For Love’s Sake

Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Just a few days ago, during one of our Crossfire Unite events, I was talking with a few of our young people. During the conversation, a young man posed a question that I suppose many people, young and old alike, ponder in their lives. He asked, “If God is all powerful and able to do anything, then why didn’t He just wipe out all trace of sin, and mankind would never go through what we have to go through?” My immediate response to his question was simple: because of love.

God had the ability to completely erase all sin so it would never be a problem for humanity. However, such an act would have also removed the ability for mankind to make the decision, based on free moral will, to live for God. Sin, simply defined, is missing the mark or hitting a mark that is altogether wrong. Sin is refusing to submit to God’s way. Certainly God is ashamed of our acts of sin, but what really displeases Him is our refusal to obey His plan.

Adam and Eve were instructed to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet, they disobeyed and chose to do so anyway. God gave them a choice—to eat or not to eat. There were benefits attached to not eating this fruit, and there were consequences to eating it—fruit that was deemed forbidden. The question we have to ask ourselves is, What if God would have never given them the choice? If God would have never given them the choice, then we would never have known if they truly loved Him or not. Without the choice to obey Him, there can be no “trust test” of devotion to prove the sincerity of our love toward God.

Is this to say that because Adam and Eve disobeyed God that they didn’t love Him? The answer to that question is no. Just because we fail doesn’t mean that we don’t love God, but what we do with our failures—that’s what demonstrates our love and devotion for Him. God proved His love toward us by giving us His Son to die in our place for our mistakes.

The only thing God asks of us to prove our love to Him is our choice to accept that what His Son, Jesus Christ, did on the Cross of Calvary was enough to wash away all of our sins. So why did God allow sin in the world? To prove our love for Him. Before He asked us to prove our love for Him, He demonstrated His love by dying for us while we were yet sinners. God never wanted robots; He wanted a people that would choose Him because they loved Him!

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Parisragan1

Paris, accompanied by his wife Marybeth, coordinates and oversees <a href="https://gabrielswaggart.org/crossfire/unite">Crossfire Unite</a> fellowship groups. He is a regular teacher on SBN’s “<a href="https://gabrielswaggart.org/crossfire/gotc">Generation of the Cross</a>” with Gabriel Swaggart. Paris is a workshop instructor and assists with Church Needs for the <a href="https://gabrielswaggart.org/iyc">International Youth Conference</a>, and he has been an evening professor at <a href="https://jsbc.edu" target="_blank">Jimmy Swaggart Bible College</a> since the spring of 2017. He oversees all Crossfire Unite Student Outreaches. Paris also contributes writings to the <a href="https://gabrielswaggart.org/crossfire/blog?author=paris%20ragan">Crossfire Blog</a>.

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