The Biblical Articles: After the First Step

What happens then? The amazing thing, the totally unexpected thing, is that even though we are "in the wrong" before God, he forgives us and empowers us to live new lives. He accepts us as we are. He does not say, "Go out and prove how good you can be, and then come back, and perhaps we'll reconsider your case." No, he says: "Right now, just as you are, I accept you. There is no longer any barrier between us. I will enter into as close a relationship with you as you will let me."

How does the Christian know that this astounding claim is true? How can he "bank on it"? Because this is what the New Testament is all about. For there we do not find simply a statement about this kind of love, but an enactment of it. Looking at Christ from the point of our need, we see in him the embodiment of this kind of love. We see in him God's outgoing love coming to us when we could not get to him, entering into our experience, refusing to hate people even when people hated him, loving them to the bitter end, even death upon the cross. And so Christian faith says: "That is God's love, coming to you just as you are, not waiting till you are worthy, but meeting you precisely at the point of your unworthiness. Simply believe that God is like that. Simply believe that God has taken the initiative in seeking you, that you are already forgiven if you will accept the gift of forgiveness which he offers you."

This accepting us as we are makes a tremendous difference. It makes, in fact, all the difference, because it now means that relationship is possible. I can enter into relationship with God now. I do not have to wait until some distant day when I become "good enough." We can see the significance of this in the relationship between parents and children. If your parents never entered into relationship with you except when you were "being good," you wouldn't have very much to do with each other. The thing that is most significant about parental love (at its highest and best) is that it is not a love that is dependent upon being deserved. It is strongest just at those times when there is least "reason" for it:

. . . when you have smashed the left fender and headlight of the family car the day before you were all going to the lake, and you feel absolutely sick about it; . . . or when you are a mass of ugly blotches (chicken pox) and want to crawl away and hide forever; . . . or when you get home after striking out in the ninth inning with the winning run on third, and can never go back to school again.

These are the times when you think: How can anybody love me? I'm a total flop. And these are the times when you find that your parents love you-at the unexpected times, when it is clear that they love you, not because you have done something to deserve their love, but simply because you are you and they love you just as you are -- in all your misery and unhappiness.

Well, the love of God is something like that. Infinitely more, of course, but of that sort. It is love that is undeserved, reaching out to you, right where you are, offering itself without reserve, to meet your need.

So the establishment of the new relationship is the work of God. C. S. Lewis puts the point graphically in his fairy story, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

A nasty specimen of humanity, called Eustace Scrubb, is so thoroughly nasty that he is changed into a dragon. After a while he discovers that it is not much fun being a dragon, and that it is actually not much fun being nasty to everyone else. So he begins to help rather than to hinder his shipmates (who are stranded on an island after a bad storm).

But he can't get rid of his dragon skin.

It just won't come off, no matter how hard he works at it. It is only possible for him to be changed back to his rightful form when he consents to let Aslan, the lion who is king of the beasts, use his claws to scratch off the terrible scales. Eustace the dragon cannot save himself. He can be saved only by something that the king of his creation can do for him. His emancipation is a giftnot something he was able to achieve himself.

So, too, in the Bible, the new relationship (which the Bible calls "salvation") is a sheer gift. It is not earned, it is not deserved, it is not anything that I can claim as a "right." I am brought into new relationship with God, not because I am good (which I am not), but because God loves me in spite of the fact that I am not good. It is the side of love that is so "new," so unexpected, in Christian faith.

Paul points out that it would be quite astonishing for a man to die on behalf of a good man. That would be a real test of his love. But what an unprecedented kind of love, he goes on, when Christ dies for men who are not even good, who are unworthy. Christ dies for us while we are yet sinners ( Rom. 5: 8: see also the end of Chapter l0 above), and that shows the lengths to which true love is ready to go. God loves the undeserving. Unexpected news, indeed!