From the Pastor's Study
From the Pastor’s Study
In Spite of Who We Are
Nov 30, 2022
A few days ago, I was having a discussion with a few people about whether or not it is possible to change another person. The answer, it seems, is both yes and no. No, we cannot change the essence of who a person is. Just as it is impossible to change the length of our arms or the colour or our eyes, it is impossible to change someone from being an introvert to becoming an extrovert, for example. Equally, it is impossible to make a left-brained mathematics whiz into a great right-brained sculptor. The essence of who we are seems to be more or less set in stone. God has created us to be the kind of people we are, and we can do nothing to change that.
On the other hand, we can change ourselves and others by helping them become more like the people God intended them to be. Sin has damaged us, both in the essence of who we are and in the expression of that essence. Thus, there is always room for growth so that we increasingly use our gifts and abilities in a way that glorified God. For example, someone who has trouble controlling her anger might blow up any time she feels she has been wronged. At the same time, that same person might have a strong reaction to situations where injustice is don’t to another. The first, being angry when she is wronged, is a selfish expression of a what could otherwise be turned toward a deep sense of the need for justice for others. Sin has so corrupted us that every part of our lives is tainted by it and the expression of who we are is often not very positive. Nevertheless, there still remains the remnant of the ideal person that God intends each of us to be.
A few days after I had the conversation about whether or not we can change people, I was listening to a podcast in which the speaker talked a bit about how God views us. He said that the idea that God loves us the way we are is a very dangerous idea. It seems that this concept has risen out of the very Reformed view that we can’t do anything to make God love us. In other words, our efforts do not determine whether or not God will be gracious to us. Yet, asserted the podcast speaker, it is dangerous for us to think that God loves us the way we are. It would be more correct to say that God loves us in spite of the way we are.
This is clearly illustrated in a marriage relationship. When a man and woman first meet, they tend not to see the other’s weaknesses. That blissful state can continue up until the second week of marriage when some of those weaknesses become evident. A committed husband and wife will work through these “disappointments” and they will come through on the other side loving their spouse in spite of their weaknesses. It is then that their love can grow stronger.
God doesn’t need to spend time with us to know the sin affects every part of who we are and that we have all sorts or problems and weaknesses. The podcast speaker said that God doesn’t love us as we are, but he loves us in spite of who we are. And that, he emphasized, should always amaze us.
The problem with saying that God loves us as we are is that we can become satisfied with who we are because we might believe that God is satisfied with the way we are. We might reason that because God loves us the way we are, we don’t have to change at all. This can, and does, lead to the lack of desire to grow into the kind of people we could become.
The podcast speaker went on to say that the depth of God’s love is expressed not only in spite of who we are but also in the fact that God, through the Holy Spirit, makes us more into the kind of people we were intended to be. In fact, if God simply loves us as we are and is satisfied with that himself, that would not be a deep kind of love. God’s love is best seen as we watch him take a sinful person and change them, sometimes very gradually, into what he created them to be.
In the marriage vows that I encourage couples to use, one of the key commitments that both husband and wife make is to do everything they can to help their spouse to flourish. (Of course, if a husband or wife understands that to mean that the should try to change their spouse into something they are not, they will be deeply disappointed as they fail miserably.) God will not change us to be someone we are not, but he does work in us to rid our lives of the impact of sin so that we can become the kind of people we could be.
This process has a name: it is called sanctification. Sanctification is the process by which we are made holy, more Christlike. This is a life-long process, and it is something that we can experience not because God loves us for who we are but because he loves us in spite of who we are, and he loves us to much that he wants us to become all that he created us to be.
Again, God won’t change us to become someone he did not mean us to be. But, through the working of the Spirit, those sinful expressions will be closed down, and we will become more like Jesus. This life-long process will not be completed on this side of the grave, but when we enter into eternal glory, then every vestige of sin will be eliminated, and it is then that we will be the kind of people God intended us to be.
God does not change us into someone we are not, but he takes who we are, sinful nature and all, and he makes us into what we should become. In this we see the full depth of his love. Only let us be willing to become what God created us to be as the Spirit works in us.
Pastor Gary
