremely, and they end up disappointing us in varying ways.
Now you might be thinking, ‘well, this is stupid! This doesn’t even work on a practical level! This ideology dismantles all incentive to work hard at your job, or to try hard in your relationships, or enjoy the gifts and pleasures of earth!’
Not too fast. No one said you shouldn’t work hard at relationships, or your treat job with excellence, or really enjoy the things of earth. What I am saying is that when you don’t treat these things as gods that could fail you, you finally approach them with the peace, freedom, grace, and joy needed to finally enable you to relate to and operate in your jobs, relationships, and pleasures better. The pressure is off. You can give grace, because you don’t expect others or things to supremely fulfill you. Only God can take that role.
When you don’t treat things as gods that can fail you, and finally treat God like he doesn’t fail you, you will finally approach everything else with the freedom to fail and not be devastated, and the freedom to succeed and simply be overjoyed and thankful. Besides, when you treat others and things as a means to supremely fulfill you, you are fundamentally and inevitably using them for a selfish ends. You aren’t really loving them. You are just loving the idea of how they can fulfill you. However, when God is your ultimate anchor of security and supreme dose of satisfaction and centerpiece of significance, then you can love others as others and treat things as things. You can enjoy them in and of themselves. You aren’t using them to fulfill a need that needs to be met. God has met that need supremely. So… now what? Just love people authentically for who they are. Just enjoy things intrinsically for what they are.
Why? Because in Christ, everything you long for in life—undisputed significance, permanent security, maximal self-worth, etc.—you already have and it can never be taken away from you by what you do or don’t do.
We so often determine our worth by what we accomplish for ourselves, for others, and for God. This is a dead end. What do I mean? If your self-worth is determined by what you do or don’t do, then your efforts will turn your heart proud if you succeed and will turn your heart sorrowful if you fail. And in the process, making your deeds the ‘currency’ to determine your significance is what will make even the best things in life merely a cold-hearted, selfish transaction—your relationship with God, others, family, and your work will amount to nothing more than a transaction. You hoped to transact for so much, but you reduced it all to so little.
Yet, the gospel of Christ says the exact opposite. It says that your value, self-worth, significance, and security can be known because God—whose opinion only really matters—lovingly lived and died for you in the person of Jesus Christ. His deeds determine your worth. His deeds secure your salvation. His deeds prove that you are valuable. And if you are valuable to God, then what job you have, what relationship you do or don’t have, how much money you make, etc. doesn’t matter a dime towards your significance or security! YOU ARE FREE.
Your value is independent from what you do because GOD LOVES YOU.
When you hear, ‘God loves you’ what do you think of? What goes through your head? What resounds in your heart?
I hope you start realizing that the phrase ‘God loves you’ is entirely synonymous with ‘God likes you a lot’ and ‘God rejoices over you’ and ‘you are supremely valuable in God’s eyes’ and ‘your value is not determined by what you do but about what He has done’.
‘God loves you’ is a familiar phrase. This is not a bad thing. This is an amazing truth to hear over and over again. Let’s just reaffirm this truth in our hearts, soak in its rich meaning, and rejoice in it until we can confidently say back to God, with the psalmist, “You are my strength and my shield; in you my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to you” (Ps. 28:7 ESV, adapted).
