"We need to let it soak in that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more…and nothing we can do to make God love us less." - Philip Yancey
"We all need to know that God does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good. Nothing humans can do will ever decrease or increase God's eternal eagerness to love." - Richard Rohr
I remember when I first heard these kind of statements and sort of cringed. I was suspicious that those who echoed Philip Yancey or Fr. Richard might employ them to imply, "So it doesn't matter what you do." I don't think I hear Jesus saying, "It doesn't matter what you do," and in fact, that's certainly not what Yancey or Rohr are implying either. I believe it's pretty obvious that God (through Christ and in these two fine teachers) wants us to love others and emulate his grace and mercy in our lives. That matters a lot! And it seems God has also made it clear that harming others, or judging and condemning them is something he'd want us to turn from as we grow up. Discovering God's infinite love for us isn't simply a green light for an "anything goes" attitude.
But implications and suspicions aside, the more I soak in the New Testament Gospels and epistles, and as I continue through to the early church fathers and mothers, the more I see how and why these opening aphorisms are exactly right.
First, consider the phrase, 'there's nothing you can do to make God.' This is absolutely true: no one can 'make God' do or be anything other than what he is. That is, God loves us with an infinite love, because God IS love ... but nothing in heaven or earth or under the earth canconstrain God to love us or not love us. His love is what the ancient theologians called a 'self-donation.' We don't seduce his love by being either adorable or pathetic -- his love flows entirely from his nature and is utterly voluntary. He is "moved to compassion," not because we 'trigger' him or manipulate him with our pleas, but rather, because God is compassion itself and his love flows without ceasing wherever and to whomever it is received. My experience of God's love may fluctuate as I welcome it or rebuff it, but God himself cannot be said to love us more or less, as if his very nature was dependent on our behaviour or jerked around by our emotional rollercoaster rides.
Why not? Because for God to be God means that he is the infinite perfection of all we call goodness and love. God can't become more than perfect or more than infinite. God cannot become more loving or more God. If he could become 1% more, that would mean he's only 99% now ... and that would be 1% less than God. Get it? And he cannot become less in any way -- less God, less infinite, less love -- because that would diminish him. And to diminish God even 1% would mean he would no longer be the perfection of love -- would no longer be God.
Beautiful post, Dr. Jersak! Love the imagery.
Posted by: Bev Gordon | March 21, 2015 at 08:44 AM