Big Time Heavy Theology Alert - "Antinomy"

I'm sorta kidding about "big time heavy theology".

Really what I want to say in this article is quite simple.

It's just that it's so far above our way of thinking that it's...well, it's from the mind of God.

We accept it as true, even though it boggles our minds. It goes against the grain of our Earthbound logic, as we sometimes understand logic.

Logic Is Good

I'm not at all knocking logic. Logic is a wonderful gift from God.

In fact, what I'm going to lay out in a moment is actually quite logical. It's just that logic doesn't require truth, and so we rationalize untrue things all the time.

For example, look at the following syllogism:

1. All zebras are green [premise 1].
2. That animal over there is a zebra [premise 2].
3. Therefore that animal over there is green [conclusion].

That is PERFECTLY logical...really. But it's not TRUE. That was Spock's problem.

So in order to use logic rightly, we ought to begin with TRUE premises. And there are no truer premises than those that come from the Word of God RIGHTLY DIVIDED.

Sidenote: I say "rightly divided" because Scripture can be wildly taken out of context, applied "logically", and yet end in the ridiculous. Something stupid like combining "Judas hanged himself" with "Go thou and do likewise" (Humorous, but I'm only slightly exaggerating the abuses some use of this kind of "logic").

God's Ways and Thoughts

One of the most important Scriptures we should know as humans comes from Isaiah 55:8,9. Here it is:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts."

Do you have a pet? Or have you ever had a pet?

We have a wiener dog. He is not the brightest dog on the Planet (we say he's nothing but love), but let's assume for a moment that he is the smartest of all dogs.

Do you think that if I tried to explain to him why we're leaving him on a Sunday morning to go to church that he would understand that? And not be so unhappy to see us leave, but rejoice that we are going to fellowship and hear the Word of God?

Ridiculous, isn't it?

Why? Because our ways are higher than his, and our thoughts are higher than his. I can't even ease his mind, because all he "knows" is that he wants us to be home with him. Well, also he "knows" we love him. And he's pretty happy with that, especially when we come back home.

Now, if you think that is an extreme illustration of God's ways and thoughts being higher than ours, you're wrong. Infinitely wrong. God's ways and thoughts are so much higher than ours that we can't even comprehend how much higher they are!

And yet He has condescended to reveal some of His ways and thoughts to us, in ways that we can actually understand and react to them.

But here's the beginning of the point of this article: Some of what God reveals to us appears to contradict itself, but yet He declares that it is true.

Which leads to our direct subject, the concept of the Antinomy.

What Is An Antinomy?

Before defining the concept of an antinomy, I want to make a rather bold statement:

Until you understand the concept of "antinomy", there is much of Scripture that will elude you or confuse you.

But when you understand the concept of "antinomy", Scriptures that you never understood will shine with truth in a way that glorifies the Lord Whose ways and thoughts are higher than ours.

Here's an informal working definition of Antinomy for our purposes here:

An Antinomy exists when we have TWO TRUTHS from Scripture that APPEAR to contradict themselves, yet BOTH ARE TRUE for the simple reason that GOD'S WORD DECLARES THEM TO BE TRUE.

We see illustrations of this in the natural world. A pan of water is water, but clouds are water. To the ignorant that would appear as a contradiction, but we know both are true.

On a psychological level, we may say Hitler was a monster of evil, yet a nephew of his may say he is a loving doting Uncle. Apparent contradiction, yet both may be true (I don't know if Hitler even had a nephew).

No illustration does justice to a biblical antinomy, however, since no level of truth rises to the level of biblical truth in it's absoluteness.

Although there are several antinomies in Scripture, I will use one as an example.

God's Love For All As An Antinomy

The question of whether God loves all men or just some has been a long-standing controversy.

And like many controversies, I believe the problem is in a lack of understanding of the concept of Antinomy.

And so the result of the controversy is almost invariably a twisting of Scriptures to fit one view or the other.

1. The "God Loves Everybody" school reasons, "John 3:16 says God loved the world, the world means everybody, and 'God is love', isn't He, and that settles it."

