We're starting a brand new series today called “He Loves Me.” Maybe you’ve seen someone pull the petals off a daisy and say, “He loves me, he loves me not.”

What’s interesting is that we often see our relationship with God and other people like this. He loves me…But only if I do this or do that. He loves me not…Because I didn’t do this or that.

Let me just ask you point blank: Is love in your life transactional? Do you give and receive love based on actions alone?

Emotions are powerful things and what interesting is that all of these emotions we feel from and towards people are all actually directed back at God. That might be hard to believe but let’s look at a few emotions and make the link.

Anger. Now, I’m not talking about when you get frustrated at someone cutting you off in traffic. I am talking about that constant underlying frustration you feel in every day life. At some point that anger goes all the way back down to something between you and God. “No it wasn’t God, it was my childhood.” Yeah, but at some point I am willing to bet you’ve said to yourself, “God, why didn’t you do anything to help?”

Love. If you were loved well by your parents, it is exponentially easier to embrace God’s love for you. Yet the opposite is true, too. Tell me how hard it is to see God as a father when yours was abusive.

And this really is the crux of what the idea of he loves me, he loves me not is. We naturally attach love to action, Yet love, definitionally, is not. Biblically not, either.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

This passage specifically shows us that biblical love still loves in spite of our doing.

So then where does the idea of transactional love come from?
Genesis 2:15-17
15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. 16 But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— 17 except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”

Genesis 3:1-5
1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” 2 “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. 3 “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” 4 “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

Here’s what the serpent was really saying: “God is hiding something from you.” Now Eve, like all of us, would most likely immediately wonder why. Why would God withhold something from us? Why would you withhold something from your children?

God was protecting them through withholding, not maliciously keeping something from them. But Eve wasn’t thinking like that. She was thinking transactionally. Wait how can you assume that? Because her response was to eat it because by eating it, she would get what God was withholding from her.

In a singular moment in human history, love became transactional. If I do this, then I’ll get that. And plus, if God really loved me, he wouldn’t withhold anything. She and Adam both believed in that moment love was transactional.

And the truth is, you’ve thought the same thought towards God and others, too! If love is transactional, then what must I do to be loved?

But is that true? Do you have to do in order to be loved?

That depends on how you define love. Adam and Eve didn’t see God withholding something as love. They saw it as the opposite.

But look at how God responded. Yes, there was a punishment. Our sin still separates no matter how much God loves us. Yes, there was fruit that had to be eaten. (I mean sin and its fruit separation). Sowing and reaping still happens no matter how much God loves us. So God punished them - and the serpent. Pain in childbirth, labor in work, submission, and banishment from the Garden,

But first: Genesis 3:21
And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.
Even though they had just done something that would require Jesus’ death, God covered them. That is what love does. It covers brokenness, not delights in it.

God loved them, but he hated what they did. And this is where we have to draw a clear line.

God loves you no matter what, but we have to understand what God actually loves. God loves our being not necessarily our doing. He can be pleased with our doing, proud of our doing, and he can even bless our doing, but nothing - NOTHING - separates us from his unconditional love.

Romans 8:35-39
35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you don’t see God’s love as unconditional you’ll only ever see God’s actions as transactional, always about what you do, not who you are.

But this is the clear line I am talking about: the difference between your being and your doing. Notice, Paul doesn’t tell us that nothing can separate us from God. He said nothing can separate us from God’s love. Sin absolutely separates us from God. And often because we feel the separation from sin, we interpret that as separation from his love.

This is an important distinction because you have to differentiate between who you are and what you do. A big part of the problem here, though, is that humans attach doing and being. If you drink you are a drinker. If you lie, you are a liar. If you commit a crime you are a criminal, etc. We assign identity based on activity.

But does God do that with us?
Psalm 103:8-14
8 The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 9 He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. 10 He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. 11 For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. 12 He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. 13 The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. 14 For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.

I don’t know if you caught it but God:
- doesn’t repay us for our sin
- doesn’t deal with us as we deserve
- removes our sin from us
- treats us with tender compassion
- remembers who he is dealing with

And what is the thing that gives him that ability? His unfailing love.

This is wildly important for you to understand if you see God’s love as transactional. That means you see God happy with you when you do good, or mad at you when you do badly. You see God as the one who did or didn’t do x, y, or z because you did or didn’t do a, b, or c.

In fact, when you see God’s love like this, you have a really hard time seeing the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as anything else than proof that God is a transitional God. After all, wasn’t the sacrificial system all about transactions called sacrifices? You had sacrifice an animal to deal with your sin. You did x so God demands you do y or else he’ll respond with z?

But look at that system God established in the Old Testament for a moment. What was the purpose?

