Thought of the Day 03.22.10

It’s so easy to get the Gospel wrong that many people can’t even tell the difference between proper and improper formulations of it. Consider a simple question like, “Why does God love us?”

Well, one common answer is that God loves us because we are loveable. We are so precious that Jesus went to the Cross as the necessary bargain to get what He truly wanted. But if we were really so loveable, why did it take a Cross to get us?

The truth is that God loves us because He is loving, and the outrageous price he paid to get us proves something about Him, not about us. Of course, we then acquire tremendous worth precisely because a God that loving wanted us. His wanting, not our wantableness, is what makes us precious.

See, there’s all the difference in the universe between saying the heresy, “You are so valuable that Jesus would die to get you,” and saying the Gospel truth, “You are so valuable because Jesus died to get you.” Sadly, millions of people think these two sentences are saying the exact same thing.