Well, I believe that does settle it, but this school of thought often has difficulty, then, in explaining God's wrath, eternal punishment, and hatred. They usually end up in blaming "free will", when the truth is that if every person was left to their own "free will" they would continue in their rejection of God, all the way to the Lake of Fire.

2. The "God Does NOT Love Everybody" school reasons, "God couldn't love everybody and still send them to Hell. Does not Scripture say that God hates the wicked? That God hated Esau, but loved Jacob?"

This idea has been widely spread among Reformed believers through the writings of A.W. Pink in his famous book The Sovereignty of God (a great book overall, by the way). Pink argues that John 3:16, "God so loved the world...", is referring merely to "the world of the Elect".

Pink's argument, in my opinion, is a truly pathetic piece of biblical interpretation, which begins with a premise (God simply couldn't love the wicked), and concludes with a twisting of John 3:16 which is monumental. Hardly a more simple and clear statement could be made than that God loves the world, and therefore sent His Son.

Why would Pink engage in such twisting of Scripture?

Simple. He did not "get" the concept of Antinomy. He reasoned that the hatred and wrath of God could not co-exist with His love.

But His ways and thoughts are higher than ours and we have to ask TWO honest questions:

1. Does Scripture SEEM to say that God loves everyone? I believe the answer is a clear, "Yes". God IS love. That's a reference to His essence. He could not deny His essence.

That's how in Ezekiel 33:11 we can read, "Say to them, `As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, `I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live."

If God did not love the wicked, it would make no sense for Him to NOT delight in their death.

Do you see how an understanding of Antinomy can open up your understanding of Scriptures? (This is just one of MANY examples, which space does not permit relating here).

2. Does Scripture SEEM to say that God Hates The Wicked? If we're honest, we have to say, "Yes".

But that's illogical, you cry!

No, it only SEEMS to be a contradiction, but both statements are true. Why? Because God has declared them to be true in His Word!

Puny little man, as J. Vernon McGee used to say, thinks he HAS to figure it out by his own LIMITED thoughts. He must reconcile the two truths by denying one of them, and twisting the other.

This is arrogance of the highest variety, and a denial of the pretty-darn-clear Word of God.

God's Justice And an Illustration

We might finally ask, then, "How can God send someone to the Lake of Fire if He loves them?

We have to admit we simply cannot FULLY understand this.

But that doesn't mean that we can't SOMEWHAT understand it, if we understand two seemingly unrelated concepts, Justice and Love.

When a human Judge in a court sentences someone to be hanged for a crime, he is exercising Justice. The criminal, we say, *deserves* to be hung by the neck until dead.

But suppose the criminal is the wife of the Judge, or his son or daughter, whom he loves dearly? Does the Judge abandon his LOVE...or his JUSTICE?

Neither, if He is a good Judge.

He is quite capable of sentencing his loved one to the gallows, with sobs of grief, tears in his eyes, but doing right.

How much more the infinite Creator of the Universe cannot deny Himself as the God Who is Love, who loved the whole world and whose love prompted Him to send His Son, Who in turn declared, "If ANYONE will come to Me, I will in no way cast him out", and wept over the Israelites who rejected Him.

Daisy Theology - He Love Me, He Loves Me Not (Transcript)

I suppose someone listening to this may not be familiar with the plucking of Daisy petals to determine someone’s love.

A young lady might pick a Daisy flower, and stare at it as she picks off its petals one by one. As she picks a petal, she says aloud, “He loves me.”

As she picks off the next petal, she says, “He loves me not.”

Petal by petal she speaks the words, “He loves me, he loves me not; he loves me, he loves me not,” until the last petal is plucked off. And whichever phrase coincides with the last petal, tells her whether the one she loves...loves her.

Silly superstition, I know. But even sillier is building our view of God around Daisy Theology.

Performance Is What It's All About?

Daisy Theology is that view of God that basically says, God loves me when I perform well, and when I don’t perform well...well, how could God love somebody like me, when I act like that, or think this or that?