Hebrews 10:1-6
10 The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. 2 If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. 3 But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year. 4 For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. 6 You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin.

And don’t forget, why did Jesus come to offer that body? John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

Hebrews 10:7-16
7 Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God—as is written about me in the Scriptures.’” 8 First, Christ said, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them” (though they are required by the law of Moses). 9 Then he said, “Look, I have come to do your will.” He cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. 10 For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time. 11 Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. 12 But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 13 There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. 14 For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy. 15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so. For he says, 16 “This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

And THERE it is. The Old Testament sacrificial system was not about creating a transactional relationship with God. It was to point to a day when a sacrifice would be made that would be so powerful that it would completely cleanse us from all our sin, and in the process, God would put the law in our hearts and minds, which is the part God is really after,
Not behavioral change, but a change in your being!

He wants to write the law in our hearts and minds, not just the regulations God wants us to live by, but the reason for the regulations to begin with! This is why Jesus was so mad at the Pharisees all the time. They’d mastered the law but were ignorant to the why, the heart behind it.
Let me say it like this: They only cared about doing but failed to understand the more important thing: being.

So what did God want them to understand? Look at the context of Jeremiah 31 that the writer of Hebrews quotes in that Hebrews 10 passage!

Jeremiah 31
3 Long ago the Lord said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.
20 “Is not Israel still my son, my darling child?” says the Lord. “I often have to punish him, but I still love him. That’s why I long for him and surely will have mercy on him.
31 “The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord.

Come on family!
I am not advocating that you just sin your little heart out because God loves you no matter what! But I am saying that you have to understand that while humans clearly are incapable of it, God separates what you do and who you are, and the entire point of this book called the Bible is to give you:
- an understanding of who God is
- the opportunity to experience his love
- the tools you need to live this life
- but even more, the plan on how you take the things you are doing and change them so that you can be who you God knows you can be.

You have to shift your thinking away from seeing God as an accountant making copious notes of every debit and credit, and start seeing God as the Father he is, the God who loves you in spite of you.

Stop seeing everything you do as a transaction whereby God is either going to give based on your goodness to take based on your badness.

BUT HOWWWWWW

1. Stop seeing God’s love as something you can earn
You can’t. So stop trying. You can’t earn it and you can’t lose it. You can’t make God love you more or less.

You are going to have to get over the fact that no matter what you do, how many times you do it, or how bad it is, God is going to love you no matter what.

I’m sorry you had to earn love from your mom or dad. I’m sorry you had to prove yourself to get affection from your spouse. I’m sorry every person in your life has demanded a deposit before spending love on you.

But God is not your mom or dad, not your spouse, and not anyone else.

Ephesians 2:4-5
4 God is so rich in mercy and loves us so much 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.

God is going to love you at your best and God is going to love you at your worst. Get used to it! And just receive it!

2. Start letting God’s love do what it does
Why do you think God is compassionate with us, merciful, slow to get angry? Why doesn’t he punish us according to our sins and repay us for our iniquities?

He loves us. Yes. But why?

Partly, because God has chosen to pour his love on us. He just wants to.
I just read you Ephesians 2:4-5. Now let me read Ephesians 1:4-5
4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Ok so God loved us before he said let there be light, and he chose us in Christ Jesus, he decided to adopt us, he wanted to do it, and it gave him great pleasure.

But did you see the part about his choosing us? This is the other part.

He wants us to be holy like he is. Now why would he want that?
Psalm 24:3-5
3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies. 5 They will receive the Lord’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior.
He wants us on his holy mountain with him.

But wait…this verse looks like we’re back to transactional. Pure hands and hearts, no idolatry, no lying, those people get the blessing? That’s doing bro!

Hold on a minute. What does God’s love do?
Romans 2:4
Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

That says kindness not love bro. I read Ephesians 1:4-5, Ephesians 2:4-5, now Titus 3:4-5
4 But when God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, 5 he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his compassion. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

His love is intended to get you to a place where you want to change what you are doing. You want to do righteous things, you want to be holy.

And all of the sudden John 14:15 makes sense when Jesus says,
If you love me, obey my commandments.

It was never about being loved because of your obedience. It was about being obedient because you love.

That leads me to a really important question.
Is the reason what you are doing hasn’t changed much simply because you haven’t really experienced the love of God?

If that is the case, then I invite you to open your heart to God and then let his love do what his love does.

2. Start letting God’s love do what it does
Why do you think God is compassionate with us, merciful, slow to get angry? Why doesn’t he punish us according to our sins and repay us for our iniquities?

He loves us. Yes. But why?

