One of our least helpful habits we drag into our new life in Christ reads God and His promises through the lens of our former life without Christ. God has given us eternal life where all things are new: a new authority, a new heart, and a new love for God and all that reflects His perfect and holy character. Yet, some bad habits die hard. One such habit views God’s love and grace toward us according to fallen human standards, according to our personal experience. We might be tempted to believe that a God of infinite excellence and boundless resources would take little interest or delight in our insignificant and imperfect existence. After all, most of us know people who have no desire to befriend or help us because they have no need for us. God has a universe to run and unique and personal concern for us individually can be hard to fathom in a world of broken promises, fickle and conditional love, arrogance, deception, and a host of other traits of our fallen world. Moreover, God needs nothing, least of all a pain in the neck.
God, however, is the consummate and perfect Father; He does not treat His children that way. In fact, He spends a great deal of ink in His love letter confirming His deepest concern for each of us personally. “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31 NAS). Moreover, He has gone the infinite distance to prove it: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 NAS). “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NAS). Not only does He set His love on those who can add nothing to His infinite sufficiency, He does it at infinite cost to Himself in Christ, in order that He might give to us without measure from His boundless treasures. That God needs nothing means great blessing to us because He has all to give, with no reduction to His endless resources. The Puritan Thomas Brooks said it well:
God hath in Himself all power to defend you, all wisdom to direct you, all mercy to pardon you, all grace to enrich you, all righteousness to clothe you, all goodness to supply you, and all happiness to crown you.[1]
We thank God that from His love and overflow of His infinite goodness He has chosen to bless us, to delight in our eternal happiness, and He has done so in the person and saving work of Jesus Christ. God’s sufficiency has become our eternal blessing and joy in Christ. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Praise God He has all to give, and He has determined to give it without measure to His children in Christ.
[1] Quoted in I. D. E. Thomas, ed., A Puritan Golden Treasury (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth), 126.
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© 2016 Craig Biehl, Adapted from Craig Biehl, God the Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, Carpenter’s Son Publishing, 2015.
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