American religion believes that God is a commodity, available in the supermarket of religions and churches, and purchased on the basis of recommendations and ratings by others. In fact, you can vote on the best church in Clarksville and every day people vote with ratings and reviews on Google, Facebook, and all kinds of other social media. This has become normal to us. We presume that church shopping means finding a church home and a faith that matches up with your own preferences, opinions, and choices. When first you find a good match, everything seems wonderful but it does not last. In the end, something will wear thin and the feelings will fade and the enthusiasm flag until you are back hoofing it across town in search of a better match.
We are the most fickle of creatures. Why are we loyal fans of losing teams but walk out the door never to return if the pastor offends us or somebody fails to call us by name or looks at us funny? Why will keep old familiar things long after they are worn out but tire of a spouse and family life because it gets old or does not fulfill all our dreams? Why are we lonely and complain nobody loves us and then want to get away for some peace, quiet, and solitude? Why do we feel compelled to judge others but are outraged if people judge us either rightly or wrongly?
Into this, Jesus prays words well worth our hearing. “You did not choose Me but I chose you.” There is no god worth having who has to be chosen. The only God worth having is the God who chooses you. There is no religion worth having in which you are in the drivers seat. The only religion worth having is that religion in which God is incomprehensible and too big to fit our minds. We presume that once we choose a God, He will become our equal. Our friend and companion who will echo our opinions and agree with us over everything. This is not the God who created all things from nothing and it is certainly not the God who became incarnate for us in order to be our Savior. This God is not understandable and so we must pray “Thy will be done.” This God is not our pet but we are His sheep. This God is meets us not where we want but where He has chosen to be found.
Now this might sound off putting. This does not sound like a very friendly God. In fact, it sounds like a God who does not want to be friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. We may not know what friendship is, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does. The work of the Spirit is to make us know this friendship – not as our gesture but as His choice, even at the cost of the cross.
Because you did not choose God and He chose you, your relationship is not fragile or weak but as strong as the love that made the promise of salvation while the sting of Adam and Eve’s rebellion was still fresh. Because you did not choose God and He chose you, your relationship is not an infatuation for the moment but the steadfast love that unfolded the plan of salvation down through the ages until finally Christ was born. Because you did not choose God and He chose you, your relationship is not imagined behind the image you choose to project but as real as the sins He knew when He loved you even to death on the cross. Because you did not choose God and He chose you, your relationship with Him does not end in a cemetery or at a grave but is raised from death to everlasting life.
The Scriptures reveal to us the depth of a love that is not a matter of words or even a choice but of a commitment tested by suffering and death. That is the love of God for you. When God calls you friends, this is not something weak or fragile like the friending and unfriending we do on social media and the faded friendships that end simply because we put no more effort into them. The friendship of God is revealed by the cross. The friendship of God endures through our whims and fancies that take us away from Him but never take Him from us.
So when He calls us to love as He has loved, to love the things He says, to love the things He commands, He is not placing a condition on His love. He is offering to you the love that will fill you and define you and direct you throughout your life and even into heaven. You are not His servant but His friends because He has revealed to you everything about His love for you. You are His friend because in you He has planted this love and His Spirit so that you will bear the good fruit that lasts. You are His friend because He has given you the promise that He will hear your every prayer and love you enough to give what is good and right even when that is different from what you want. You are His friend so that you will become in Christ an instrument of this love that forgives and restores and does not quickly judge and does not count the cost of loving.
How sad it is that we have made God the object of our choice and forgotten what it means to be called, elected, washed anew, set apart, and raised up to be His sons and daughters! How sad it is that have learned to be satisfied with a weak joy that expects to receive more than we give! How sad it is that we have put the worst construction on the words we hear and the actions other take! Are we happy or content or at peace in this? Of course not. We are lonely and fearful and sad.
The Lord has invited us to something unimaginable to us until the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to Christ, to a God who chooses us not one a whim but as an everlasting covenant of love and fidelity, from a God whose love for us is not a matter of mere words or symbols but of a body suffering and a life outpoured upon the cross. Here is a God whose mercy gives to the unworthy and the undeserving all that cost Christ His all and who does it generously and extravagantly. Here is a God who teaches us what real friendship is and who invites us to learn from Him to friend one another as He has us. Here is love – not that we loved Him but He loved us first and still and forever.
The love we have for one another in Christ is like Christ’s love for us – it chooses to love despite the unworthiness of those whom we love, bears with their failings, and endures because of forgiveness. The Scriptures tell us to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of love in Christ. Maybe law seems like a bad word but love is the fulfilling of the law. It was for the Christ whose love kept every command so we could be counted righteous and whose love fulfilled every prophetic promise so that we could be redeemed. As the Father has loved Me, says Jesus, so have I loved you. This love is not a choice. It is a commitment unto death. Abide in His love for you and this love and the God who gives it to you will never let you down.
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