I missed it! Diving again into God’s love, I missed the craziness that God would ever bother proving anything to us!
The Gods and Kings
Normally you had to prove yourself to the gods, to the kings, to the lords, to your city, to your family. They had nothing to prove to you—except what happens when you don’t prove yourself.
The gods—and the kings with them—looked indifferently on humanity, on mere mortals (unless you proved yourself especially worthy of attention, and that didn’t always end well).
(See Larry Hurtado’s Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World for more on this.)
God Proves…
But Paul is EMPHATIC: God PROVES his love to us!
And God proves his love to us when we had done everything to prove ourselves unworthy of both love and proof—at least as we think of it.
“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NRSV)
The PROOF of God’s Love
• God doesn’t just tell us to trust his love, or believe his love, or to take his word for it. GOD PROVES IT.
• God doesn’t just offer hints and suggestions, drop some bread crumbs, or play hard to get about his love. GOD PROVES IT.
• God isn’t aloof and disinterested, caring little about what we may or may not think about his love. GOD PROVES IT.
God PROVES his love.
God DEMONSTRATES his love.
God does the work to SHOW his love.
God is the one DOING the PROVING
• God proves it himself—not sending a messenger.
• God acts himself—not delegating the work.
• God comes in person—not through another.
Of course it was (and is) a crazy message that “God loves us”.
But it’s even crazier that God—the most high God—would stoop down to our ignorance in mind and enemies of heart, and prove his love to us.
Truly that is good news.
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Posts in “Unsystematic Thought’s on God’s Demonstration of Love” Series:
- From Abstraction to Demonstration of Love (#1)
- While We Were Still Weak (#2)
- God Proves to Us (#3)
- On God’s Unique Kind of Love (#4)
- While We Were Still Warring (#5)
- Enemy Love as Forgiveness (#6)
Embodied Faith Podcast Episode:
Other Posts on Love