5/19/2025

Brennan Manning wrote:  “We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he would bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”  Are you astonished by this?  Do you at times find yourself questioning the goodness of God, wondering how God could really love someone like you?

The “how” of God loving is determined by the “who” that God is.  Holy Scripture is clear:  “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  The word “love” here means “unconditional commitment to seek the best for another.”  This is not just what God does—it is who God is.  There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more or less than God already does.

Jim Denison says that if we really believed God loves us without qualification:

We wouldn’t try to earn his forgiveness by punishing ourselves.  We would believe that our Father forgives all we confess (1 John 1:9) and then separates our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).  As it is, we often punish ourselves for sins God will not punish through self-inflicted discouragement and even self-harm.

We wouldn’t try to excuse our failures so as to minimize our need for forgiveness.  As C.S. Lewis said, the worse our excuses, the more they contribute to the problem by adding deceit to our other failures.

We wouldn’t be tempted by a transactional faith that seeks to earn God’s favor through religious activities and good deeds.  Rather, we would serve because we are loved, not so we will be loved.  We would give because we have received, not so we will receive.

We would love and serve others whether they love and serve us or not since we are secure in the fact that we are unconditionally loved by the God of the universe.

-Michael