How Being Loved Makes You Who You Are

I am a child of God; therefore, I am loved. 

In our YouTube video this week we discuss the practical implications of being a child of God, and we mainly spoke about being loved as a child of God. Simply, that being a child of God means that we are loved by a good and gracious Heavenly Father. What exactly does this mean?

Let us Consider This...

First, take two minutes to sit in silence and meditate on how you have experienced love in your life. We all have different experiences of love: some exhilarating, some excruciating, and some exhausting experiences--oddly enough, each of these might have been a good or bad experience. Point is, did that love you experience require anything in return? Was it an unconditional love? Were you being loved, or giving love without any condition or expectation? Our experience in ministry has shown that 90% of love that people experience is conditional and 10% is unconditional. 

If this assumption is true, then all of us have a warped view of love that has shaped our worldview. This worldview of conditional love is a problem in our relationship with God, because is causes us to hold back and not live in a full unhindered relationship with God, our Father. Consider this, each time you encounter God's love for you, you assume that he wants something in return, because you believe that love has conditions. So, what do you do? You try and behave well, or work harder, or tithe more, or serve more, or sin less. All of these things in themselves sound very noble, and biblical; however, if we are doing them because we feel that God is loving us to get something out of us, then we do not fully understand God's love for us. 

God does not love us to get something out of us. God loves us because he is loving--that's his nature and it's what he does. A blacksmith shapes metal; God loves unconditionally.

"I Love You My Child"

This is what God says to you, with no strings attached! This first implication of being a child of God is that we are unconditionally loved: 

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! -1 John 3:1 (NIV)

God, by his love has made us his children. We are God's children because he loves us. God has not made us his children so that he can have people under compulsion to worship him. Scripture is clear, "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19 NIV). It is in our love for God that we worship him, and in doing so we fulfill the greatest commandment to love God (Matt 22:37). There is, if you will, a continuous cycle: God loves us, he makes us his children, we love God.

Now, imagine if we tried to repay God's love for us, how exhausting that would be? How could we ever pay back a God who loves us eternally? This sounds ridiculous, but there are people who try! Scripture describes this type of person who tries to repay God in Luke 15:25-32 (NIV):

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ 

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

We see two things plaguing the "older son:" 1) he was acting as if love was conditional and trying to repay his father, and 2) he was his father's son, but was living as his slave. 

"...But I've Done All This For You!"

Like this older brother, when we live as if God's love is conditional, we slip from sonship (child of God) to slavery. This older son became frustrated and entitled with his father because he was trying to gain favor with him by his merit. He shows us what faith looks like under a system of conditional love. The older son says, "all these years I've been slaving for you...yet you never gave me... (Lk 15:29). He was working for the favor of his father, and even expected something in return for all his hard labor. The only thing all of his hard work did for him was make him a slave. 

Faith under a system of conditional love looks like the slavery of the older son. We know that God is loving, like the older brother did (c.f. his recognition of the father's treatment of the younger son), but we try and repay his love toward us through merit. Eventually, we will end up exhausted and entitled expecting that God owes us something because of our grand merit toward him. 

Interestingly enough, a son and slave will perform the same action but have a different heart. The fruit of the son will be compelled by love, but the fruit of the son will be compelled by fear. A son works with God, yet the slave works for God as if they are repaying a debt that is owned and can be paid off. 

The older son is the perfect image of one living under conditional love. He was compelled by his father, as stated before, but he was trying to pay his father's kindness back through his merits and it led him into slavery. Exactly, how much work does it take to pay God back for his love? 

No Mistake or Merit

God's love for us is unconditional: our mistakes don't erase it and our merit doesn't earn it--this is the revelation of the two sons in Luke 15. God loves us and because of that love he has made us his children. Children of God and slaves of God will perform the same actions but with different hearts. Children are not trying to repay God, they are simply trying to love God and love others. 

The practical implication of being a child of God is that you are unconditionally loved, and because of that love you will love God, and others, because you simply love God.