The Most Important Discovery
The following excerpt is from "Worth It: Following Jesus When Life Feels Complicated," by Chris Morphew, published by The Good Book Company.
Here’s what you need to know, above and beyond and before anything else:
You are loved.
You are loved with a love so huge and wild and expansive, it defies description or explanation. My words are going to fall so far short here, but since this love is the foundation of everything else, I feel like I at least need to give it a shot.
This love is the truest thing about you.[1] It’s what defines who you are at the deepest, most profound level—because whatever doubts you might have about your place in the world, and whatever anybody else says, the Creator of the universe, the God of everything, the one who has the ultimate power and authority to say how much you matter, says you matter infinitely.
And that infinite, immeasurable value and dignity and worth is not something you need to earn or deserve or strive for or prove or measure up to. No success or failure or trophy or grade or other person’s opinion can shift it a single inch—because it’s all a gift. It’s yours already. It’s hardwired into your body, fixed deep in your bones, encoded in your DNA. This extraordinary value and significance is just who you are—because the one true King of heaven and earth has created you on purpose, imprinted you with his very own image, and crowned you with glory and honor (Gen. 1:26-27; Ps. 8:5).
And to be clear, I’m not just talking about people in general here.
I’m talking about you.
Before the beginning of the universe, God had you in mind. The vast, beautiful story he’s weaving together through all of time and space and history would be incomplete without you in it. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.[2] The same God who has numbered every star in the sky has also made you by hand and numbered every hair on your head (Ps. 139:13-14; Luke 12:7).
You are here on purpose—and you are here for a purpose. You have been created to partner with God in ruling and caring for the universe he’s made, and blessing the people in it—to spend eternity filling up on the deep riches of God’s love, and reflecting that love out into the world around you (Gen. 1:28; Matt. 22:36-40).
And what’s so important to understand is that the love I’m describing here is not just a thing God does; it’s who God is (1 John 4:16).
The deepest truth in the universe
The idea of the Trinity—that there’s one God, but that he exists in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is one of the most mind-bending ideas in the whole Christian faith. But it’s well worth the headache, because here’s what it means:
Love isn’t just something God started doing one day and might stop doing sometime in the future. It’s the fundamental truth about God’s identity. It’s what’s been going on within God’s own three-in-one self—between Father, Son and Spirit—for all eternity.
And so when I tell you that love is more foundational to our universe than physics or chemistry or gravity or the speed of light, that might sound like just a cute little poetic flourish I’m pulling out, but it’s not. It’s the actual, literal truth. God could have set stuff like chemistry up in a thousand different ways, but love is a non-negotiable, because it’s just who God is.
This love is how God defines himself—“the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Ex. 34:7). And over and over again, all through history, this is who God has proven himself to be in his relationship with his people, and in his faithfulness to his promises.
Everything God has ever said or ever will say, everything he’s ever done or ever will do, every instruction he’s ever given or command he’s handed down, it all flows from the exact same place: God’s endless, perfect, others-focused, self-giving love.
This love shields and protects, it drives out fear, it never fails (Ps. 5:12; 1 John 4:18; Ps. 36:5-7).
It’s like the love of a devoted mother, cradling her newborn baby (Isa. 49:15).
It’s like the love of a compassionate father, sprinting out to meet his runaway kid, letting all their failures fall to the dust because he’s just so desperately glad to have them home again (Luke 15:11-32).
This love is personal. It’s a love that can be known, a love that can be relied on. But it’s also a love that surpassesknowledge—a love so far beyond any other love that exists that you can’t just think your way there. You need to experience it (1 John 4:16; Eph. 3:16-19).
As one writer put it, “The most important discovery you will ever make is the Father’s love, and it’s just that—a discovery. It cannot be taught. It has to be discovered, and everything else flows from that discovery.”[3]
Too good to be true?
And, listen, if you’re thinking this all seems kind of unbelievable—more like wish-fulfillment than actual reality—I absolutely get it. In a world like ours—a world so full of heartbreak and disappointment and betrayal and broken promises—it makes sense that a claim like this might leave you feeling suspicious or cynical. In the whole history of the universe, nothing even remotely as good as this has ever been true before.
And to be completely honest with you, I think I’d find the whole thing pretty vague and theoretical if it wasn’t for Jesus—because it’s only in him that we see all of these extraordinary claims about the love of God, lived out in the flesh and blood of an actual human life.
In a world of corrupt leaders and institutions, here’s a man who acts with complete honesty and integrity.
In a world of hypocrisy, here’s a man whose actions flawlessly match his words.
In a world of oppression, here’s a man who uses his power to serve.
In a world of sexism, here’s a man who is radically dedicated to the rights, dignity and inclusion of women.
In a world of distraction and selfishness, here’s a man who always makes time to love the person in front of him.
In a world obsessed with drawing lines to determine who’s in and who’s out, here’s a man who constantly points to the people everyone else despises and looks down on—the ones everyone else assumes must be outside the circle of God’s love and care—and says, Them too. They’re invited. They’re welcomed home (Mark 2:13-17; Luke 15).
Throughout his time on earth, Jesus was constantly calling people into bigger, higher, wider, deeper, more expansive love. Oh, so you love the people who love you? You can do better than that. Go bigger! Aim higher! Love your worst enemy. Pray for the people who make your lives miserable. Why? Because that’s what God’s love is like (Matt. 5:43-48)!
The more deeply and truly we love—the more, in other words, we become like Jesus—the more we become like God himself.
Which is so important to realize, because there’s this pervasive, toxic idea out there that the abundant love of Jesus is somehow a different thing to the attitude that God the Father (or, as some people want to call him, “Old Testament God”) has towards us. People imagine a situation where God the Father is spiteful and cruel and out for blood—but then, thankfully, Jesus steps in and says, Yeah, sorry about my dad, you guys. I know he’s a bit much. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with him for you.
As if God and Jesus are on opposite sides of a conflict.
As if Jesus had to twist his Father’s arm to get him to be kind to us.
As if what God wanted to do was torture and destroy us, but Jesus took away his right to do that by dying on the cross in our place.
But Jesus won’t let us get away with that kind of thinking. He insists that “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” because “I and the Father are one” (John 14:9, 10:30). Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3).
There is no division, no conflict, no part of God that does not have his arms stretched out toward you in love as you turn to him.
When you see Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the outcast, defending the vulnerable, and welcoming lost rebels back into the family, you’re seeing what God is like.
When you see Jesus stretched out on the cross, crying out to his Father to forgive the people pounding in the nails—when you see him laying down his life to pay the penalty for all the ways we’ve failed to love God and each other—you’re getting a glimpse right into the heart of God himself:
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
Which means that, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter how badly you’ve messed your life up, no matter who’s made you feel like you’re somehow beyond the reach of God’s love and care and welcome, you don’t need to worry about any of it.
You can come to God in all of your brokenness and messiness and failure and insecurity and know exactly how he will treat you—because, in Jesus, he has already shown you the incredible lengths he was willing to go to, to welcome you home to himself.
[1] David Lomas, The Truest Thing About You: Identity, Desire, and Why It All Matters (David C. Cook, 2014), p. 108.
[2] This description comes from the writer Dallas Willard, quoted by John Ortberg in Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You (Zondervan, 2014), p. 19.
[3] Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer (Zondervan, 2022), p. 24. Staton is expanding on a quote from Pete Greig in Dirty Glory: Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You (Hodder and Stoughton, 2016), p. 53.