Does God Love You Just the Way You Are?
In one sense God loves you just the way you are, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Let’s unpack this statement.
God loves each of his children unconditionally, wherever we are, whoever we are. Even if we are sinning, living a dissolute life, He still loves us. But what does love mean? The classic definition of love is to desire the good of another. God most definitely desires the good for all his children regardless of who they are. As human parents, we strive to love our children in the same way. Even though they are behaving badly, we still desire their good – we still love them.
The implication of the person who says that God loves them just as they are is often that they do not need to change anything about themselves; God will be perfectly content for them to be the same forever. Here is where they are making a serious error.
The very fact that God loves you, that He desires your good, entails that He will not be satisfied with you until you are perfect, until you become the perfect creature He had in mind when he created you. The current version of you that lives today is nowhere near what God planned for you when He conceived your existence in His divine mind.
Your body is decaying, you suffer physically and emotionally, your thoughts are wicked, you behave selfishly, you make immoral choices every day, you neglect to think about God, you don’t pray to Him – you have a long way to go!
When God creates the new heaven and new earth, all of your flaws will be history. You will have an imperishable body, your suffering will end, your thoughts will be good, you will put others before yourself, you will make all moral choices, you will think about God all the time, and you will commune with Him unceasingly. At this time, God will be completely satisfied with you, but not a moment before.
God certainly does love you just as you are, but He wants so much more for you and He will not be satisfied with you until you are perfected. Never use the fact that God loves you as an excuse for maintaining your evil thoughts and behavior. The good that God desires for you is far beyond where you are today; it is past the horizon that you can immediately see. There is no higher love.
