Doing the Hard Work

Let’s pick up a couple of threads from last week’s reflection on the call to Jubilee the Israelites experienced, as God instructed them to live a year in celebration of His grace.

For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (NLT)

EVERYONE. No exceptions. The best behaved. The worst. The ignorant. The brilliant. The showy. The humble. The legend to many. The nobody. 

God did not, does not differentiate.

God created all humankind to bear his image. ALL of us. And, sadly – as the narrative of Scripture unfolds, and as we consider the darker side of all of human history – we have all turned our backs on this, ignoring our Creator and our need for Him in all things.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:8 (NLT)

Our abandonment of God is not a coherent argument for Him sticking by us; and yet, as we read Paul’s words in Romans, we who follow Christ know the reality of God’s grace and our undeserved favour, made possible through Christ’s living amongst us, sharing our life, dying on the cross to take our punishment for our sins, one and for all, completely and without qualification. 

GOD DID THE HARD WORK. Not because he had to, but because He loved, loves and will love us. This is the example (fully expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – but already seen in God’s delivery of Israel from their enemies in the times of Moses) that the first step of Jubilee draws on.  

God works the miracle when we are unable to. He does perfect, good works for those He loves, even when they have let Him down. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is the first step – we need to acknowledge our fallenness before God and turn back in repentance to our Lord.

Not because we deserve God’s forgiveness, but we know that, in His love, he will extend it to us. 

This is His grace. Because of him, we can receive it. As His people, our response should be to show that level of love to those around us.

As John 3:16 describes his love, to EVERYONE. Young, old, nice, mean, pleasant, yuk. The best, the worst, the hero, the villain.  

Why – because, we partner with God in the need for others to understand His forgiveness. He asks us to share in that mission; His people are called to be His light, His mercy, His voice in the world we live in.

As the year gets moving, let’s see our interactions with one another as a starting place for those undeserved, yet stunningly beautiful, expressions of God’s love. Let’s do the hard work for the other, not counting the cost, not expecting reciprocity. Simply because.

GOD DID IT ALREADY.

Shalom.