A Picture of Pure Love
Have you ever watched a child when she receives a brand new puppy? I don't know who's happier, the puppy or the child. There is a mutual affection that has a purity and a simplicity to it, even though the relationship remains to be developed.
It's similar to when a person begins a relationship with our loving God. It's thrilling and all-encompassing. It's the beginning of a wonderful journey, one in which the love never ends and the relationship never stops growing and maturing.
"We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
Drawn to the Well
In Alabama, any good farmer knows that to keep your cattle or horses from wandering off you’ve got to build a fence. That’s how we do it here, we build fences. But that is not how they do it in Australia… “In Australia, ranches (called stations) are so vast that fences are superfluous. Under these conditions, a farmer has to sink a bore and create a well, a precious water supply in the Outback. It is assumed that livestock, though they will stray, will never roam too far from the well, lest they die. As long as there is a supply of clean water, the livestock will remain close by.”
The Good Sheperd doesn't build a fence around us to keep us from leaving. Instead, God provides us with a positive reason for why we should stay. He uses love, not law, to draw us to Himself.
"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27).
"But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life" (John 4:14, NLT).
The Broken Xylophone
According to the book of Romans in the NT, sin is not a list of unacceptable behaviors, it’s embedded in our nature. It’s like this: A friend of mine is a pastor who, early in his marriage, started having kids. People in the congregation tried to care for this new family, but one person brought over some toys for his kids that were hand-me-downs. Some hand-me-downs are great. My son is 11 and we have yet to buy him a shirt. It's good not to be the oldest cousin.
But some-hand-me-downs are actually just throw-me-outs, and people who are waste-not-want-nots think churches are beggers-not-choosers, so that’s where they dump their someone’s-treasure that was pretty much just everyone’s-trash.
So, a family gave him hand-me-down toys, one of which was an 8-note xylophone with one of the keys missing. He asked me, “Do they want my kids to grow up tone deaf?” That xylophone was never going to play right. You couldn’t sing do-re-mi with that thing because there was no "fa."
The doctrine of sin isn’t like a xylophone player who isn’t good at it and makes mistakes; it’s like a xylophone player who is missing some keys. No matter how good they might become, they'll never be able to play it exactly right.
So, you and I are not sometimes sinful, we were born broken. Which just tells you how loving Jesus is. No kid at the store is going to pick up the xylophone that's missing keys. You and I are that toy, but Jesus picked us anyway.
He picked us and in his supernatural power, he restores us. But make sure you get this; He restores us because he loves us. He doesn’t love us because we can be restored. He loves us first.
Most of us think it’s the other way around – he’ll love us when he’s done with us. No. He restores us because he loved us first.
"And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).