Because the Lord Loves You

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To adopt a child is an act of kindness nearly without parallel. The love that motivates a would-be mother and father to accept a child not their own into their home and call him their own can only come from our loving heavenly Father. A special, unreproducable bond exists between flesh-and-blood family, but there is something wonderful that binds together parents who choose to receive and a child who is given to them by means of adoption. The adoption of children gives us a beautiful picture of what the unconditional love of God is like.

Unconditional love is a wonderful thing. We hear it mentioned often in religious circles. Unconditional love, in Hebrew hesed and in Greek agape, is the love with which only God can love. It is the type of love with which St. Paul exhorts us to love one another in the Holy Spirit. It is the love of Christ for His people. And yet, it is beyond our grasp.

We can talk all we want about unconditional love, but when you get right down to it, it makes no sense to us. You are incapable of loving anyone or anything unconditionally. Despite the vows you take, you are unable to love your spouse with your whole heart. Your children get less than everything. Even the Lord your God does not get your full loyalty. We love as far as it makes sense to us. In today's culture, that often is not very far at all. When you stop feeling the love, you can put her away and find that loving feeling with someone new. When he decides to move on to a younger model, you can stop loving him and turn on him with the fury of a woman scorned. Just turn on the news or open the papers to find examples of love in today's world.

But the love of God is not like that. His love makes no sense. Without any merit or worthiness in you, He loves you with His whole heart. And His love is what makes you who you are: a beloved child of God, adopted in Jesus Christ.

What does this mean, that you are an adopted child of God? It means that before the foundation of the world, before the ages began, your heavenly Father loved you and planned to show His love for you in Christ Jesus. It means that every cell in your body, every breath in your lungs, every hair on your head is known to Him. Every move you make, every step you take is in His hands, because He created you and breathed life into you.

The Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, has chosen you to be His own child and to live under Him in His kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and purity. He has called you His own, and has joined you together with all His children. As Moses declared to the children of Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” You are a treasured possession, chosen specifically by God, from among all the people on earth. You are beloved by God because He chose you, and you are valuable and precious because you are beloved and chosen.

The Lord chose you, not because of anything special about you, but because He decided to, according to His great love. He chose to make Israel His beloved and treasured people, not because they deserved it or earned it in any way. Israel has never been anything special in the great scheme of world history. No great empire. No world-shifting kings. No continent-spanning settlements. In fact, the Lord said that He chose them in spite of their being the smallest among all the peoples of the earth. The Lord loves those whom He chooses, regardless of, and in spite of their personal or collective attributes.

Likewise, you are God's chosen people. Despite your personal makeup, God loves you and has called you His own. You wake up each morning and remember that the sign of the holy Cross marks your forehead and your heart, forever identifying you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified and as one adopted by the Father of all the living.

And you are chosen by God as of the first quality. You are not the fat kid left until last in the kickball team line-up. You are not the runt of the litter. You are not damaged goods in the eyes of God. You are His treasured possession, because He has chosen you over all others. And because He has chosen you as His own, He has given you all that is His to give. The majesty, glory, and grace of God are all imparted to you by Jesus. As far as God is concerned, He reckons you as valuable as the pearl of great price or the treasure hidden in the field.

But as great as all that sounds, it doesn't make sense. All the evidence suggests that God should shun you, rather than treasure you. You are not the most wonderful thing in the world. Rather just the opposite. The Scriptures declare you to be nothing more than a poor, miserable sinner. You were born with the taint of sin coursing through your veins. You came into this world an enemy of God and spiritually dead in your trespasses.

Your heavenly Father created you as His child, and you rebelled against Him. You have not honored or obeyed Him, just as you have failed to love, honor, and obey your earthly parents. You have disrespected and scorned the Lord's authority in your life, just as you have disdained those whom He has placed in authority over your bodily life. You have angered those who care for you, and have made their work a burden. You have not lived peaceably in submission, so it ought not go well with you and you ought not live long in the land.

Whatever sources of pride you may have in this world, they mean nothing to the one who created the heavens and the earth. The Lord does not need your offerings. He is not impressed with your abilities or your earnings. The balance of your bank accounts or the success of your farm or the abundance of your offspring do not balance your accounts in heaven.

In fact, your love of God does not even match His love for you. When He came to you and adopted you as His own, you were the recalcitrant, bull-headed child who runs away night after night. You were the child who throws fits when his father tells him no. The last thing on the mind of any unregenerate person is honoring father and mother.

Irrespective of all that, God chose you and me anyway. He sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to die for you and rise for you. He chose to send Jesus to death, even death on the cross, so that He might forgive your sins and claim you as His own. While you were yet sinners, Christ died for you. He washed you clean in the waters of new birth and marked you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified, and thereby attached His name to you and called you His beloved son. He chose you to be His treasured possession, and keeps you safe and secure in His loving hand.

God did whatever was necessary to make you His own. In His great love for you, He did not spare His only-begotten Son, but delivered Jesus up to death so that He could secure your life in Christ, and rescue you from eternal death. Just as He chose the people of Israel from the loins of Abraham, and He did everything necessary to secure them in His grace, so He chose you from among all the people on earth, and shed His blood so that He could put His name upon you and adopt you as His own precious child. He did this all purely out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.

The adoption of a child into a new family is a wonderful act of kindness and love. The love a parent gives to a child is a great image of the love God has for us. Thankfully, our heavenly Father loves us more steadfastly than we can even imagine possible.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.