If God is for us, who can be against us?
Perception, especially in the Christian faith, is everything. One such perception dawned on me when I read these words in Romans 8 this week. I tend to see God as a stationary Person whom I must approach to find forgiveness, encouragement, or solace. After all, Jesus spoke of himself as the "way," which implies that I must go on a some form of mini-journey to find him.
But for a moment, this verse in Romans pulled back a veil, and I saw things in reverse. I realized that I am not a Christian because I am for God, but because he is for me. We "love him because he first loved us." Or to use spatial language, we believe in him because he first moved towards us.
He moved towards us in the Incarnation. That was wholly his initiative. While the Jews may have prayed for deliverance and for a manifestation of the rightness of their revelation, the actual fact of the Incarnation was startling to the point of offense. And it certainly made no impact on philosophical pagans, for whom salvation was the escape of the spirit from the confines of human flesh.
He moved towards us in the earthly life of Jesus. The Jews defined ritual cleanliness as the opposite of uncleanness--hence the stringent laws about the place (or dis-placement) of lepers in the society. Yet Jesus walked into groups of lepers and touched them. The healing power within him was stronger than the effect of the disease upon him. Reversing the Old Testament principle of defilement, the light of Christ overcame the darkness. And he approached them.
He moved towards us in his cross and resurrection. I don't want to belabor the doctrine of the atonement here; but I want to point out that in these events God the Father made it possible for himself to dwell with and in beings who still struggle with uncleanness and are intellectually finite. A way has been opened for us to fellowship with him as we are, while being changed by it.
The gospel is certainly not something we earn. By definition it is the evangelium, the "good news." And it is good news because it is the initiative of God, his willingness to run to us when we are running from him. Without his initiative, their is no hope of salvation.
We've all seen romantic moments in a movie, or in a commercial, in which a husband gives his wife a gift beyond his means, but which demonstrates his love. Her response: "O George, what have you done?" The question sounds like an accusation. But it is the opposite-- a question based on the joy of experiencing something too good to be true. Incarnation, life, death, resurrection--I found myself asking in my last reading of Romans 8, "O God, what have you done?"
"Oh what have you done?" or "You shouldn't have!" We generally say "You shouldn't have out of a sense of guilt for the lavishness of the gift we are glad to have received. It is somewhat of a dissimulative scolding toward the giver. But in the receiving of Christ the expression turns into a truthful revelation of the unworthiness of the recipient compared to the completely gracefilled giver, God. It convinces me that He only did it because of Who and What He is and likes to do. Not because of who and what I am or what I do. I hated Him when I knew Him not. So He revealed Himself to me. I wonder if He was smiling and thinking, " Bet you can't hate this!"
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