Redeeming Love

I just finished reading Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. If you have not read it, I would highly recommend your spending the time necessary to devour its 400 plus pages. I did. And I am so glad I did. What a work of art! She makes a grand effort to capture in words the depths of God’s love for us, His redemptive love. Love and redemption are the crux of my faith, yet I am starved for words that come close to the hint of a definition. How can we describe in our simple humanness the greatness of God’s love for us? We haven’t the capacity in our minds to comprehend it to its fullest degree, so how can we come close to explaining it?

This weekend, our Pastor Jack Graham preached on John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Certainly it is one of the most well-known and often-quoted scriptures of the Bible. God loves us so much He wants to redeem us to life everlasting. He is the everlasting God and He wants to give us His everlasting love and an everlasting life with Him. Despite our faults and our failures, our sins and our selfishness, God loves us anyway, so much so that He made it possible for us to live with Him forever. There is a key word in the scripture that none should read swiftly past. It is the word “believes.” “Whoever believes.” Each who desires to know God and live forever with Him must believe in God and in His Son. It is really much simpler than one might think. God doesn’t put parameters around the word “believes.” He doesn’t require a certain amount of belief, a specific show of belief, or a carefully-worded statement of belief. His only requirement is a simple, but true, belief in Him and in His Son. That means the seven-year-old who says with a pure heart “Yes, I believe” has God’s everlasting love and promise of eternal life as much as Billy Graham. To believe, really believe, is at the heart of our hope.

I emphasize believe with the word really, not to be redundant, but to create a pause, an opportunity for reflection for all who are reading. Have you come to a place where you truly believe? It is not enough to be in a family who believes, in a church who believes, have friends that believe, or even to be married to one who believes. It is insufficient to sing about belief, to “Amen” to others’ prayers of belief, or to rely on a ceremonial act of belief. God knows the heart of each one of us. God knows whether you are one who believes or not. He knows if you doubt His very existence. He is the great “I Am” and His existence is not dependent upon your belief. But your eternal existence is dependent upon your belief in Him. He knows if you doubt that Jesus was and is His Son, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”--given, sacrificed and resurrected for you. He knows if you don’t recognize or receive His love for you. He knows. But He is patient. “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) God’s redeeming love is indescribable, although Francine Rivers made phenomenal strides towards the goal. But don’t take her word for it. Don’t take mine, or even my Pastor’s. Take His. Take God at His Word. If you haven’t experienced His redeeming love for yourself, then call out to Him, believing. Just one simple word of faith, spoken out of a heart that truly believes, is all that is required to receive God’s greatest gift of all.