Unending Love

This entry was inspired by an incredible message at church this morning. As always, you need not be Christian to read, comment, or take something from this blog, though. (See this link for the message which inspired this post, which will be uploaded in the next week. It is called "As in Adam, So in Christ")

Who are you? Take a moment to think about it. Consider the aspects you try to keep hidden, the things you try to keep yourself from believing, the things that have enormous impact on our identity, and even the things that depend on the perceptions of those around us.

We have, essentially, two options of ways to identify ourselves. The first is through Adam (as in the first man), which is to say through humanity. This option reflects the broken world we live in, in which we experience spiritual, psychological, social, and physical death. (This is a common choice of non-Christians and is the source of sayings such as YOLO.)

The second option is to identify ourselves through Christ. That is, through the resurrection. This allows us to experience spiritual, psychological, social, and physical death both now and (more fully) in the next life. 

So in what ways are you experiencing the results of the life of Adam?

For me, this list includes depression, self injury, and marriage issues, among many others.

In what ways are you experiencing life through Christ?

This list, for me, is short, including only the limited ministry I have through this blog.

It was quite shocking for me to see that I'm experiencing the results of Adam's actions more than those of Christ. Still, in the midst of my struggle to see myself the way Christ does, it is encouraging to know that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). In my life, this means that no cut, no burn, no marriage issue, no amount of low self-esteem, nothing can make God stop loving me. Nothing.

This is not to say that we don't do bad things. We do. Only that those bad things cause us to distance ourselves from God, but God does not stop loving us as a result. God never stops loving you, if you only believe. Now that's the kind of love we all desire.