You Are Offered Endless Love and Forgiveness; the Choice Whether to Accept such Offer is Yours

Dear Readers:

I would like to take a break from my usual subjects to share my beliefs about the Lord God Jesus Christ and His offer of endless love and forgiveness for us.

As I understand it, no one else in the world offers us the kind of endless love and forgiveness that Jesus does. With humans, even friends and even lovers will have some limit to their patience for us. Jesus offers us love without end.

And, upon information and belief, he proved it. Lots of other prophets and religious figures have professed their love, but He backed it up with action. He paid the ultimate price. He loved us so much that He went through a bloody and excruciating death on the cross to pay our sin debts to win limitless forgiveness for us. I feel that this means His forgiveness is more than just ‘cheap grace.’ It was hard-fought for and hard-won. I know of no one else who so not only said they loved and forgave us but demonstrated it with their actions to such an extent.

I suppose this raises the questions: where do we come in? What is our role in this?

I have a book from Georgetown University about the visionaries in Medgugorie in the former Yugoslavia. And, there is a story in the book that made a deep impression on me:

One young woman related that she had a vision. In the vision, people were running and jumping into a great blazing fire. No one was pushing them. They were throwing themselves into the fire. And, the fire made them hideous. There was a woman runner who was beautiful, but the fire made her look like a monster.

The the person who had listened to this account tried to challenge the young woman. She asked her something like: ‘why couldn’t God throw up a wall around the fire? Or, grasp the people to Him?’

The visionary replied something like: ‘God has already done everything He can. He sent His only son to suffer and die so that all may have eternal life. But even God cannot force someone to love him.’

Not everyone finds this story persuasive. Some might object: ‘Even if we reject God, that doesn’t mean that God stops loving us!’

With all due respect, I think that would be missing the point. I think it is true that God, that Jesus, never stops loving us, but I think the point is that we have the power to reject God’s love and the forgiveness won for us by Jesus. We can choose to ‘jump in the fire,’ metaphorically speaking. And, I think that that makes sense. I think it makes sense that even a loving God would respect our choice to refuse His love and forgiveness. So, if we freely choose to reject God’s love and forgiveness, we have the power to prevent ourselves from receiving love and forgiveness. We have the freedom to choose an eternal state of being unloved and unforgiven.

I think this leads to the next question, and that is: so how do we choose?

My impression is that we choose whether or not we accept love and forgiveness not only by what we choose to believe, but by our actions. For example, if a person murders another human being — and does not repent from such an action — I suspect that such a person may have divorced themself from the love and forgiveness.

So, in conclusion, I believe that Jesus Christ offers us endless love and forgiveness, but that we have the power to reject such love and forgiveness. It is up to each person to accept or reject.

In the end, there is nothing that I can say or do that can make you change your mind, dear reader. You have the power to choose your own destiny. However, I beg of you to find your own way to accept rather than to reject the offer of love and forgiveness.

Please choose carefully.