Offensive Love

God's love is incredibly offensive. Not in the sense that "The Pirates need to generate more offense" but in the sense that his love is above and beyond our cognitive understanding of what is good and right.

We have unintentionally shape our understanding of God and His love toward us based on our experience and the love we have receive from others. If one wants to judge by this merit he or she will continually underestimate the capacity God has to show favor, grace, and love toward his children.

I am a Christian and believe in the mystery of the Trinity. I believe in One God yet he has revealed himself in three characters. We call this the Father, the Son (Jesus, the Christ), and the Holy Spirit. They are equal in power and authority for there are literally one but they are different in their roles. The Father creates and sustains the world, the Son sacrificed himself showing us the great love of the Father, while the Holy Spirit empowers us for daily living and enlightens us to the truth that Jesus in the Messiah.

Trying to explain God in human terms is very difficult for He (even using gender is incorrect analysis) indescribable. The best one can do to explain and understand the glory of the Father is to look at the Son. The author of Colossians, Saint Paul, show the resurrected Christ seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven in a vision. He says two important things of God: "The Son is the image of the invisible God"  and "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him."

What's the point. We can fully and truly know God through the character of Jesus Christ. If we have some understanding of God that does not match up with how Jesus acted then we need to repent (change the way we think) at once.

Many of the religious people in the First Century did not like Jesus. They were offended by how he did things. He was offending people before he was born. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. God chose to bring His Son into the world through a teenage Jewish girl who was engaged to be married. Many people would have looked at Jesus and mocked him calling him a bastard child. Neither did Jesus get married. This is more common in today's culture but not in the First Century! In addition, Jesus who was a teacher with much authority, chose disciples that were the rejects of the day. The majority of his followers were fishermen and tax-collectors.

What is this Jesus guy doing? As you read through the Gospels you will see that he continues to offend the religious yet stun the "Sinners" by welcoming them into his life. He breaks down their man-made religion and reveals the true heart of God. "To seek and save the lost."

There is an account of great offense that Jesus brings in Luke's Gospel. Some Pharisees (this was a devout Jewish sect that held morality to a high standard) invited Jesus to have dinner at their home. This was the greatest level of intimacy in the Jewish First Century culture. As they are enjoying their meal and woman who doesn't even get named walks right into the house. She is simply called, "a sinful woman." She does the oldest thing. She falls to the ground at the feet of Jesus, pouring perfume and washing his feet with their kisses and hair.

This event caused the Pharisees not to be mad at the woman but at Jesus. But why? Because he was not offended at the woman. She was unclean. She was unholy. She was unworthy. She was a SINNER. She was a woman. She wasn't one of them. She wasn't a child of Abraham. The Pharisees say about Jesus, "If this man was a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is- that she is a sinner."

Jesus explains why he is not offended with a story (this was pretty common for Him).

"Two people owed money to a certain monelender. One owed him 500 days of wage, and the other 50 days of wage. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?

His rhetorical question was answered correctly by Simon, "The one who had the bigger debt forgiven."

If the Pharisees and many Christians today it is about doing more right than wrong. Life is about achieving perfection; more good deeds than sins. But the thing is no one is perfect. And if we are honest with ourselves trying to achieve perfection is hard and it is tiresome task.

The very fact that God sent His Son Jesus to die in our place is the fact that we could not rescue ourselves. That is
God's
Great
Love.

That he chose to love everyone equally. You might say, "Well, Jeff. Don't we all? No, I don't think so. We might try to love everyone equally and unconditionally but this again is a task that you and I fail.

God's love is offensive because your eternally  status before God is not determine by how you act or what you do. It is totally, 100% in the fact that he loves you and me and us and paved the way for us to have an eternal relationship with Him.

Jesus didn't care that the woman who was at his feet was considered to be a sinful woman. He didn't view people in light of their sin but in light of how much he loved them. To this day, Jesus' love is incredibly offensive to many. It is "too good to be true." We many times believe this because we believe the falsehood that God can only love me by how good of a person  I am. You are not a good person. You are however, a child of God. A prince or princess in God's kingdom. Forever loved and forever cherished simply because you are you.

Because this woman had a huge debt her understanding of God's love was able to increase. Y(our) ability to love others is directly proportional to the love we have received. To those who have received grace in light of their error how much greater has their capacity to show grace increased. 

As you walk through life today, I pray that you know that there is a God and He is madly in love with you. I pray that you can reflect on your life and understand no matter what you have gone through that God is willing to fully forgive you of everything. 

And when He forgives; He forgets.