Falling in Love with God!

Maybe it’s because I’m officially old and cry at Hallmark cards, but it seems over the last number of years that God’s truth is able to elicit in me tears that I don’t remember in the younger me. I’m sure this has nothing to do with age per se, but with a growing realization that comes with growing in the knowledge of his benefits. These words of John Calvin in the first chapter of his Institutes captures well the nature of this divine-human relationship:

I call “piety” that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that his is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.

Bingo! There are many profound truths here that would take many posts to unpack, but here is the gist: God is for us, not against us.

Sin alienated us from God, and as Adam and Eve did after the fall, it causes us not to seek God, but to hide from him. In our natural, sinful state we want nothing to do with our judge, jury, and executioner. Born in sin, we are born enemies of God. But God by his inscrutable will chose some of us, and died for us to pay the penalty for our rebellion on the cross in Christ, his wrath fully satisfied, justice done, we are now reconciled to him. Whenever this happens, however this happens by the power of the Holy Spirit, redemption accomplished is redemption applied. I call this a radical relational reversal. This, however, is just the beginning. We don’t fall in love with God by one act of God. We might say that sanctification is not so much growing in holiness (which we often confuse with being more moral), but growing in holiness by falling in love with God.

I’ve likened God’s relationship with his people, those for whom Christ died, as a man wooing a maiden. Such a man, smitten by the beauty and allure of the maiden, doesn’t blurt out his love or hit her over the head with it. Wise to human nature, he knows an indirect approach has a much better chance at success with his beloved, so he woos her. Here are a couple definitions of woo:

• To seek the affection of (someone, especially a woman) with the intent to marry or begin a romantic relationship.
• To gain the favor of (someone) or move (someone) to do something by entreaties or inducements: To seek the romantic affections of someone, especially a woman.

I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to see such a wooing of a romantic relationship between God and his people. We are his bride, after all. That has been my experience. He uses the totality of the experiences of our lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly, the mundane and the profound to shape and mold our affections that we might inevitably embody the greatest commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. We fall in love with him!