This is the
second week of our series called “Does God…?”
We’re looking at just who God is and how God does things. This week, our question is “Does God care
about me?” Not does God care about
humanity generally, but does God care about me, and about you, as
an individual.
It’s an important question. I mean, think about who God is. This is the almighty, all-powerful God we’re
talking about. This is the God who just
had to speak a word and the entire universe was created. This is a God who is bigger and greater and
stronger and more powerful than anything we could ever imagine.
Now think about who we are. We’re small, puny, tiny. Isaiah says we’re like grasshoppers
compared to God. Could you care about a
grasshopper? A grasshopper’s a pest,
right? There are an awful lot of us
grasshoppers, too, over seven billion at the last estimate. Even if God wants to, can God even keep
track of that many of us, let alone care about us as individuals?
Some people would say no. One of the most prominent among them is the
famous physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking. A
couple of years ago, he flatly said that it would be impossible for God to care
about seven billion individuals. In
fact, he used that as proof of the non-existence of God. Dr. Hawking said about the way Christians
view God, “They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal
relationship. When you look at the vast
size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it,
that seems most impossible.”
It’s obviously not just Dr. Hawking
who thinks that way. There are millions
of people who claim to have a belief in God, but who don’t think God takes any
active interest in human life. It’s
often referred to as the Watchmaker Theory:
God created the universe in much the same way a human would make an
old-fashioned watch. God then “wound
up” the universe, so to speak, and then let it go, to tick on its own. God may be observing what happens, but God
does not take any action to influence it.
God has left us to our own devices, to sink or swim on our own.
The Bible does not endorse that
theory, of course. The Bible regularly
shows God taking an active interest in human affairs and taking action to
influence them. Even so, when we read
the Old Testament, it’s hard to find much that leads us to believe God actually
cares about you and me individually and personally.
The Ten Commandments are great, but
they say nothing about love or caring or anything like that. There’s a lot in the Old Testament that
shows God caring about the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, but that’s a
promise to Israel as a nation, not as individuals. There are a few select leaders who seem to achieve a personal
relationship with God, but that kind of personal relationship does not seem to
have been available to most people.
That’s the reason the priests made
all the ritual offerings and sacrifices we read about in the Old
Testament. Common people did not have
individual access to God, so they needed the priest to go to God for them. God was thought of as being God of the big
picture. God would take care of the
people of Israel generally, but God did not necessarily take care of individual
people.
That’s one of the reasons so many
people had a hard time accepting Jesus as their Savior. The idea that God would take human form,
that it was possible to have a direct, one-on-one relationship with God, was
not the way most people thought about God at that time. It did not make sense to them.
Even if they could conceive of God
wanting a direct relationship with individuals, they’d have expected God to go
to the top people, the priests, the Pharisees, people like that. That’s not what Jesus did. Instead, he spent time with the common
people, or even to the outcasts, the lowest people in society. It did not make sense to them that God would
want a one-on-one relationship with people like that.
One of the greatest and most
important things about the story of Jesus is that Jesus was God living on the
earth, having a direct, personal, one-on-one relationship with human
beings. Not just the privileged few,
but all human beings, including the common people and even the lowest of the
low. All of Jesus’ life involved God
having that personal relationship with people on earth. Not only that, but because of Jesus’ death
and resurrection, each of us can still have that personal relationship with God
if we accept Jesus as our Savior.
That’s incredible, you know? It seems amazing to me every time I think about
it. God, this being that is beyond my
comprehension, wants to have a person relationship with me, as weak and sinful
and inadequate as I am. There’s no
logic that explains that. There’s no
good reason I can think of for God to want that relationship. The only reason there can possibly be is
love. God wants that relationship with
each one of us, as weak and sinful and inadequate as we all are, just because
God loves us.
There’s a phrase our scripture used
twice today. I’m sure you’ve heard it
many times before, but I don’t know that we always really think about it. The phrase is this: “God is love.”
“God is love.” Think about that. It’s not “God loves.”
It’s not “God has love.” It’s
not “God feels love.” It’s “God is
love.”
Love is an intrinsic part of who
God is. Love exists because God
exists. God could not exist without
loving, any more than you and I can exist without breathing. God does not stop and think about loving us,
any more than you and I stop and think about taking our next breath. God just does it. God loves us because that’s who God is. The almighty, all-powerful God is also the all-loving God.
Our scripture also says, “love is
from God. Everyone who loves is born of
God and knows God.” Because God is
love, and we are created in God’s image, we, too, have the ability to
love. We don’t have that ability
without God; in fact, our scripture says, “whoever does not love does not know
God.” Without God, there is no
love. Love exists because God exists.
That’s true whether we know it or
not. It’s true whether we’re aware of
it or not. There are people who don’t
believe in God who are still able to love.
Why? Because God is living in
them, whether they realize it or not.
Our scripture says, “Those who abide in love abide in God, and God
abides in them.”
That’s amazing, really. God loves each one of us so much that God
will live in people who do not even acknowledge God’s existence. Even when we’re apathetic, even when we resist,
even when we actively try to fight God, God still keeps working on us and
working in us. God never gives up on
us, because God loves us.
Our scripture says, “If we love one
another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.” When we show love to someone, in that
moment, we are as close to God as we can ever get. When we truly show love, when we do something for someone with no
plan of getting anything in return and without it even occurring to us that we
might get something in return, we act in as much of a God-like way as it’s
possible for us to act. And if we can
get to the point where doing that comes naturally to us, where we do it without
even thinking about it, then God’s love truly has been perfected in us.
Our scripture closes by saying,
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear.” That’s the other thing we get from that
one-on-one relationship with God. We
don’t have to live in fear of God, because we know God loves us.
In Old Testament times, people
feared God. The psalms and the proverbs
even say that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. That’s why following all those Jewish laws
was considered so important. People
were afraid that if they did something wrong, God would punish them.
That idea does not show up in the
New Testament. Why? Because we know what they did not know in
Old Testament times. We know that Jesus
is God, and that God is love, and that where there is love there can be no
fear. When the Holy Spirit is in our
hearts, when we have a personal relationship with God, we no longer have to
live in fear of punishment.
Now, obviously, that does not mean we’re free to do
anything we want. What it does mean is
that we’re free to live as God wants us to live. We don’t have to constantly look over our shoulders. We don’t have to worry that God’s watching
our every move, waiting for us to step out of line. Instead, we’re free to go out and show God’s love to people
everywhere and at all times. We don’t
have to live in fear. We don’t have to
worry about following all the technical rules. The only rule we have is God’s rule, and that’s love: love of God and love of each other.
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