The Fullness of Limitless Love

It doesn't make any sense....at all.

How can you experience the fullness of something that is limitless?

It's an oxymoron really. Fullness by definition implies that there is an end, a limit, a point at which an object can be no more full than it already is.

It's complicated even more by the fact that it is nearly impossible for us to experience the fullness of anything, be it joy, freedom, peace, relationship, money, or satisfaction. There is seemingly always something waiting for our cup to fill to the brim, just to bump us and watch it spill all over ourselves and those around us. This creates an environment of deep yearning, longing, searching, and striving after more. More fun, more peace, more enjoyment, more entertainment, more satisfaction, more fulfillment, and more acceptance.

We're born into, & quickly willingly join with this "rat race" of seeking to satisfy the insatiable, & fill the unfillable.

Equally unfathomable & incomprehensible to us is the idea that something can be limitless. We really truly have nothing as a reference point for the concept of an object, emotion, relationship, person, or action that could be considered as without limit, constraint or ending.

So what could possibly reconcile these two ideas that by themselves are irreconcilable by our minds, but together become the greatest of opposites.

The Gospel.

The Gospel starts with God before the creation of anything. It has to start there. Because in those moments of eternity before God created time, energy, life, & mankind, He was complete, all sufficient and in need of nothing. But He choses to create anyways, not of a desire for something He needs, but of the overflow of everything He is. Light. Peace. Joy. Love.

Man, being created in the image of God for the glory of God, finds himself in a state of absolute peace & joy, clothed in the love & acceptance of a gracious & generous Father who began the process as an overflow of His limitless love.
And while clothed in this love & acceptance, mankind decides to shed those clothes in pursuit of other fashions, and quickly finds itself Naked, outside of God's love & acceptance.

This is naturally a dangerous place to be.

But God makes a way. He offers a perfect payment for our betrayal, in Jesus, who lives the perfect life, and gives us the credit for it, who dies the death we deserved to die, and gives us His perfect eternal life, which we could never otherwise obtain. All so that we could be clothed in the love & acceptance of our gracious & generous Father again.

Oh and how this is surely the greatest of all great headlines in the universe. Jesus Paid it ALL.

But the Gospel does not end with Jesus paying it All, and us obtaining eternal heavenly life. Well it does end with that, but there's so much more in the middle that we skip over. Like how to overcome sin NOW. How to avoid temptation, how to grow into maturity, and the fullness of what Christ has accomplished for us. Namely that we have become Sons & Daughters of the Most High God.

But there in lies the Gospel. There in lies the Fullness of Limitless Love. There in lies the power over sin & temptation & doubt, and the power to freedom & peace & joy.

That there has been a fundamental shift in your identity. You've been taken, in Christ, from enemy to child, from lost to found, from hostile to in love. You are no longer a naked sinner, but a finely dressed Child of a gracious & generous Father.

And here's where it gets great. If you are in Christ, & Christ is in you, There is nothing (read ABSOLUTELY NO THING) you can do to make Him love you any less, and nothing (read NO NO NO NO NO NO NO THING EVER ANYWHERE IN ANY CAPACITY) you can do to make Him love you anymore.

Now don't read that familiar phrase calously. Reread it, and contemplate this. We have relationships now, where we know that there's nothing we can do to make someone love us anymore, and by that we mean that they'll never fully love us, but they've capped out on loving us. They have more to give, but they'll never give it to us, no matter what we do.

But this is not the God of of this great gospel. When He says there's nothing you can do to make Him love you more, what He's saying is that ALL, every last drop of His everlasting, neverending, always flowing, limitless Love is directed towards You. He can't love you anymore because He's already loving you with everything that He is. He's pouring all of His endless Love in your direction.

Consider the implications for a moment. This means that even in pain, trial, suffering, and hardship, God is loving you ferociously. Because all of His wrath towards you has been poured out on Jesus on the cross, all He has left towards you is His love. Which means pain is a tool to detach you from fruitless pursuits and direct you into the flow of His love. It means suffering is not pointless, but a directional sign that He alone can satisfy you.

