I Didn’t Deserve It

Have you ever received something you didn’t deserve? You didn’t work for it or earn it; it was just a gift, given freely.

God’s love is like that. No matter what your past looks like, He loves you. He chooses to look at you and love you truly, before you ever could choose to love Him back. He knows every wrong thing you have ever done. He knows every hurt you have suffered. He knows every bad decision you have ever made. And He loves you anyway. He loves me too.

There is not one thing I’ve done to deserve God’s love in my life. Sure, I’m basically a good person, but God knows all the secrets of my heart. Like how I was so mean and nasty to my sister when we were children; I regret so many things. He knows about the pride that I’ve had in my heart too many times. And I think I’ll stop listing them right there.

The point is that God already knows about our sin, and He chooses to love us anyway. And He knows how heavy our guilt feels. It weighs so heavily on our shoulders: like a backpack full of rocks. That’s why He allowed Jesus to come to earth so long ago; to make impossibility possible. To build a bridge where there was no crossing. To be able to understand us and know our hearts inside and out.

Jesus didn’t leave Heaven to come to earth for a vacation. He wasn’t bored in Heaven. He knew exactly what He was doing when He chose to come to us. He became a baby that grew to be a man so He could understand our human-ness: our pain, grief, joy, and our hearts. He loved us so much that He left Paradise to come to us, before we even realized we were in need of a savior. A professor in Bible College compared this to a human deciding to become a worm in the worm colony so he could understand what they go through. Jesus came to make a way for us to be reunited with God forever: to be forgiven of our sin.

The death He died on the cross was pure torture. But He endured it for us. He took our sin upon Himself, so that He could become the perfect sacrifice to forgive our sin.

In this day and age, where we second-guess any free gift because of bad experiences in the past, many are skeptical. But we must understand that although His forgiveness is free to receive, it cost Jesus everything to provide it. I didn’t deserve it, but I accept it with a heart of sheer gratitude.