‘I was a virgin because I love Jesus and now Jesus hates me.‘
April, from Grey’s Anatomy, says this to Jackson the morning after their intimate night together. It’s one of those lines that makes me cringe…. and it’s one of those lines that gets broadcasted all over the world.
Is this how Jesus is viewed?
Unfortunately, I think it is a lot of times. Not only by the world, but by Christians. And I think this statement is evidence of our lack of understanding who Jesus really is.
Honestly, I’ve probably felt like this a bit myself in times when I’ve knowingly sinned. That my sin causes Jesus to hate me. The guilt is too overwhelming. There’s no way I can ever be forgiven of this (whatever ‘this’ is at the time). It’s especially worse when I’ve chosen to sin, knowing it was sin. I can’t get by with a, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to’ type of confession. Instead, I must throw myself at His feet… acknowledging my unworthiness, acknowledging how undeserving I am of grace and forgiveness.
But to honestly think that He hates me?
It seems absurd and contrary to everything I read about Christ in Scripture.
Remember the woman at the well?
Or the woman caught in adultery?
Or the prostitute that washes His feet?
Or the disciples that had given their lives to follow Him and then betrayed Him in an instant?
Where is the hate, then?
How do we go from reading this about Jesus to believing something false about who He is? Where does the disconnect happen?
It makes me wonder how interested we are in even wanting to know who Jesus is, or if we’re more caught up and consumed by who we are, what we do, our guilt, our freedom, ourselves. It’s almost as if we take our own feelings of guilt and despair and because we don’t know what to do with those emotions, it’s easier to make false statements like, ‘Jesus hates me’.
‘Cause sometimes it’s easier to think that Jesus hates us when we do something wrong than to think that He still loves us even when we do something wrong.
Think about it.
We have this mentality that demands justice be done.
When we do something wrong to someone else, it sometimes seems easier if we pay the price for what we’ve done wrong to them. If they let us off the hook, there’s this feeling of debt that we have toward them.
Do we feel like that about Christ?
That there’s this debt that’s been paid that we’re constantly trying to pay back…. but we never can… because we’re never good enough?
Does God hate sin? Yes. He has to… He’s too holy to even have it exist in His presence. But does He ever hate us?
It’s completely contrary to the Gospel.
Soon I’ll probably talk about this whole cliche of ‘loving the sinner, but hating the sin’ that we spout of quite regularly. But, for now… I’ll agree that it’s true of Christ. That while we may not be able to separate the two in our human little minds, I believe Jesus is fully capable of loving us despite our sin. He is able to see us and know us beyond anything that we do or think or say…. and love us.
That’s the Jesus I’m interested in knowing. The one that contradicts everything I think I know about how we are naturally wired… the one who came so that we might live.
Who is the Jesus that you know?
One that hates you because you messed up? ‘Cause that Jesus doesn’t exist…
Seek to know Him today for who He is. The one full of mystery, power, healing… and love.