So there was one a fairly rich man who had two sons. The younger son went to his father one day and he said that he wanted his inheritance now, rather than waiting until his father died. The father obliged and gave the younger son his share of the money. The son took that money and moved out, crossed the country, and blew all the money on extravagance. He had a good time, but not a long time. Once he wasted all the money he was really in trouble and he couldn’t get a job for a while, when he did it wasn’t a good job either. It was a dirty job with no class at all, but someone had to do it and he was desperate. He wasn’t even making enough to eat real food, he had to eat food for animals. His dad was rich though, so he had the thought one day that even the groundskeepers that worked for his dad lived better than he was living, so he decided to go back to his dad to apologize and beg for a job working for him, because he knew he wasn’t good enough to still be called his father’s son, but he was desperate for the work. When he got back to his dad’s place, where he used to live, his dad ran out and hugged him. The son was obviously surprised and insisted that he knew he didn’t deserve any good treatment, that he knew he had completely gone against his father and had even hated him before. The father didn’t care, he was just glad his son was back because he loved him. The father knew that his son just didn’t know better, he was so happy that the son who he loved was back that it didn’t matter what had happened before, he just wanted to be with him again. As far as the father knew, the son was dead, never to be seen again, and he was just happy to have him back, because he loved his son.
More or less, that’s the tale of the prodigal son that Jesus told (found in Luke 15). As Jesus, God in the flesh, explained it to the crowds of the time, that’s how God feels towards us. God made us. It doesn’t matter how you think you got to where you are, you’re not an accident and you haven’t gone too far in any wrong direction. God loved Gideon, the son of a prostitute, and He even led him to do great things. Gideon is proof that even when someone comes into the world in a way that no person had planned for, he was definitely not an accident. Paul is proof that no one has messed up too badly for God to still work with them and still love them and do great things with them. Paul was, in today’s terms, practically a leader of ISIS. He went around rounding up and killing Christians, but God still had good plans for Paul. Paul even said that he was the worst of all of the sinners in the world, and yet God’s grace was enough for him.
God loves you, and His days of condemning you are over right now in one sense. Jesus’ temporary death was a sacrifice that God made for you, because He loves you. Since Jesus’ death, we’re free from the Old Testament laws, and God isn’t waiting for you to mess up so He can condemn you or turn His back on you. There was a time, recorded in John 8, where a woman was dragged out to Jesus who had been sleeping around outside of marriage and they said that she needed to be killed because that’s what the law said. Jesus told them that any of them who hadn’t sinned could go ahead and throw the first stone at her. Of course, since every single person has sinned, they all left. The woman was surprised as they all left, and Jesus told her that He didn’t condemn her, and that she was free to go, and from then on to sin no more. He knew what she was doing was wrong morally and also harming her, and legally she did deserve to die, but that’s not what God was about. He loved her and He just wanted what was best for her, not to punish her for breaking a rule.
That doesn’t mean that He wasn’t serious, though. God shows us unimaginable grace. Paul asks rhetorically in Romans 6 Should we keep sinning since we’ll get grace anyway? His answer is then “Of course not”. Grace is literally the sweetest thing ever. We don’t deserve it in the slightest, and yet we’re always going to get it. It isn’t something to be abused, but it certainly is something we shouldn’t skip out on.
There will be a time that we have to answer for our decisions. Grace being offered to us doesn’t just mean that we get to walk all over God and never face any consequences. God keeps His promises, and He’s just so we’re definitely going to need to own up to what we’ve done, but Jesus beautifully offers us something that we don’t deserve, and we can take it at any time before we would otherwise face our eternal punishment, what we deserve. God loves you so much, He doesn’t want anyone to go to hell. The Bible even says that He delays the day of judgment so that there are more chances for us to come back to Him and accept the grace that He offers. There are consequences to our actions, we’ll face some while we live and we’ll face some when we die, but God loves us so much that He gives every single one of us every day to turn to Him and accept the grace that He’s offering.
It doesn’t matter if you love God and are already dedicating your whole life to doing His will, if you don’t believe in Him at all and think it’s just a myth, if you misunderstand Him, if you hate Him, or if you don’t think you’re good enough. Spoiler alert, none of us are good enough. That’s the beauty of grace. None of us deserve it at all. I don’t care how much you don’t believe in God or don’t think you’re enough or hate Him or anything, God loves you as much as He loves everyone else. You’re His beloved. When it comes down to it, we’re all drowning but He wants to save all of us. It just takes us reaching up and taking the hand that He’s offering us and accepting the grace that we don’t deserve, but that He’s offering because of His immense love for us, no matter who we are, where we are, or what we’ve done.
He loves you, He’s always with you, and you can personally talk to Him at any time about anything. He doesn’t need you to agree with Him, He just wants you to take a step closer to Him and He’ll get closer to you and the rest will work out.
