Psalm 139:13, 17-18 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!
It was in a conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago that the true reality of God’s love affair with us, as His people, set in. God created us to be His counterpart.
We often look back to “the beginning” in what we think is a chronological order of:
God created, we fell, He gave us the law, we couldn’t follow it, so He sent Jesus, who suffered and died at the hands of His creation, then He resurrected Him, and when we believe we're saved. Hallelujah!
Now while all this is true, Jesus wasn’t sent as an afterthought of our disobedience, He was the plan from the very beginning. God created us already knowing we’d fall. He gave us the Law knowing we couldn’t follow it with the intention of pointing us to Jesus. And then, at just right time, God sent Jesus to do what we could never do ourselves. Live a perfect life and die a sinner’s death to wash us as white as snow, as white as His bride should be.
In Genesis 1 God created the heavens, the earth and everything on the earth. He created water creatures, birds, livestock and animals, and as Gene Edwards put it in his book Divine Romance, each “he” having a “she”
And then in His final act of creation, God said “Let us make man in Our image.” He molded him out of clay. And from this “he”, He made his “she”. Alas, every created creature has its own counterpart; all created having a counterpart, but no counterpart for God Himself.
I believe when God said “Let us make man in Our image” he was talking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Colossians 1:15-16 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see.
2 Timothy 1:9 For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.
I also believe that God created us to be His Love, His Bride. And being omniscient, He knew that His creation, His love would betray Him. Imagine knowing that, having the power to stop it, but instead allowing it. In His perfect love, God allows free will.
Many would ask why? If when He created us He knew we would mess things up and not be able to follow His law, then having to send Jesus to ransom us, why didn’t He just send Jesus immediately after the fall? Why do we have to fail so miserably over and over again?
For me the answer is simple, hard but simple. God wants me to love Him even as I live in this broken world. Through pain and in spite of how I may feel. Through things I may not like or understand. He wants me to choose to love Him because I was created to love Him and because He wants to be loved by me. I am His bride.
It’s the same in my marriage; I don’t want my husband to love me just because he married me and because married people are supposed to love each other. I want him to love me and accept me because I’m Jena and he chooses to. Even when I don’t seem lovable, I still want him to love me. No matter what the world tells him or how he “feels”, I don’t want his love for me to change.
God is the one who put the desire in us to be loved. Although God has perfect love within Himself, the depth of His love for us is far beyond anything we can imagine. He wants us to love Him by choice!
God, your Father, your Creator and the Creator of the universe wants YOU, male and female alike, to be His bride (Isaiah 61:10). Giving love and receiving love is not based on a feeling, it’s a choice. Jesus made the first choice, and now it’s up to you.
If you were the only person on the planet, Jesus would have chosen to walk the same path. He wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Do you believe He loves you?
Do you believe because of that love, He died for you?
Will you choose to love Him?
Personally, I have no idea why anyone would not choose to love the One who loves like that.
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