And so many have built their Christian lives around the awful thought pattern, “He loves me, he loves me not; He loves me, He loves me not.”

They may not SAY that God doesn't love them, but they FEEL it. And they feel it because they THINK it. And they think it because it's TAUGHT to them every time performance-based Christianity is held up as an idol.

And it's a shame. And it's not just a shame. It's a blasphemous denial of the Cross of Christ, where He said, "it is finished". It's Galatianism at its most subtle. It's the attitude that God loves me when I'm "good", and frowns with disappointment and anger when I'm not "good".

It's screamed from the pulpit every time condemnation is heaped on the sheep, because they aren't performing to perfection. It's screamed by pop Christian books that consist of nothing but 10 or 40 or 100 "rules to live by".

Books like How to Be A Good ______ [husband, wife, friend, Christian, worshiper, charity worker, pray-er, etc. ad nauseum]. Written by men and women who know that they fall short, but think it is incumbent on them to tell everyone else how to be a "Good ______."

Not precious principles from a loving God who loves us because He chose to before the foundation of the world, but rules to measure by. Rules to condemn by.

Daisy Theology is hurtful to the Christian life.

Why Daisy Theology Is Hurtful To The Christian Life

Here are 7 reasons why:

1. It quenches the peace of God.

Peace is a fruit of the Spirit. When we are filled with the Spirit and walking by the Spirit, we have peace in our hearts. This is a cycle, because the more we have peace in our hearts, the more we desire to commune with the Lord. We want to draw near to Him, and express our love to Him, and draw on His wonderful love for us.

When wrong thoughts about God creep into our thinking, it pushes out the right thoughts. And this quenches the Holy Spirit, and causes us to be robbed of our peace. Instead of resting and basking in the love of God, we fret and worry and amazingly, we may not even know we’re doing it for a while.

We may even try to perform better, trying to earn God’s favor and love and peace. And so we get off of the ground of Grace, and onto the ground of Law. And the cycle goes the other way. Until we come back to the great truth that God loves us by Grace, unconditionally, accepting us in the Beloved, Jesus Christ.

So Daisy Theology quenches the peace of God.

2. It causes believers to experience condemnation, in direct violation of Romans 8:1.

Rom. 8:1 says that there is now NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. But that doesn’t mean believers don’t sometimes FEEL condemnation. And if you FEEL condemned, then in a way you are. And so there is this odd thing going on where one is experiencing what is not even true.

And when a believer experiences condemnation, they will either have discouragement and despair for a time, or they will muster up their flesh and determine to perform well to earn God’s love. And under this lie-based scenario, the Spirit is quenched, and there’s another spiritual tailspin.

3. It steals the joy of salvation.

Joy is also a fruit of the Spirit, and is robbed from us for the same reason peace is robbed from us. The cry of David in Psalm 51:12 is the same cry that comes from the one who is in the dry desert of Daisy Theology: Lord, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation”. But cry as we might, that joy won’t be restored until we abandon “He loves me, He loves me not,” and acknowledge the precious truth that He loves me.

4. It's contagious, spreading it's lie like a virus, everytime someone "sneezes" it.

The world, the flesh and the devil are intent on deceiving believers in Jesus Christ about God’s love for us. Every day in a thousand ways, every Sunday even in the pulpits of preachers who love Jesus, the virus of Legalism is spread.

Every time the Christian life is portrayed as some measure of performance, making it man-centered while pretending to be Christ-centered, the virus is spread. Every time God is taught to be angry and frowning on His born-again children until they get their act together, the virus is spread.

Every time the Christian life is looked at as a list of rules to live by, or else...the virus of Daisy Theology is spread.

We need to immunize ourselves from this virus, by proclaiming from the Word of God, and meditating in our hearts on the truth that God has already forgiven all of our sins, past present and future.

And there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more, and nothing we can do to make Him love us less. He loves us, because He has chosen to do so, even while we were yet unsaved.


5. It is rampant in the minds of many believers, and therefore in the church.

This may sound a little redundant, but it’s important to realize that this is not an isolated problem in the Church. We need to be on guard against Legalism and Daisy Theology all the time.