This means that He also loves you eternally, and takes great delight in showing you His eternal love for eternity. So these light and momentary afflictions become as nothing in the light of the glory that has prepared for us.

It also means you need to stop trying so hard to please Him, and start trying harder to enjoy Him. That you need to stop beating yourself up over your failures, and stop running away from Him, and start running towards Him in failure, knowing that He will gladly fill you to the brim over and over and over again with His limitless supply of His love, directed towards you, His child.

Naked

Naked.

It's how you come into this world, and it's essentially how you go out of it as well.

Naked.

It's not a pleasant idea, or image, or reality. My guess is that even the site of the word naked conjures in you, the reader, such feelings that you would rather quickly dismiss, ignore & suppress than dwell on, contemplate & explore.

Feelings of disgust, of embarrassment, of shame.

Yes, shame might be the most common, & yet most underestimated of these feelings.
Why shame, what is there to be ashamed of when it comes to nakedness? God created us naked & yet without shame (Gen. 2:25), so why is it now that we so quickly associate being naked & being ashamed as one in the same?

Adam & Eve might have something to say about this if they weren't dead...and naked.

It seems to me that we've completely forgotten, or missed, or ignored this thing in the depths of all of our souls that remembers the time when there was shalom, peace, joy, freedom, where everything in all of creation worked in perfect rhythm, melody & harmony, like the greatest of all symphonies ever written or heard. We're told about it in Ecclesiastes, where we're told that God placed eternity in the hearts of men. That we remember that this life that we live now is not all there ever is, or ever was.

And so if we were to be honest with ourselves (which I won't pretend that we can be), we would discover that our soul aches for what Adam & Eve experienced briefly.

Nakedness without shame. In short, Shalom. Rhythm. Peace. Harmony. Perfection.

The odd thing is that while Adam & Eve, in those moments, were completely naked, they were also completely clothed. In the love & acceptance of their Creator, Father & Friend. They were given one commandment, don't eat of this one tree. I've given you everything else you will ever need, and it is all beyond just fulfilling a need, it is beautiful, tasteful, joyous, & free, and if you stay within this simple boundary you will always be joyous & free, and clothed in love & acceptance.

But infamously, we all know what happened, they didn't stay within the boundaries, they stepped outside of it to pursue the one thing that they couldn't have, & in that the rejected God's acceptance & love as being enough for them, & declared they would rather have God's things than God Himself, that they would rather be powerful & "all-knowing" then empowered & and truly know God, that they would rather pursue themselves, than God.

And so there they stood, naked. Stripped bare. Exposed. Full of shame, regret, fear, and animosity towards each other & God.

It's far too easy for us to sit back, analyze, dissect & examine Adam & Eve, and to totally miss the point that they so very perfectly represent you & I.

Now you're probably expecting me to start listing all the ways that we're horrible people who ignore God, chase idols & sin. Well you're wrong.

My goal here is for us to simply take a minute to realize that so much of our issue with ourselves is wrapped up in this idea of shame. My goal is for us to examine ourselves for a moment & be honest enough to aknowledge that there is a problem. That maybe why we work so hard & long, why we dive into entertainment & food head first and why we care so much about what other people think, is because we're trying desperately to make our fig leaves with which to cover our nakedness before God. To earn His love, to gain His acceptance, to find ourselves worthy, desirable & lovable once again. Because the soul remembers, & the heart knows that there is so much more, so very much more to life, to you, to this world then scratching & clawing to be clothed.

I'll end with this, & pick up with it in my next post. You can take a shower & brush your teeth, put on nice clothes & a pretty smile, and you can present yourself a certain way, but you don't have access to cleaning out the inside, and you can't clothe your soul.

But there is one who knew no sin, who became sin on your behalf that you might be clothed in the righteousness of God, to be found acceptable in His sight, cleansed of all shame. He is Jesus.