Singer Lauren Daigle sings a song titled Love Like This. It explores the idea of the awe of being loved unconditionally by God. In the song, she repeats the question, “What have I done to deserve love like this?” And I think of McDonald’s “You deserve a break today” commercials. We all deserve better, don’t we?
We live in a “deserve” world. I guess you might call it a “meritocracy.” It seems it has always been that way. When Job received all that Satan could dish out, his friends assumed he had done something wrong, because you don’t get this kind of torment for being good. If you’re good, you deserve better. When Pilate killed some Galileans and mixed their blood with their sacrifice, the people thought it must have been because they did something bad (Luke 13:1-5), because bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good people.
I understand that the point of Daigle’s song is not “I deserve to be loved,” but the opposite. But we tend to think that, don’t we? When something bad happens, we think, “I deserve better.” When something good happens we become “Maria von Trapp”—“I must have done something good.” Because “deserve” drives everything. Or does it?
The truth is that we do not deserve God’s love. We’ve done everything we could to forfeit any claim to worthiness. Scripture calls us “sinners” and “enemies” of God (Rom 5:8, 10). We’re naturally hostile toward God (Rom 8:7). If God had a “naughty and nice” list, we wouldn’t be on the “nice” list. In terms of being loved by God, “deserve” has nothing to do with it.
But that’s just one of the things that makes the good news of the gospel so good. No, we don’t deserve it, but “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). We’ve earned judgment and are given mercy. We’ve earned no good will from God and we’re given grace. Sometimes we’re so used to God’s goodness that we miss how truly big it is.
2 comments:
People often ask why God doesn't do more to save more people, or why should there only be one way to salvation? Sadly Christians ask the same question. The problem is it misses the point. We do believe in a meritocracy, we only fail to understand what we truly merit. We believe that we're so lovable and good-hearted that it would be wrong for God not to save more people. But what we actually merit is punishment. The question should actually be, "Why does God provide ANY means of salvation?" Only when we grapple with that question can we truly see the grace and mercy of God in its true light. God would have had every right to strike down Adam and Eve and start over as many times as it took. But He had a plan to show both mercy and justice.
Yes, we seem to live in a “meritocracy”--perhaps its name is “Entitlement Land” (as opposed to “Land of Opportunity”). Man has been the recipient of God’s grace and mercy from the start, but due to our “early-onset rebellion,” it is very much an unmerited love. Still, it is love, for which I am eternally grateful.
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