Religion always starts out with demanding. Christianity always begins with bestowing. Having created both Adam and Eve to be His image bearers, the first thing God did was to bless them. It is important to understand that God’s first inclination was to bless humanity even before they had done one thing to earn it or done one act of service toward Him. God is love. Love is not one aspect of who God is; it is His primary DNA. 1 John 4 doesn’t say that God loves, though, of course, He does love with perfect love; it says that God’s very nature is love. Every other aspect of God’s character, like holiness, justice, wisdom, etc., Always fits into God’s DNA of love. You don’t balance love with justice. Justice must fit into who God is as love. Agape love at its core is sacrificial and longs to share, which is why God is a God of grace and hope.
God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it (exercise God’s dominion over it). He didn’t give them those things to do until He first blessed them. Great saints are not great achievers; they are great receivers. Only the blessed can be an authentic blessing to the world around them. A divine outflow through us is always a result of a divine inflow in us. Jesus didn’t come to satisfy God’s anger towards us. He came to satisfy God’s relentless longing to bless us. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” And Romans 5:6, 10 says that Christ died for us and reconciled us to God while we were still “helpless, ungodly, and enemies.” (God never treated us as an enemy, but in our rebellion, we treated Him as an enemy.)
God reconciled us through Christ to Himself without our ever asking Him to or ever telling Him we were sorry. Why? Because God is love, and his first inclination is always to bless. We change because he blesses us. We don’t change to get him to bless us. CS Lewis said that the most important thing about us is what we believe about God. No wonder the enemy, the deceiver, is always trying to distort the truth about God because if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. It doesn’t say the truth will set you free; it says IF YOU KNOW THE TRUTH, the truth will set you free.
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