Adversarial politics and the “steadfast love” of God
The confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, began yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Democrats grilled him, while Republicans largely seemed to indicate their support. This is unsurprising, of course—if Kamala Harris had won the White House, the politics would have been reversed.
The adversarial nature of our governmental system must be frustrating to those who experience it. However, the Founders intended a system of checks and balances in their belief that, because we are flawed and fallen, none of us can be trusted with unaccountable power over others.
As a result, we have prosecutors and defense attorneys in our courts. Our capitalistic economic system thrives on competition that benefits consumers. Competition improves students and athletes as well. Not to mention our never-ending battle with nature for physical survival, from gravity that can break our bodies to diseases, predators, and disasters that can kill us.
It seems that adversity is a foundational fact in every dimension of our world. It is therefore understandable that we would see the Creator of our world in the same way.
This was certainly my experience for many years, even after I became a Christian. I’d like to tell you that story in the hope that it can encourage you in your story today.
Zeus with a scale?
I grew up not going to church, but I always had a sense that God is real. However, I thought of him as a kind of Zeus atop Mt. Olympus, a judge with a giant set of scales—the good went on one side and the bad on the other, and the way the scales tipped determined where you went, either to heaven or to hell.
Even when I became a Christian at the age of fifteen, I pictured God in his holiness and omnipotence more than in his mercy and love. I know that he loves me because “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but I also know that he is “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8) and that I am a sinner by virtue of my inherited sinful nature (Romans 3:23; 5:12; Psalm 51:5).
In my fallenness, I am less a good person who sometimes does bad things than a bad person who tries to do good things. David observed, “There is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3). Paul’s admission is mine: “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18–19).
I am grateful that God forgives all I confess to him (1 John 1:9), but my default subliminal picture of him has typically been of a holy Lord who is consistently displeased with my failures and shortcomings.
But this is not so.
“They all ate and were satisfied”
The psalmist said of God, “You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15). Here we learn that God wants to bless us and therefore takes the initiative to give us his best.
This is why David exhorted us, “Oh give thanks to the Lᴏʀᴅ; for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (1 Chronicles 16:34). It is why God can say to his people, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31:3, my emphasis). It is why we read that nothing “in all creation” is “able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).
This is not because we deserve his grace, but because this is the kind of Father he is: “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4–5). Paul asked, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31–32).
Our Father wants only the best for his children. Accordingly, when Jesus fed the multitude, he didn’t just give them enough to survive another day: “They all ate and were satisfied” (Matthew 14:20, my emphasis), something that I would imagine seldom happened for many of these impoverished people. He turned water not just into wine but into “good” wine, far exceeding the expectations even of the “master of the feast” (John 2:9–10).
And what we experience from his hand in this broken world cannot compare to what is waiting for us in paradise: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). In the meantime, our Lord is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).
As “the bridegroom rejoices over the bride”
I say all of that to say this: I am learning to see God as a Father who loves me so unconditionally that he rejoices over me as “the bridegroom rejoices over the bride” (Isaiah 62:5) and “takes pleasure” in me as his child (Psalm 149:4).
If I love my children and grandchildren so deeply that they bring delight to my heart, how much more does my Father delight in me (Psalm 18:19)?
If I want only their best, how much more does he want only my best (cf. Psalm 37:4)?
If I find joy in blessing them, how much more does he find joy in blessing me (cf. Psalm 16:11)?
However, our Lord honors the freedom with which he created us and thus can give us only what we choose to receive. A longtime friend who has experienced much of God’s blessings summarizes his faith this way: “He leads, I follow.”
Can you say the same today?
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“My brethren, it is in proportion as you get near to God that you enter into the full enjoyment of life—that life which Jesus Christ gives you, and which Jesus Christ preserves in you.” —Charles Spurgeon
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