Aug 11 Fri
Does Jesus Love You Just the Way You Are? Is he happy if you continue so?
NO.
Against such absurd claims, only sharp replies will do. Like ice water splashed onto the face of a hallucinating man, a sharp reply brings a man back to his senses.
You see, Jesus does not love us just the way we are, as if he were neutral between sanctity of life and sinful life; between God and the Devil. He loves us by having mercy on us, on the way we are. Such Divine compassion caused the Son of God to take flesh in the womb of His Virgin Mother, suffer, and be crucified. All these motions proceeded from the Divine Mercy.
In God, his justice presupposes, and is founded upon his mercy, a work of pure loving kindness, wholly gratuitous. Mercy is the root and source of all the works of God.
God’s justice gives to each of us whatever is required for us to live rightly and so attain heaven. His mercy, on the other hand, gives far beyond what is strictly necessary, and it is in this sense that it surpasses justice.
Under the weight of Original Sin, and its effects, man has been left prone to sin.
After the fall, he might have left us in our fallen condition so far as justice is concerned. Or he might have raised us up from sin by a simple act of forgiveness conveyed to the mouth of a prophet after we had fulfilled certain conditions. But He has done something infinitely greater than this: out of pure mercy he gave us his only Son as the victim to buy our salvation.
God is not happy when man remains stubborn in his sins. He loves you; he does not love your sins.
Mercy is offered to those who crave forgiveness; those who express profound contrition; those who possess a deep horror of sin. When the hands of a sinner are held out with all these dispositions, Divine Mercy rushes in like a tidal wave.
The Savior is called so, because He comes to save us from our wretched fate, from “the way we are,” from the way we have chosen, from the way we have become. His words, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened…” relieve us of the pain of continuing “the way we are.”
Some imply that the Savior is happy when we persist in the wrong “way we are,” without repentance. He isn’t. But because He loves us, He shows us compassion. And then He shows us the way forward, so different than the way we were on before.
No. Jesus does not love sin. For God does not play such dirty tricks.
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