Partly, because God has chosen to pour his love on us. He just wants to.
I just read you Ephesians 2:4-5. Now let me read Ephesians 1:4-5
4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Ok so God loved us before he said let there be light, and he chose us in Christ Jesus, he decided to adopt us, he wanted to do it, and it gave him great pleasure.

But did you see the part about his choosing us? This is the other part.

He wants us to be holy like he is. Now why would he want that?
Psalm 24:3-5
3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies. 5 They will receive the Lord’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior.
He wants us on his holy mountain with him.

But wait…this verse looks like we’re back to transactional.
Pure hands and hearts, no idolatry, no lying, those people get the blessing? That’s doing bro!

Hold on a minute. What does God’s love do?
Romans 2:4
Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?
That says kindness not love bro.
I read Ephesians 1:4-5, Ephesians 2:4-5, now Titus 3:4-5
4 But when God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, 5 he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his compassion. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

His love is intended to get you to a place where you want to change what you are doing
You want to do righteous things, you want to be holy.

And all of the sudden John 14:15 makes sense when Jesus says,
If you love me, obey my commandments.
It was never about being loved because of your obedience.
It was about being obedient because you love.

That leads me to a really important question.
Is the reason what you are doing hasn’t changed much simply because you haven’t really experienced the love of God?

If that is the case, then I invite you to open your heart to God and then let his love do what his love does.

3. Start living in God’s love
1 John 4:16
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

What does that even mean?
Well, first, stop questioning God’s motives. If a bad thing happens to you, don’t assume God is after you. A sickness could just be that we live in a fallen world. A death in the family could just be God calling that person home. And a pay raise doesn’t mean that you are on God’s goodie list, either.

Look, your sin has consequences, so if you are sowing sin expect to reap separation. But DON’T make the mistake that God’s love for you has changed.

God hates that sin but he loves you more than you could ever fathom. And just like with your own kids, God would rather you change than him chastise.

And second, if you want God’s fruits, then start living God’s way. You want to be blessed? Obey. You want to succeed? Chase God first. You want to have joy? It is in Jesus. You want to get closer to him? Do the work.

But the motivation for all of that doing is not to get love. It is because you are loved! That is what living in God’s love is! It is the daily decision to honor God with your entire life just because he loves you!

Your sin will separate you and distance always impacts how we feel love. But if you want to feel what love feels, then you have to do what love does.

What does love do?
God’s love chases after us, is poured out on us, is sacrificial, is faithful, is long-suffering, is patient and kind. God’s love is unchanging, unending, unshakeable. His love draws us near to him, leads him to long for us.

Does your love for God make you do those things?
Are you cultivating the relationship with God that he is trying to cultivate with you? Whatever it takes to strengthen your relationship with God, that’s what love does.

Just because God made you the object of his affection doesn’t mean he made you the center of the universe. I think this is where we are when we say things like, “If I do this, then God will love me more.” It makes us think how we perceive God’s love is actually how God’s love is. As if we had the power to dictate how God does or doesn’t love. As if anything we could do would have any impact on how much he loves us anyway.

So let me just ask you: Have you really encountered his love? I mean his unconditional love? Do you see everything with God as a transaction? If so, then you haven’t. His love isn’t negotiable.

If that is you, I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to shift your thinking right now. Let’s do that now. Let’s pray.

Maybe you have never opened your heart to him but in this moment, your heart is beating out of your chest and you can feel even now his love drawing you to him. Don’t fight the feeling. Let love do what love does. God is wanting to save you right now. If that is you, just tell him now: “Jesus I receive your love. Save me. I confess you as Lord. I believe in you. I repent of my sin.” If you prayed that, just raise your hand. We want to help you grow with God.

Maybe you’ve been angry at God because he either did or didn’t do something you expected. It has made you question his love for you. If that is you, don’t make the same mistake Eve made in thinking God has an ulterior motive. Rather, just have an honest moment with him now. “God I am angry and hurt. I don’t know why you allowed what you allowed, but I have been angry at you for it and have questioned your love for me. Forgive me. Let me experience your love right now. God I need to so badly.”

Maybe life’s circumstances have stopped you from loving or receiving love altogether. I know you don’t want to live like that. No one does. But there’s so much pain and anger that you can’t imagine your heart soft again. “God, you promised in Ezekiel 36:26 you will give me a new heart, and will put a new spirit in me. You will take out my stony, stubborn heart and give me a tender, responsive heart. Forgive me Lord. Please help me. I am asking you to do just what you promised to do right now.”

Forgive us for making our relationship with you transactional.
Thank you for always loving us, even at our worst.
Give us the courage to open our hearts to you fully.
Holy Spirit, do in us what we in our flesh are incapable of.
in Jesus name, amen.