I recently read an online post questioning if we should be singing the song “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. The post questioned the idea of God being reckless with his love, and I must admit he made some good points. However, this is a song that has filled me on so many occasions I find myself living in God’s reckless love every day.
What does it mean to live under God’s reckless love? It does not mean that we live under a careless God, who just takes his best shot and hopes that it works. No, we live under the love of a God who will stop at nothing to bring his children home and to keep us in a relationship with Him. One of my favorite self-descriptions of God is found in Exodus as the ten commandments are given to his people. As he commands his people to not create for themselves any images or god’s for their worship he says;
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:5-6 (ESV)
“For I the LORD your God am a jealous God.” This is not a Jerry Springer type of Jealousy, this is a love that will stop at nothing to rescue his children and keep them from harm. He will act in a way that to all outsiders would appear to be totally reckless. He will send his Spirit to pursue us with unmatched tenacity. He will send his Son to become like us and demonstrate his love for us as Paul writes;
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (NIV)
Who does that? Who puts their son into harm’s way for those who reject his love? God does – in what can only be described by the world as reckless, but for those of us who grow to know the Father we see that it is anything but reckless. It is a calculated, well-planned, premeditated event, the great culmination of an amazing Love from a God who beyond all of my human reason loves and cares for me. Yes, even me!
The more I ponder this idea of God’s reckless love, the more I stand in amazement of the journey of life that God has taken me on these past 50+ years. Through the eyes of faith I can see nothing, but a relentless love that has come to my aid time after time. I have come to discover that what makes this love reckless is not God, but me. It is my recklessness that has caused God to pursue me in ways that to all outside observers can only be seen as a reckless act of God. But this is simply because they do not know the whole story.
This Love of God that recklessly pursues me is grounded in the fact that God is the creator and giver of life, my life. He has called me to be his very own child, for reasons above my pay grade. When we lose sight, as the majority of Americans have that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” then everything that God is, and everything that God does has no context, and therefore it makes no sense. Worse than making no sense is that fact that many when they hear us talk about the relationship with have with God see him as anything but loving.
I rejoice that in my recklessness God, my jealous God comes after me with an “overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love.” Cory Asbury in terms we can relate to unpacks this reckless love, ”
When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me
You have been so, so good to me
When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me
You have been so, so kind to meAnd oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine
And I couldn’t earn it, and I don’t deserve it, still, You give Yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God, yeahThere’s no shadow You won’t light up
Mountain You won’t climb up
Coming after me
There’s no wall You won’t kick down
Lie You won’t tear down
Coming after me