I don’t mean that we become Grace police, and jump down someone’s throat every time we hear it. But we can help the cause of Jesus and His Grace among our brethren, by speaking the truth in love, and by guarding our own hearts against the lie that God loves and favors us based on our performance.

6. It is seldom directly taught from the pulpit, but it's virus is smeared all over congregations by implication.

What do I mean by that? Well, hardly anyone preaches, “God doesn’t love you when you sin. He hates you, and you are going to Hell if you don’t stop that sinning and be perfect.”

No, it’s much more subtle than that, and unfortunately, is preached by preachers who themselves are fuzzy on God’s unconditional acceptance of us in Christ. They have often been taught Law-based theology in Seminary or Bible College.

They have been “warned” by well-meaning teachers that if you really preach Grace in all its fullness that the sheep will run wild. They’ve been taught that focusing on our performance is the best way to honor God. And so on.

And so they pass on these concepts to their flocks, never understanding that we are not only saved by Grace apart from works initially, but that we are to live by Grace apart from works AFTER we are saved.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t DO good works after we’re saved. We will. It’s God who is at work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure, Paul tells the Philippians.

And as New Creations in Christ, who love Jesus, we WANT to live holy lives. But what about when we don’t? Does God withhold His love from us? Of course not.

7. It seems to "make sense", but is utterly unbiblical, destructive, and anti-Christ.

I know it seems to make sense. Humanly speaking, why shouldn’t God be angry at us, and frown on us when we fail? After all, didn’t He give us the
Bible with all the rules for living? And didn’t He give us His Holy Spirit so we have the power to obey all those rules? I mean it only makes sense.

The problem with that is that it is simply not true. It’s not the way it is. Why? Because Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).

Romans 5:10: "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"

See, we have been reconciled to God, forever. We have been declared righteous by Him, through the blood of Christ. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).

And so there is no barrier to His love for us.

And for that we can love Him.

Daisy Theology is one of the most subtle and destructive corruptions of the Word of God that has ever been cooked up by the Doctrines of Demons, Inc. lie factory.

Don't buy their product! Call the Better Bible Bureau and report them!

If you are Christ's, there is nothing that can separate you from His love. Don't forget that. There is nothing you can do that will make Him love you more or love you less. He loves you, period.

The curtain has been torn apart. The wall has been torn down. It is finished. He loves you, period.

Don't even look at a daisy, until you are completely recovered.

Daisy Theology - He Love Me, He Loves Me Not

This week's audio message:

Daisy Theology - He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Is God Pleased With You?

This week's audio message:

Is God Pleased With You?

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Keep Yourselves In The Love Of God

This week's audio message:

Keep Yourselves In The Love Of God

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Going Beyond Admiring Worship

This week's audio message:

Going Beyond Admiring Worship

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Going Beyond Admiring Worship

Admiring Jesus seems to be a great pastime of practically everyone.

Mahatma Ghandi, who through peacful protest and hunger strikes changed the face of India and the world, admired Jesus, and claimed to gear his methods after the Lord’s sacrificial life.

Then Martin Luther King, Jr. patterned his movement after Ghandi’s.

Mohammed admired Jesus, and considered Him a prophet. To this day, Muslims call Jesus a prophet.

In fact, I’ve never met a person who would not say that they admired Jesus, at least until His gospel rips open their heart and separates the real admirers from those who admire from ignorance.

But my real point in this message is not to cast stones at those who are outside the church of Jesus Christ, who are outside the body of Christ, yet claim to admire Jesus.

To The Unbeliever

If you are not a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ, if you have not believed in Him as Savior and Lord, I urge you to do so. I urge you to believe the truth that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to be crucified to pay for our sins. And that He rose again from the dead. So that if you believe in Him, you will be saved from Hell, and given eternal life even now, and when you die, you will go to be with the Lord in heaven forever.

That’s the Good News, the Gospel, and if you will believe in Him now, He will indeed save you and make you His child.

