Unconditional

Something that I've grappled with over the past month or so is what our/my identity is. I'm in the dorms at TFC, and around mostly younger girls. I therefore tend to do things very similar to them. For as long as I can remember I associated my identity with the things I did, and the people I was around. Over the past couple of years though, that has bounced around so much as I assimilated myself to fit into the setting around me. I think part of this stems from the idea I received growing up that a "good Christian" did certain things and did not do certain things. There was such a HUGE emphasis on this. Well, as I've bounced literally all over the place in what role I am in for the month or year, I've learned that the only basic truth, the only thing that deserves the label of identity, is the fact that I am a child of Christ. God calls us to do different things at different stages in our lives to relate to other people, or sometimes just to glorify Himself. King David was so caught up in worship that he danced naked before the Lord. That did not make him crazy, and it didn't make him more child-like. It was simply an action of pure obedience and reverence.

This identity, as stated in Ephesians 3, says we are "fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." That is who we ARE.

And in similar form, I've heard so many different takes on the love of Christ, and the forgiveness of sin, that it literally left me hurting for a while in confusion. As a child of Christ, I am love UNCONDITIONALLY. That means that no matter what I do, God is not going to love me more or less because of it. His love is NOT dependent upon our actions. This has been such a hard concept for me to grasp. God is not going to love me more because I do something for Him, and He isn't going to love me less because I do not obey Him. His love STAYS THE SAME! He might get frustrated or hurt with me or He might even be proud of me for listening to Him, but unlike human love, those feelings do not change the amount He loves me! John 13:1 says "...[Jesus] having loved His own who were (ARE) in the world, He loved them to the end." This in the Greek could also be "...His beloved, in the world, He loved them to the uttermost." If He loved us to the uttermost when He was fully man, when one of those He loved that much was about to betray Him in the worst possible way, and another was about to disown Him (THREE TIMES!), how much more can He love us now that He has been glorified and is with the Father! NOTHING anyone can do or say can change that amount of love.