Something was placed on my heart yesterday morning that I really want to share; it's something that blew my mind (God has the tendency to do that to me lol) but more importantly it's something I feel we need to recognize before we can truly enter into the beautiful ever-deepening cycle of Love:
We are both undeserving AND deserving of Love.
WHAT.
I know it's hard to wrap your head around (believe me, I was floored when this was first revealed to me), but stay with me here. It's yet another parodox that makes no sense at all, but also makes complete sense at the same time (there are just so many when it comes to God, no?). Ok, let me try to explain this further...
If we really fully recognize God for who He is while seeing ourselves for who we are, I really feel that there would be no dispute re: the seemingly non-sensical statement above. I don't really feel the need to explain why we are undeserving of Love because, at least from the perspective of someone who grew up in the church, this concept has been engrained into our minds and is the general consensus in the church as a whole. Now please don't misunderstand me here; I am NOT disagreeing with this in anyway because I fully agree that we are completely undeserving of grace - after all, that is what grace is: "the free unmerited favour of God." However, while the majority of people (including myself until literally yesterday morning) stop here, I strongly believe there is more to this than simply the first half of the statement (the 'undeserving' part).
You see, God sees us as people of worth; This is why He came down from Heaven to live among us to show us how to live in through giving and receiving love in the purest of ways - the way love was originally designed and intended to be experienced. So for us to merely focus on the 'undeserving' half of the statement, but entirely disregard the second half would be to deny God's perspective of us: beings of worth. In His perspective, we are worthy of grace and Love so He, in turn, demonstrated His grace and Love in the deepest of ways: through Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, coming to Earth to live among us in order to show us a whole new way of living and to literally save us from ourselves.
God sees us as people of worth so, from His perspective, we are deserving of Love. Because He sees us as people of worth He makes us worthy so, in the light of this truth, we can recognize with humility that we ARE deserving of Love.
Why is this recognizing this important? Well, in denying the second half of the statement while focusing solely first, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are so undeserving of anything at all and are merely nothing but a piece of crap, and when you start thinking along these lines there is no way you can truly love yourself.
What? Love yourself? But why is that important? After all, aren't we called to love others anyway?
Well, yes. Most definitely yes. And we can trust this to be true because it is all here in the Great Commandment: "37And He [Jesus] said to him [the guy asking what the greatest commandment was], "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38This is the great and foremost commandment. 39The second is like it, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself."" (Matthew 22:37-39, emphasis mine).
As yourself. Oh, how often we forget about these two beautifully important words at the end of that second commandment. Another way to rephrase this line would be, "Love your neighbour the way you love yourself." So why is loving yourself important? Because of those two beautifully important words that Jesus intentionally included here. If you're still lost, I'll break it down for you now: if you don't love yourself, you cannot love others the way we are called to love others; It's all there in verse 39, in the words that came straight from the the mouth of God Himself.
However, not only does not loving ourselves impact our ability to love others, I also think that not loving ourselves impacts our ability to love God too. If you truly love someone, how could you completely disregard and deny their opinion? If God sees is as people of worth and we fully love God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds (as we are called to love Him in verse 37), then how could we possibly even consider denying His perspective that we are people of worth and worthy of Love?
I simply don't think we can.
So here we are, back at the very beginning again: We are both undeserving AND deserving of Love.
Yet another paradox that makes no sense but complete sense at the same time which makes the deep and beautiful mystery of God that much greater.
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