To The Believer

But the admiration of the unbeliever is not my real subject here. My subject is the believer, the Christian whose Christian life is stifled by limiting it to admiration and even worship for the Lord.

Within the Body of Christ there is a normal and good thing that we call worship. Worship has been described as giving God His due, to ascribe worthiness to Him, to bow down and recognize and praise Him for all that He is.

And this is right and good and biblical. And at least to some extent, it is incorporated into most meetings of the Church, and rightly so. We sing worship songs, we pray things like, “We worship you, Lord. You are worthy of our worship and so we praise you.”

And this is as it should be.

But sometimes our worship is more of a calculated admiration for the Lord, than love for Him.

And so my real point is to encourage those IN the Body of Christ, to not only admire Him, and worship Him, but to go beyond admiring worship of Jesus, to a new level of loving Him.

There are those believers who have been born again, basically love the Lord, basically know their Bibles, and know for a fact that Jesus is God, that He is good, that He is righteous, that He sacrificially gave His life for our sins, that He rose again, that He is Lord over all, and that He deserves all the glory and honor that He could ever receive.

But with all that born-again admiration, with their cries of “we must glorify God in all we do”, with their exhortations of obedience, obedience, obedience…with all that, I often see a lack of loving intimacy with this admired Savior.

Why is that? I think it’s for two reasons.

1. Many travel in theological circles that are Law-oriented.

They see the Christian life, not primarily as a relationship or fellowship with our Friend and Brother and Savior Jesus, but as a life of rules and regulations. They know Jesus loves them, but somehow think that the degree of that love is dependent on our performance. You will find them emphasizing the verse, “If you love me you will obey my commandments.” But you won’t often see them quoting the verse, “...[nothing] shall be able to separate us from the love of God which Is in Jesus our Lord.”

So some lack this intimate loving relationship with Christ, just because it is considered sort of selfish and distasteful in their theological circles. Sort of mystical, sort of anti-good-doctrine. They use derogatory terms such as “touchy-feely” or “kum-ba-ya around the campfire emotionalism".

If you are one of these, please keep listening.

2. Many are scarred by a perceived lack of love in earlier times of their lives.

Now, don’t think I’m getting all "psychological" here.

And particularly, if you belong to Category 1, the Law-oriented type, I know the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck at the very mention of our past lives affecting our walk with Christ.

But here is the simple fact: We are fearfully and wonderfully made, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. And when we are born again, and come to Christ, and we become new creations in our spirits…we sometimes still have a lot of renewing of our minds that are needed.

Many times a perceived lack of love, or perceived rejection of some kind by parents, or peers, or a teacher, for example, can make us instinctively feel that we can’t really be loved. And that carries over into our feelings about whether God can really love us. And that can keep us from really having the intimate and loving fellowship with Jesus that we may want to have.

And then sometimes a mis-guided kind of cold-steel theology is piled on to make it even worse. Maybe well-intentioned folks say things like, “You don’t just feel unworthy, you are unworthy. Get over it. You’re a Sinner. You’re a worm and a jerk. Don’t let these Dr. Feelgood softies make you think you’re loveable. Just pull up your bootstraps and start obeying. Bring glory to God. It’s all about Him, it’s not about you, you selfish pig. Start performing, and see if you can bring your level of performance up to where it should be -– in the power of the Spirit, of course.”

And the implication is that if you perform well enough, THEN you might be loveable, at least a little.

But of course it’s all hogwash. If you feel unloved, you feel unloved.

Now please get this:

The only way you will ever feel loved by God, is through understanding from His Word, through the Spirit, that you were loved by Him long before you were “loveable”. And He loves you because He chooses to love you. And there is nothing you could ever do to make Him love you more, and there is nothing you could ever do to make Him love you less.

And it’s because of one thing...Grace.

There is a rest for the people of God, the Bible says, wherin they rest from their works! That doesn’t mean we don’t do works. We will, as God works them in us, and we walk by His Spirit. It means we rest from our works as means of gaining love and acceptance and fellowship with God, with Jesus.

