“Wayne, I have come to realize that I have been trying to earn points with someone who was no longer keeping score.” In his situation I cannot imagine more painful words.
My heart broke for him, and we spent the rest of our lunch together sorting out his options and finding out how I could support him in the difficult days ahead.
His words, however, had touched something far deeper and had coalesced in a simple phrase what the Father had been working into my life over the previous months. What had borne tragic news to him had signaled new-found freedom for me. I had spent all of my life in the faith doing with God what he had done with his wife. I, too, had been trying to earn points with someone who was no longer keeping score, though for far different reasons.
My friend’s wife had stopped keeping score because she was no longer interested in saving their relationship. My Father had never kept score because he wanted nothing more than to cultivate a relationship with me. He had done that, not by throwing my scorecard away, but by completely filling it out himself.
That’s what Paul meant when he said that Jesus died on the cross so that, “the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). For someone who had lived many years imagining God as the divine Scorekeeper, this moment was an epiphany. God’s not counting anymore, and that means I don’t have to either!
If Adam and Eve’s troubles began when they lost sight of how deeply God loved them, doesn’t it stand to reason that our whole lives will change when we come to know the depth of his love for us? That’s exactly what our Father wants the reality of the cross to produce in us.
We will look at what it means to live every day in the confidence of his love for us. We’ll discover that when living in this reality everything about our life and our faith will take on different meaning and tap new motivations. Rather than providing an excuse for falling victim to sin, our security in his love will actually destroy the root of sin and teach us how to live as his free people in the earth.
But let us be certain of the process at the outset. You cannot implement the practical implications as an attempt to become secure in his love. That is backwards, confusing the cause with the results. It will only produce another form of legalism — trying to earn by effort what God has made a gift.
Freedom to grow in him comes when you recognize that his love for you isn’t affected by your actions. Philip Yancey in his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, said it as clearly as we need to understand it: “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more… and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”
Our only choice is whether or not to live loved, trusting that his eye is on us and that he can work out in us everything that he desires. That is the challenge of life in God’s kingdom. He has done everything to demonstrate his irrefutable love; but he will not make us live there. We can still live less-loved, pursing our own agenda with our own resources and in the process not only destroying ourselves but hurting others as well.
The choice is yours; and it can never be made once for a life-time. This choice is made every day in every circumstance in which you find yourself. Do you trust that he loves you even in this, or will you fall back on your own wisdom and desires?
From He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen.
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