My small group leader tasked our group with writing out God’s story in 300 words or less. I really struggled with this writing assignment, even though I thought it would be easy—I get paid to boil down complicated topics into short-form, easy-to-digest content.
But as I thought about the gospel and the most important pieces, I had a hard time figuring out which plot points were the most important to share. While the synopsis of the Bible shared below is brief and flawed and at least a little bit heretical, it’s what I think is most important to know about God’s story at this point in my life and what I tell people who are struggling with their faith.
The Assignment
There are really only two things you need to know about God—he loves you and is entitled to be loved by you.
God created humankind as an expression of himself, an artist crafting a passion project. He didn’t make us out of necessity, but we were designed with a function, a privilege—to worship God and work his creation.
Love is a choice, and God loves his creation. He wants us to love him, choose him back. But when given freedom, we chose ourselves over him, the creator and sustainer of life. Death resulted. Physical and spiritual death. We built a wall between ourselves and the creator, cutting off the power line, our source of life.
We immediately recognized our wrongdoing but denied it just as quickly. For thousands of years, we tried to rely on our own power and save ourselves from death, ignoring God’s outstretched hand. Despite digging in our heels, God carried us along, showing us time and time again we could not revive ourselves.
After centuries of failed self-reliance, God became one of us—Jesus. He came to earth, fully human yet fully God, as the bastard son of a teenage girl. Through his death, he kicked down the wall we built and bridged the gap between life and death.
Through Christ’s parting gift, the Holy Spirit, we can live in light of eternity, abiding with God while trapped, albeit temporarily, in a world where we always choose ourselves when left to our own devices. Someday soon, Christ will return to destroy death and all its friends. He will tear away the final barrier between the lover and the loved so we can once again be the fullest expression of what we were created to be—the object of God’s delight.
God’s love is the most important thing for us to know and embrace. After growing up in the Southern Baptist Church, I thought God’s love was something you received if you repented and “asked Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and savior.” I was always taught that God “loves the sinner but hates the sin.” But I was also taught that humans were enslaved and fully consumed by sin—it was your identity—unless they repented and turned to God. Therefore, it seemed like God must hate sinners, too.
But that’s not what scripture says.
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” —Romans 5:6-8
God died for humankind out of his love for us. He loves us despite our sin. There was no promise that anyone would confess Jesus as Lord, but he sacrificed himself anyway so that we would have the opportunity to be reconciled to him through faith.
I know some of you probably tripped on the phrase “bastard son of a teenage girl.”
I debated whether or not to describe Christ that way. God could have chosen any number of ways to come into the world, but he chose to be born to a young woman who was betrothed to be married and had not yet consummated her relationship.
People knew Mary was pregnant before her marriage to Joseph was finalized. While there is no indication that Jesus was ostracized from society the way children born out of wedlock would have been in first century Israel, he was accused of being born of sexual immorality by critics of his ministry in an attempt to tarnish his reputation (John 8:41).
Furthermore, God sent an angel to Joseph to tell him what was going on so he wouldn’t divorce Mary. Joseph had faith that Mary truly had been impregnated by God and chose to still take her as his wife and adopted Jesus as his son.
Even Christ’s entrance into the world was an act of faith for the woman who bore him and the man who raised him. A conscious choice to love God and trust his plans over their own. Isn't that all God asks of us?
Excellent Emma. I enjoy reading your work, or should I say, your creative passion. Thank you,
I still trip on the word "bastard," LOL. But I don't think this is heretical. I'm curious—do you think it's a little heretical because of that word or because you are proposing that God loves sinners and died for them without the promise that anyone would choose Him? I mean, that's clearly supported by scripture, but a lot of people seem to have a problem with that idea.
Well written and on point!