Does God Love . . . Me?

Crucified… but I Still Live

If you ask most Christians if God loves them, they don’t normally hesitate to answer yes, maybe even enthusiastically. Having listened to plenty of young people and adults, not to mention my own heart, I have come to suspect that we are not as sure of this as we seem. Are we simply repeating an automatic “right answer” that doesn’t truly reflect our internal world? Often lurking under such quick responses are deep and abiding insecurities about God’s attitude toward us. Consequently, asking a different question has often yielded a more revealing answer that can open up a more compelling conversation. So now I ask you . . .

Does God like you?

Have you ever felt that your parents, or spouse, or God loved you and yet wondered if they actually liked you? Love is so loaded with obligations and duty that it often loses all emotive force, all sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Like can remind us of an aspect of God’s love that we far too easily forget. Forgetting God’s delight and joy in us stunts our ability to enjoy God’s love. Forgiveness—as beautiful and crucial as it is—is not enough. Unless it is understood to come from love and to lead back to love, unless we understand the gospel in terms of God’s fierce delight in us and not merely a wiping away of prior offenses, unless we understand God’s battle for us as a dramatic personal rescue and not merely a cold forensic process, we have ignored most of the Scriptures as well as the needs of the human condition.

Your Christian identity needs to be shaped by the fact that God in Christ loved you and gave himself for you—you! God doesn’t forgive just generic sins; he forgives my sins. He doesn’t save just the cosmos; he saves me. Why? Because he loves you and me as particular people. God delights in you as you use the particular gifts he has given you. You are a child of the King. You are an irreplaceable member of the body of Christ. God wants you to flourish as the particular you that you are, to enjoy his creation and to enjoy him. That is your calling and privilege as a particular human creature he made and delights in. This is crucial for recapturing a healthy embrace of our creaturely limits. He doesn’t love just a generic world or amorphous humanity; he loves you, and he even likes you.