God Loves You

It's the greatest truth of the Christian faith...and the hardest one to believe: 

God loves you. 

Yes, you. 

Way back when the whole Jesus thing was still fairly new, Paul wrote a letter to a young church whose people were losing their way a little bit. The church was in Colossia, and sin was starting to creep its way in. 

In chapter 3, Paul gently reminds them to put away all these sins of the flesh - the things that belong to their earthly nature. Things like sexual immorality, impurity, lust, greed. Even evil desires. He tells them to stop lying to each other and being angry with one another and letting "filthy language" come from their lips. He says, "This is who you used to be, but not any more." 

Yet, the fact that Paul was even mentioning these things in his letter to them means...they were still these things. They were still engaged in these things, still doing these things. Still being hateful and malicious and angry and immoral and impure and lustful and greedy and a whole host of "evil" things. 

But in the very next sentence, he changes the whole tone of everything: 

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience (3:12). 

And now, wait a minute. 

Because he just called them out for being persons of the flesh, for being disgusting, for not being the kind of people they should be but the kind they used to be. And then, in what feels like the very same breath, he reminds them they are "holy" and "dearly loved." 

I don't know about you, but that's a hard one for me. Put me in front of a mirror, and I'm bound to see my flesh. I'm bound to see the ways I'm not measuring up, even to my own standards, let alone God's. I'm prone to wallow in my brokenness and lament the fact that I'm still living my flesh, still living the old life, still the same old person I swore I didn't want to be any more (not that I ever wanted to be her). 

And it's easy to forget that at the very same time that I am all of those things, I am also holy and, most importantly, dearly loved. 

But such it is. That's the heart of the whole thing. God is love. And if God is love, then you are loved by Him. Nothing else could be more true. 

So if you're beating yourself up today, if you're looking in the mirror at someone who just messed up again, who just fell into an old pattern, who just made the same mistake, who just chose something you swore you'd never choose again, and you're wondering what this life you're living says about you, know this: it only says you've temporarily forgotten. 

Because the most important, the most true, the most amazing thing about you is not that you're somehow still here, somehow still pushing through, somehow still making it despite all your mistakes. No. The most important, most true, most amazing thing about you is that you are dearly loved. 

For God is love. 

And that means you.