God is Our Salvation!

Steve McVey spoke on something at the conference, that to me, is still hard to grasp. So I want to write it out and think about it.

He made the point that salvation is not that I accept Jesus Christ, but that he accepts me. Read the story of the prodigal son. It wasn't that the son accepted the father into his life. It was the son daring to enter back into his fathers life. Jesus Christ reconciled us to himself, not the other way around. Salvation is that God accepts me. And at the first glimpse of me, he comes running unashamedly and just starts hugging and kissing me. He's a lot like Jacob, running towards Rachel when she's out watering her dad's sheep. She's dressed in rags, shes filthy and smells like a barn, but Jacob runs towards her, kisses her and just starts crying. So from what the Scriptures say, apparently God is infatuated with me. I don't need to understand how or why, I just need to receive his shameless love. Also, the Scriptures seem to say he is willing to make a fool of himself for me. But how is this possible? The Most High is willing to pull up his robe over his knees, exposing himself and then runs towards this filthy, stinking, selfish jerk and give him a bear hug, puts a robe of righteousness on him, sandals on his feet, and then gives him his ring of authority? I know why legalists think we're crazy now. That sounds absolutely ridiculous. It takes helpless, vulnerable faith to believe it. We don't like feeling vulnerable. It isn't safe!

Steve also made the point that sin does NOT change God's attitude towards me, but it changes mine towards him. Want proof?? Read Genesis! Read the prodigal son again! God was looking for Adam and Eve, calling out to Adam, knowing full well what they had done. The father was looking for his son, anticipating his sons return home. Sin never changed the Fathers attitude towards us. To the contrary. Jesus ATE with sinners! Which of course you know that in the middle east, eating with someone means much more than it does to us in the western world. Sin never changed God's view of us, but our view of him. Consider what Paul says of the Gentiles who don't know God in Epehesians 4:17-20:

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, aliented from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity."

If you think this is wrong, all I am doing is repeating in detail what Paul said in Romans 5:8: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

No, sin does not change God's view of us.