True Love: The Economy of Grace

Mercy, true mercy, is uncomfortable, and grace is profoundly unsettling. But I don’t deserve it! our hearts cry, but that’s the point. Grace and mercy are gifts. They are neither earned nor merited—they are not wages we deserve for something we did or recognition for something we are. They are despite those things—despite the misdeeds we’ve committed, despite the evils we’ve wrought, despite our sinful ways and our ill-seeking hearts. Love, true love, though it might be reciprocated, is never dependent on what is returned to it but rather pours forth from an overflowing fountain with an independent and eternal source. True love is unstoppable. It is perfect.

I think we have confused ourselves of late. We have taken to speaking of “toxic relationships” and “givers versus takers,” encouraging each other and ourselves to cut off those people who suck more energy from us than they seem to be worth. We split the world into a dichotomy of people who are “life-giving” and those who are life-depleting. While this can be necessary for our mental and emotional health, it has twisted into a more universal, subtle, and misleading concept of love. We are operating as though everything we give—all our time, energy, financial resources, and kindness—must have a Newtonian counterpart, an “equal and opposite reaction” from the recipient to prove the worth of the relationship. Forbid it that I get you a birthday present, then my birthday rolls around and I receive only a verbal acknowledgement. I might wonder whether you care for me in the same way I care for you, and while my skepticism could have a very real foundation, the question itself reveals an aspect of my love for you is that you earn it.

It follows that when someone is not “investing” as much in a relationship as we are, we second-guess our own contributions. We like to imagine ourselves always on the giving end of things. We might count what’s quantifiable in our friendships—how many times we came to his rescue, how many times we backed her up, how much money or time we put in, etc.—or in absence of numbers, we try to qualify whose care has shown to be greater or deeper, whose mental and emotional share is more substantial. We like to shift the balance in our favor. Unable to stand equality or the horrid weight of obligation, we give and give until we are empty, then blame the other party for our exhaustion. How could they allow us to fall? We always held them up, after all.

Because we believe love must be earned, or at the very least we must pay for its upkeep, true love makes us uncomfortable to the very core. The most important and fundamental relationship in our lives does not require complete reciprocity, however, and praise the Lord this is the case. The problem is that there is nothing we can offer to the Creator that He has not first created, and there is nothing we can bring Him that He did not first give to us. It could be said that God’s relationship with us is the most toxic relationship ever to exist. It cost Jesus His place in heaven for a time, His glory, His tears, His blood, and His life. His love was—and is—unstoppable.

Who among us would die for that life-sucking friend of ours, the one who wastes our time, eats our food, steals our mental energy, and messes with our emotional well-being? Who among us would move toward that person in love and lay down our lives for them? Much more likely we would withdraw, “quiet quitting” the relationship, or even dramatically cut things off with that person, especially because the closer we get to them, the more ugliness we see. Yet Jesus died for me. 

For me, foolish soul that I am. I disregard and even forget the very Sustainer of my being on a daily basis. I take God’s gifts for granted, even believe I’ve earned them. My family, my friends, my job, my house—I made the choices that led me to them, did I not? I convince myself that my financial wisdom and good life choices are the reasons I have these things. I am strong of mind, determined, and I cling harder to hope than most people I know. I tell myself that it is because of these things I have survived the trying circumstances of my life. Yet I had no idea the journey that would lead me here, just as I have no clue what the next forty years of my life will hold, if I even have forty years left. I build my sense of worth on my accomplishments and character. Yet, can I claim wisdom for this path I’ve been stumbling down in confusion for thirty-four years, or can I take credit for the personality I was born with? These things I take pride in are no more my choices than the color of my eyes or my birthplace.

My heart is a broken, ugly, scattered and scarred, a lost and lonely mess. Yet Jesus died to redeem me, to make me beautiful. For many years, in ignorance and misunderstanding, I have ignored this. I have buried it deep beneath my feeble attempts to be enough, to earn God’s favor. Jesus’s perfect, sacrificial, unstoppable love has been an unforgiveable grace towards me, an offense even. How could He create such a debt for me, a debt I could never hope to satisfy? How could He do that to me, requiring from me cowering obedience to prove my gratitude and reciprocal love to Him? How could He force me into such a place of shame, knowing I will never be enough?

He didn’t. Operating under this earthly understanding of love, I have this visceral sense of obligation when I realize how much God loves me. It’s an infinite obligation I could never meet. I get uncomfortable thinking about it. However, God never asked me to reciprocate in kind. He asked only for my faith, my gratitude, my imperfect love. He asked only that I turn to Him in my insufficiencies and let Him be enough. He asked that I believe Him when He says He loves me and has placed infinite worth on me.

So as I sit in my library on a Thursday afternoon, I remember God’s mercy, His grace, and His perfect, unstoppable love. It is not predicated on my reaction to Him; it is not dependent on my reciprocation. He loves me entirely and eternally. What my rebellion against accepting His grace affects is not His love but my enjoyment of it. As long as I reject Him, I cannot rejoice and rest in His care for me. Furthermore, the best thing I can do to honor His sacrifice is not to lament the injustice of it or resist it for some misplaced sense of pride that dwells inside me. Rather, the best and most appropriate response I can have to God’s love is to receive it in humility, confessing I am at once undeserving and infinitely precious. I believe Keith and Kristyn Getty sing it best: "Two wonders here that I confess/My worth and my unworthiness/My value fixed, my ransom paid/At the cross."

As inexplicable and astonishing as God’s love is, and as uncomfortable and unbearable it feels to me at times, it is the most soothing and encouraging truth I have ever known. God’s love is gentle and peaceful, but do not mistake the hush of His whispers for weakness or indifference. God’s love is strong, unstoppable, an unending fountain we could never hope to sustain but that will forever sustain us.