Loved First
Before you do anything for God, see what He has already done for you. Creation, Scripture, and the cross tell one story: you are loved first.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
John 3:16Think about the last time a newborn got passed around a room. It has accomplished nothing. Can't talk, can't help, can't pay for a single thing, and the whole room still lights up, half-arguing over who gets to hold it next.
Nobody in that room asks to see the baby's résumé first. The love arrives before the baby does anything, and it wouldn't grow one degree warmer if the baby somehow earned it.
God already feels that way about you. His love isn't a paycheck you clock in for, or a prize you unlock at level 100. It's simply how He feels about you before you've done a single thing.
You are loved first
Steps to Christ opens with a sentence worth memorizing: "Nature and revelation alike testify of God's love." In other words, if you know where to look, everything is telling you the same thing. You are loved, and you were loved before you knew it.
The evidence is everywhere
Think about it honestly. The sunshine and the rain that keep the world alive. Hills, seas, flowers, the ridiculous variety of birds. None of it had to be beautiful. It works whether or not it's lovely. But it is lovely, and that's a clue. God didn't just build a universe that functions; He built one that delights. It reads like the work of a Father who wants His kids happy.
"God is love" is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass. The lovely birds making the air vocal with their happy songs... all testify to the tender, fatherly care of our God.
Steps to Christ, chapter 1
Somebody lied about God
For a long time people have pictured God as a strict judge. Arms folded, keeping a record of everything you get wrong, waiting to catch you. If that's the God you grew up imagining, no wonder faith felt heavy. But that picture isn't from God. The enemy of good "blinded the minds of men" so that they'd fear God instead of trusting Him. Jesus came specifically to erase that lie and show us what the Father is actually like.
The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us.
Steps to Christ, chapter 1
Jesus is God with skin on
Watch how Jesus lived and you're watching the character of God. He healed people. He welcomed the poorest and the most overlooked. Little kids weren't scared of Him. They climbed into His lap. He told the truth, but "always in love." When people rejected Him, He looked at them "with pitying tenderness." That is God. And the cross isn't God finally being talked into loving us, the Father loved us the whole time and gave His Son because He already loved the world.
The sun doesn't shine because the fields earned it. It rises on the hardworking and the exhausted, the impressive and the ordinary, exactly the same every morning. God's love has that kind of no-strings constancy. It's the climate you live in, not the weather that shifts with your performance.
The difference between a motion-sensor light and the moon. Human approval is motion-activated. Perform, and it flicks on; go still, and it shuts off. God's love is the moon: already up, whether or not you did anything tonight to earn it.
When you feel unlovable
Almost everything around you runs on earning. Grades, followers, spots on the team, being useful, being impressive. It's easy to secretly assume God works the same way, and that His love switches on when you're good and off when you blow it.
Chapter 1 takes that apart. God's love isn't a paycheck for good behavior; it's the ground you're already standing on. On the day you're proud of yourself and the day you can't stand yourself, the sun still rises, the world is still beautiful, and the cross still stands. You don't have to become lovable. You already are loved, that's the starting line, not the finish.
Three questions
- What picture of God did you grow up with, a strict judge, a distant boss, a kind Father? Where did it come from?
- Where have you seen "God is love" written into the ordinary parts of your week?
- If you truly believed you were loved before you earned anything, what would you stop trying so hard to prove?
Father, thank You that You loved me first. Before I understood it, before I deserved it. Rewrite the picture of You I've been carrying. Help me see Your love in the world around me and in the face of Jesus, and let it be the ground I stand on today.
Next: Why We Need Jesus
Keep moving through the journey in order. Step 2 builds on what you have just read.
Continue to Step 2