I was walking through the City Centre today and there were some people who I presume were Christians who had just done a Bible reading, and someone was now standing to talk from it. I started off really well, "God loves you." I love to hear that proclaimed on the streets. It is the good news.
However it did not end there, "God loves you but..."
The problem is that this is how so many people see God's grace, God loves you, but... and at times it seems like a very big but.
God loves you, but you have to deal with sin.
God loves you, but there is judgement.
God loves you, but...
Of course it is true that God is concerned over sin, it is true that there is a day of judgement, it is true that we have to face the issue called sin.
God loves you full stop end of story. God loves you and He sent His son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it through Him.
God loves you and does not want anyone to perish, of course you cannot avoid the but, but sometimes I think we need to transform our buts into ands.
God loves you and therefore He sent His son into the world to save you.
Hear me out on this one, but God does not have a problem with sin, we do!
Sin is sin, it is a killer, it is the ultimate killer, without sin, no death, no pain, we would live in paradise and the power of sin leads us to the road of death. God does not have a problem with sin, it is simply that He sees sin as it is, sin is a killer. God has the antidote to sin, it is grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, new life.
We have a problem with sin because we often fail to escape it and we tend to fall into it, and we do not come up smelling of roses.
God loves you, and therefore He sent His son to save you from Sin.
We may sometimes be deluded into seeing sin as something attractive and therefore we see God as a cosmic killjoy who does not want us to enjoy ourselves. Therefore we preach as if sin was something good and God wants the best for us, and therefore does not want us to enjoy ourselves too much because He knows that it is bad for us.
Like the diets we think we can have a few sins, but so long as we are generally good we will be okay.
However the problem is that sin destroys, it is death. Sin destroys relationships (take lust, jealousy, greed, envy), it destroys peace (the same again), it destroys identity (pride), it takes away hope (we can never change). That is not God's will, that is the very opposite of God's will.
The problem is that the devil has been superb at creating problems and then blaming them on God. The truth is that God wants the best for us.
God loves you, and therefore He does not want you to throw your life away in sin but to live the best possible life. That is all positive and not a but in sight.
God loves you, He wants you to have a good time. God loves you He wants you to party. God loves you He wants you to experience and enjoy all that is good in life. He calls Himself our Father, and Dad wants the best for His children.
He therefore calls to us, "Don't jump over the edge. Don't throw it away."
God's love is not one of buts, but of the possibility of new beginnings.
So often we have this big but, but perhaps instead we should have a big "and" instead.
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