Before You Turned Around

But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, WEB)

We carry a quiet belief that God's love for us rises and falls with our behavior, that he loves us more on the clean days and pulls back on the days we fail. We rarely say it out loud, but it runs underneath everything, coloring how we pray and whether we pray at all. Paul takes aim at that belief with a single sentence about timing. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Look at when the love was demonstrated. Not after we repented, not once we had proven we were worth the trouble, but while we were still in it, still sinning, still turned the wrong direction with our backs to him.

That timing changes how you read your worst moments. Christ did not die for the improved version of you that you keep promising to become. He died for the you that was mid-sin, unlovely, offering him nothing and asking for nothing. The love was proven at your lowest, which means your lowest can no longer disprove it. The evidence was entered before you had cleaned up a single thing.

So when you fall and the thought arrives that surely this has finally exhausted whatever love God had for you, remember that his love was already on full display before you had done anything to earn it. It did not begin when you got better, and it does not end when you get worse. It was there while you were still a sinner, and it holds you now while you still are one. The cross is fixed in history, unmoved by how this week went, and that fixedness is meant to be the thing you stand on when your own sense of being loved keeps sliding around under your feet.

Father, thank you that you loved me before I turned around, before I deserved anything. Let that settle the question of whether you love me now, and draw me back to you.