Look at these verses from Romans Chapter 8:

Verse 10, “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”

Verse 15-16, “...you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father! The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God...”

Verses 18-19, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

Verses 28-30, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”

Here Paul adds a little logic: Verse 32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”

Verses 35-39, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.... For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Continue to admire Jesus for all this, of course. And worship Him for all that He has done and all that He is.

But I want to encourage you to go beyond admiring worship to a love for Him that grabs you by the heart and shakes you, and makes you see the whole world through love-colored glasses, because you love Him more.

And how do you love Him more? Simple. Not easy, necessarily, but simple.

To love Him more, you must see more and more how He loves you. See, it’s very personal. You don’t merely admire Him as One Who loves. You love Him because He first loved you. And He still loves you, with a love that never quits, that is never affected by circumstances, that is never diminished by your failures. A love that, when you really grasp it, makes your love for Him threaten to burst your heart. A love that when you really grasp it, makes you say, “How could I NOT overflow with love for this Jesus, and His Father...and my brethren...and even my enemies?”

To love Him more, bask in His love for you. Think on it, meditate on it, marvel at it, accept it.

500 years before Martin Luther’s great meeting known as the Diet of Worms, a poem was written in Worms, Germany, in 1050 A.D. Frederick Lehman was deeply moved by this poem, and it led him to write a hymn in 1917, in Pasadena, California, part of which goes like this:

Could we with ink the oceans fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,
Would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Friends, He wants to share that love with you today.

Don’t just admire Jesus.

Don’t even just worship Him.

He wants you to be in close, intimate loving fellowship and communion with Him. There is nothing standing in the way. Not even your sins. They are paid for. They are forgiven.

“It is finished.”

Better Than Being Needed

I've found over the years that people like to feel needed.

And when we become Christians, this desire to be needed carries over into our relationship with God. We want to be needed by God, and sometimes we try to "serve" Him in such a way that we look or feel indispensable to Him.

But the more we learn about the Lord, the more we realize something that we really don't want to admit ... God doesn't need us.

He really doesn't. If you doubt that, then you need to know more about God. Take a look at the photo I've included above in this post.

It's the gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light years from Earth. Now light travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND! So this is a long long way away. But even the pillars themselves are light-years tall, so this seemingly insignificant far away blip in space is really a huge multi-universe of its own, forming new universes.

And God created it, and the trillions of other outer space phenomena, with a word, a phrase really, "Let there be..." And there was.

Now do you really think this God needs us? Oh, I know we say that we are His hands and feet and mouth on this earth. But He only uses hands and feet and mouth because He chooses to. He could use a donkey. Or the rocks could cry out. Or He could do nothing.

But before you get all sad on me because God doesn't need you, let me tell you something far better.

He WANTS you. And He wants you just because He does.

And to be wanted like that is infinitely better than to be needed. Because if we are just "needed", there may be a time when we're no longer needed, and then what? If we're just "needed", then what about when someone comes along who performs our job better than we do?

And because of that aspect of being needed, there is a perverse idea behind being "needed". The perverse idea is that if we "do a good job for God" then we'll be needed, and then we will be wanted, because we're needed. And what we really desired all along is to be wanted. Feel free to read this paragraph over again :)

But to be wanted, just because God chose to want us, is a precious thing. He doesn't want us because we are flawless. He already had that in the Trinity. And He doesn't want us because we're needed.

He just wants us.

He chose to want us.

He chose to love us, and so He wants us.

But to be wanted by the Creator of the Universe is a hard thing to believe, sometimes. And so God came to dwell with us as a Man, Jesus. And the Father showed us how much He wants us by giving His Son to die for our sins. And the Son, Jesus, showed us how much He wants us by shedding His blood, and even having His Father forsake Him in some mysterious way. And the Holy Spirit showed us how much He wants us by awakening us to the Truth, and giving us new Life, and sealing us for eternity. We can't fully comprehend.

But we can comprehend, by God's grace, that the One who launched the stars and the planets, and the Eagle Nebula with a word, WANTS you and me.