Just As I Am, part 4: Everlasting Love
Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1669
God is love is more than just bumper sticker theology. Those words, or the variant, “Smile, God loves you,” are well known to most Americans—even those who roll their eyes at them. Since they are in Scripture, they are true regardless of who wrote them. But it is interesting to consider that they are found in 1 John 4:8; they were written by the apostle who—when writing the gospel that bears his name—never used his own name but instead referred to himself as “the disciple that Jesus loved.”
I think we are too familiar with this description of God. What I mean is that we are so used to hearing these words that we do not stop to consider what they really mean. A deficient understanding of God’s love is a critical weakness; a proper understanding of it would inevitably change our whole outlook on life.
We can make at least three mistakes when it comes to thinking about God’s love. 1) We can allow hard circumstances in life to make us think that God doesn’t love us. 2) We can settle for a ground-level understanding of God’s love without taking time and prayer to consider all that it means. 3) We can believe a caricature of God’s love by thinking that since it “accepts” us in our sin that it will allow us to continue in our sin.
Satan tempted the very first humans to commit the very first sin. How did he do this? By planting in their minds the idea that God was not good and was withholding something from them. Behind this temptation was the implication that God must not love them very much if he was keeping something back. In the midst of the most beautiful garden ever seen, eyes were turned to the one thing denied. This temptation must be highly effective, because the tempter has not changed his strategy over the years. If it worked in a perfect world where only one thing was denied, it works even better in a cursed world where thorns and thistles grow. Throughout history, hard circumstances have led people to either doubt or downplay God’s love. The writer of Hebrews was concerned that his readers were allowing this to happen. These readers were being treated harshly because they were Christians, and this evidently had led them to doubt God’s love for them. But the writer tells them that these trials were part of God’s discipline in their lives, and that it is actually only those that he loves that he disciplines (Hebrews 12:6).
At other times our faith is stronger and we can trace his love for us behind the clouds of life. Even in these times, his love is so great that it is not easily comprehended. Paul begins the book of Ephesians talking about God’s love and all of the blessings that he has given to his people. “Blessed with every spiritual blessing,” “chosen before the foundation of the world,” “accepted in the beloved,” “adopted as sons” — the list is long. But still Paul knows the struggles we have in order to fully understand this love. It is for this reason that in chapter 3 he tells the church in Ephesus that his prayer for them is that they “being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.” God so loved the world that he gave his only son (John 3:16). Christ died for us when we were still enemies (Romans 5:8). We are loved with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).
While these first two deficiencies downplay God’s love, a third deficiency distorts it. Modern thinking to the contrary, truth is not the enemy of love. God loves us when we are sinners, but he does not leave us in our sin. He tells us where we need to be changed, and he begins to change us. After spending all of his money and being brought so low as to covet the food of pigs, the prodigal son returned to his father. The father welcomed him home but did not leave him barefoot and dirty. Instead, he commanded that the best robe be put on him, along with a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. (We can safely assume that soap and water were brought as well.)
What we have said of God’s love is what Charlotte Elliott helps us to sing about that love. In verse 5 we can picture this story of the prodigal son—
Just as I am—Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because Thy promise I believe—
O Lamb of God, I come!
God will receive us just as we are, but that is just the beginning. After the welcoming and pardoning comes the cleansing and the relieving. Before we come to know God, we live our lives chasing the things that we think will give us peace and happiness. After we come to him, he often takes those false hopes away so that they can be replaced with holiness, obedience, and true hope.
Elliott continues in verse 6, where she aspires to the exclusivity of God’s love. She desires to be his alone. Another old hymn reminds us that we are “prone to wander” and “prone to leave” the God we love. If we pray like Paul and our prayers are answered, we will have such views of God’s love that we will not want to look for comfort anywhere else—
Just as I am—Thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down;
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone—
O Lamb of God, I come!
She concludes this hymn with verse 7. For the rest of her life she wants to see God’s love in and behind each of her trials. “Test me (prove me),” says God to Israel, and “see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure” (Malachi 3:10). There is a sinful testing of God, a cynical attitude like that of Israel in the wilderness. “Can God give us water in the desert?” But there is also a faith-prompted testing of God. “Father, you’ve said you will provide for me—now will you show yourself faithful today?”
Just as I am—of that free love,
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here, for a season, then above—
O Lamb of God, I come!
After writing this hymn, Charlotte Elliott’s “season here” would last another forty years. They were not easy years, but she grew in her understanding of that love. Now, nearly two centuries have gone by; for almost 200 years she has been enjoying God’s perfect love “above,” happy in the presence of her risen Savior and his angels, and surrounded by many millions of her brothers and sisters in the faith.
