The Law vs. Grace (learning to be loved)

One thing I’m learning during this time has to do with LOVE.

When I came to Chile to do my DTS, my personal motive was to find out if a person could really be “in love with God.” I often heard people say things like that, and couldn’t really believe it.  It wasn’t my experience, and I was suspicious of that churchy lingo.

In March, after an adventure of experiences travelling as newlyweds, Julio and I were finally two days’ journey from the YWAM base.  I wrote in my journal, speaking to God, “You’re bringing me back to Pichilemu, the place where I fell more in love with You.” To the place where I began to know Him more, and to believe that there will always be more of God for our lives.  Yes, I now believe that a person actually can be in love with God, and that there will be a process of growing together in that love, just as courtship and marital love goes through stages.

This time, in these almost-three months here, again the subject is love.  I didn’t know it would be when I arrived.  I believed the main subject to be “healing whatever is wounded inside me that makes me react poorly” or something along those lines.  And yes, that has been part of it, but just in the last few weeks of this school (dates we hadn’t planned to be here still) I’m beginning to grasp something new, something that my spirit longs for even though it’s hard to receive it.

We are sometimes taught in the Church that we are “just channels of God’s love.”  I realized that I’m living my life hoping to get “just enough” of God’s love to be able to pass it on and make a difference in someone else’s life.  In my case, enough of God’s love to be able to love the needy children he gives me to care for.  Enough of God’s love to cover over my shortcomings.  Enough of God’s love to make a difference in their lives.  Enough of God’s love to make them want it for themselves.  Enough of God’s love… enough… just enough.

In a teaching on the Law and Grace, a base leader here stated that God loves us because we need Him.  He went on to talk about how parents act when their baby is learning to walk: how excited and encouraging they are; how they run out to announce to others “my daughter is walking!” disregarding the fact that after one step, she has again fallen. 

While thinking about that, I started sketching a baby in a diaper, much before the walking phase arrives.  “God created us to be dependent on Him and interdependent with others,” they have taught us here.  God created us to be like babies with Him; totally dependent.  And even as we grow and learn, little by little, to “walk in the Spirit” and to “eat solid spiritual food,” we the dependency continues. 

Around this smiling little baby, I drew two big arms, encircling her, holding her up.  The baby was looking up into the face of the one holding her.  There was nothing that baby could offer, and her holder loved her.

Another day, while praying in class, the Spirit brought the two concepts crashing together: 

Which is it?  Just enough love to give to others?  Or loved extravagantly because I’m needy?

So I’m taking off the idea that my usefulness to God is the reason He loves me. 

And I’m trying on the new skin of being just as important for God as everyone else.  The idea that I matter as much as the neglected and abandoned children He’s called me to; that I’m just as much the object of His love as others are.  That His love is completely directed at ME, regardless of others waiting or needing His love.

The interesting thing is, of course, that His love is also completely directed at Julio, and at each of the children I used to take care of, and at the man on the corner, and at the college professor, and at the waitress at the diner.  His love is also completely directed at YOU.

In the same classes on the Law and Grace, the teacher emphasized that “doing good things” doesn’t save us.  That would be like trying to live under the law, thinking that we have to earn our salvation, love and acceptation by God.  Our Christian doctrine says that we are saved by grace alone; that there is nothing we have done or could ever do to earn the abundant and eternal life that God offers us, and that we cannot be right with God based on our actions (Ephesians 2:8-9 and Philippians 3:9).

Yet, the same Bible teaches that we ought to do good things (James 2:17).

What then, is the motivation?  Why or how are we supposed to do these good things? 

Because of love and grace: God’s freely-given, abundant, directed-at-me love. 

Because I’m loved, I do what God tells me in the Bible (obedience).  Because I’m loved, I do good things (service), I tell others about this love and grace (evangelism).  Because I’m loved, I apologize and accept others’ apologies (forgiveness).  Because I’m loved, I love others (and I love myself, too). 

I’m learning to get comfortable in this new skin.  I’ve had close to three decades living like others are the object of God’s love, and I’m just “useful” in reaching His goal of physically and spiritually saving them.  These changes are not overnight miracles; they are the kind of miracles that grow: they establish roots and strengthen before they start giving an abundant harvest.

We often have the idea that we are like buckets: to receive love and good things until, once filled, we overflow into others’ lives.  An Indian couple who came and taught here at the base shared that we should be more like pipes: everything that enters, flows through, and then escapes from the other end.  We don’t have to be full in order to spill over just a little bit.  Everything – good or bad – that we receive, we will share. 

I’ve asked God to turn the faucet on higher – to pour more love into me.  I want to receive it for myself, and I know that the result of all this love and grace is that it will flow on to others, gushing through me.