Both within and outside the church it is often emphasized in a variety of ways that God accepts people the way they are. You may come how you are. You do not have to present yourself more attractively than you are. That is unnecessary, because God loves you the way you are. These statements are true. Still, a huge misunderstanding can lurk inside them. I will try to explain how God looks at us with love.

The difference between misunderstanding and right understanding lies in your focus. Do the words of the gospel say that something is special about God, or about us? The answer makes quite a difference. Let us begin with what I would like to call the misunderstanding.

The Misunderstanding: “I Am Special”⤒🔗

The gospel of God’s love is nowadays often interpreted as if the people whom God cares about have to be very special. In some magazines this “specialness” is said to be key to giving new hope to those who, for all kinds of reasons, have low self-esteem.

This can become a kind of psychological gospel. I came across an odd though logically consistent handling of this reasoning a long time ago, in a copy of the women’s magazine Eve, where someone wrote an article based on this misunderstanding of God’s love with the title “I am marvellous!” This way you can indeed give people a more positive outlook about themselves. Sadly enough, there are people who have such a negative image of themselves that it is understandable that someone tries to help them to get rid of it. But the argument that “God loves you, so you must be great” is a mistake — it goes against the deepest essence of the gospel.

When you go through the Bible and see how the Lord God looks at people, you will find many other things. After man became disobedient to God and the wickedness of the people had become great on earth, “The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6). And when God in his great mercy made a covenant with his servant Abraham and with the people that would come forth from Abraham, he did not say: one day this nation will be a powerful people. No, God said, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God” (Deut. 7:7-9).

It will not be difficult to find the same thought many times throughout the Old Testament and no less in the New Testament. Where are all these special people? Yes, you encounter one who thought very highly about himself — the Pharisee in the parable in which the Lord shows him together with the tax collector. The Pharisee thanks God that he is not like others, and then brings up all the qualities he thinks should make him special to God. But the Lord puts the attention on the other, on the tax collector who prays, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” The Lord Jesus adds, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).

And when the apostle Paul speaks about himself, it is never with the attitude: “I must have been something very special, that God gave his Son also for me.” You will hear him say that he is the foremost sinner, and that therefore the grace of God over him has been so great (1 Timothy 1:13-16). When you read these verses you learn that it pleases God to pour his love into our hearts and to have Christ die for us. This did not occur after Christ saw something in us, but when we were weak, and ungodly, sinners and his enemies. In Romans 5:5-10 these four words are mentioned in this context. Not really a reason to say, “How happy God must have been with me, a pearl in his hand...”

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What Then Is the Reason for God’s Love?←⤒🔗

If then in us there is no reason why God was motivated to love us, why is it that the Bible speaks about his special love for us? Because it is clear that the gospel is full of that. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...” That text, John 3:16, may be engraved in our mind as one of the most central teachings of the Bible!

But again, it makes a difference whether we say something like this about ourselves or about God. It is the second! What is special about God’s love is that God is love, not that we are good! In the letter of John, who speaks words of love about God with so much emphasis, there are clearly texts about that. Not only that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), but also that love is from God (1 John 4:7), and that God loved us first (1 John 4:19). It is even a contrast: “Not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

No part of the Bible is as radical as the writings of John, who is called the apostle of love. He does not write sweetly, but sharp. Indeed, as sharp as God’s love. When speaking about us—for example, that we keep God’s commands (a reason God would be happy with us!)—then John says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3). You can interpret these words as “this is the love for God, that we keep his commandments,” but it is also quite possible, in the context of this letter, to say, “This is the love from God, that we keep his commandments.” In both cases God’s love is the source from which everything—thank God—comes.

That goes with what the Old Testament says about the Lord. It sounds like an echo of all that is written in Exodus 34:6,7, where it says that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin (see also Num. 14:18; Pss. 103:7-12; 145:8-9; Jonah 4:2; Micah 7:18). Where else does God’s love for people come from but from God himself? God’s goodwill toward people is not brought about by anything or anyone other than himself.

That is why God’s love is also the good news—it means complete deliverance. God found reason in himself. And fortunately not in us…

A Source of Comfort←⤒🔗

This is exactly how comfort can be found in the gospel. There is support for people who are depressed. And there is courage when we no longer see it, and tend to give up in struggles and difficulties. 

Thanks be to God, the gospel of God’s love does not say anything about us, but everything about him! That makes all the difference.

If we still want to talk about being a pearl in God’s hand, then speak in a tone of wonder. Because it is not that I am so precious, but because we realize that God is God. Because his love is so great. Because God delights in steadfast love (Micah 7:18). “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4, 5). This is the way faith speaks, and faith will above all speak about God, and not much about us.

All fame is excluded, undeserved blessings have I received from my God… That grace is what we should talk about. With this focus a person can be lifted up out of his troubles of guilt and any other kind of difficulty. Not: I am so great. But: “By the grace of God, I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10). Then you may indeed say: “I am.” With boldness and without fear. But you realize why! The miracle of God’s grace in Christ. 

We may come as we are. And still: “He accepts us the way we are not!” This short sentence, said by a ministerial colleague during a meeting, touched me. The Lord accepts sinners but not sin! He accepts a sinful person in his Son. In his love he wants to see me as if I am as fine, as sinless, as precious as Christ. You can read Lord’s Day 23 of the Heidelberg Catechism for details. This is the way we may speak about the gospel. It is about grace. It is all about him.