You know that slimy thing inside your mouth that you need to be able to lick ice cream from a cone? It's called your tongue. God gave it to you so that you could speak and sing and relate to other people. God gave it to us. And the little white things that you have to brush twice a day so that they don't rot. They are the teeth that God gave to you so that you can chew meat that He has provided for you. I could go on forever about the things on our bodies that God has blessed us with. If you think about it, it's insane. God knew what you needed to live, and He provided you with the right body to do the things that He knew you would do.
So, He has given us bodies to live in and a place comfortable enough for us to live in. I once hears somewhere that if the Earth was a few meters closer or further away from the Sun, it would be either too hot or too cold for us to live on. Isn't that amazing? Out of all the planets that God created, he chose one to be at the exact position for our lives to be comfortable.
He gave us each other. He didn't just make one human and say "That's enough. One will be fine." No. Right now, there is over 6 billion on this planet. That's alot of people, alot of unique, individual people. Just stop and think about it. Out of the millions of people God has created over the course of human history, there is no one, NO ONE just like you. You are special. You are unique. You are original. But you aren't alone. God knows that we need other people. People to live with, to comfort us when we are down, to laugh with, to cry with, to share with. He has made a community for us.
He gave us feeling. Have you ever thought what the world would be like if there was no emotion in it? Life would be bland. God gave us love so that we could love Him. He gave us laughter and tears, grief and joy. He gave feeling so that we could live deeper lives, so we could feel His love for us, so that we could feel the joy in being with other people, the grief in the death of our grandparents, laughter to express happiness, and tears to express sorrow. And if you just think about love for a moment. He let us have an attraction to certain people. He lets us experience a little bit of what His relationship with us is when He gave us marriage. He is amazing.
He gave us commandments to live by. Not because He is strict or mean, but because He loves us. He gives us rules because He knows that if we follow them, it will be better for us and everyone around us. He told us "Do not lie" because He knows that if we all are honest, we can trust each other and rely on one another much better than if all of us are liars.
He gave us the ability to obey those commandments. But He loves us so much that He doesn't want us to be robots, doing just what they're meant to, without minds of their own. So, He gave us free will, the ability to choose whether to obey or disobey what He tells us to do. He lets us choose whether we want a relationship with Him or not. And even if we reject Him, He still loves us and pursues us.
He knew that we would all break His commandments and do whatever we wanted to do instead. And when He created commandments He created consequences for disobeying those commandments. [If you think about it, if God has not given us punishment for doing wrong, then His laws cease to be laws, just suggestions.] In early Hebrew history, when someone had sinned, that person had to sacrifice one of the best of his animals to make restitution for what he had done. God decided to have His Son become a human, a mere human, to lead us and to teach us and to love us.
You have probably heard this alot, but please dont go cliche on me. You already know that God loves us so much that He gave us His Son to die for us, so that we may have eternal life. Think about it. God loves us so much that He GAVE us His SON to DIE for US so that we could have ETERNAL LIFE. Think about someone in your life that you love more than anyone else. Now, pretend that you have authority over that person. You're giving up that person, you're letting that person suffer a brutal, painful death. That is what God did with Jesus. He let Jesus die on a cross so that we, His CREATIONS, could live a holy, pure, blameless life with Him forever. We matter that much to God. It's amazing how much He loves us. God loves us so much that He took all of our sin, ALL OF IT. The sin we have committed, are committing, and will commit in the future. He took all of it and put it on the head of Jesus, to make him pay for what we have done. It's like what Paul said in Colossians 1:13b-14 "He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with it's regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."
God's love for us is SO extensive and SO great. We could probably write ten hundred books about the love of Christ and not cover everything. As humans, we probably cannot even comprehend how much God loves us. So, what should our response be to this? I think that if God loves us this much, if He let His son die so that He could have a relationship with us, He is really worth getting to know pretty well. I encourage you all to just spend more time in the Word and in prayer. Trust me, it's worth it.
Here is a music video by Tenth Avenue North that I really like:
In Christ,
-Daniel
Great post!
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