By Jon Walker
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NIV)
One of the biggest jerks I ever knew was a 23-year-old college graduate whose anger and arrogance spilled into many of his relationships. His hypocrisy was astounding as he claimed to be a Christian one moment and then acted like a son of hell the next. If it had been my choice, I would have avoided him all together – but since that jerk was me – I was stuck being around him.
Most of us try to avoid jerks. We pat ourselves on the back for not telling them off; we applaud ourselves for putting up with them; we remind ourselves everybody has a cross to bear, and so we grudgingly accept certain jerks as our divinely-ordained burden.
But Jesus embraced jerks; he graced them with love. Now, he had no qualms about calling a whitewashed tomb a whitewashed tomb, but the corporate evil of the Pharisees was a different matter from mere human jerkiness.
And the point is this: Jesus didn’t shelter Himself from the pain and heartache caused by jerks. In fact, he voluntarily stretched out His arms on the cross and allowed a few jerks to slam nails into His hands and feet.
Behind all their stomp and snort, jerks are still spiritual beings, created in God’s image and destined to heaven or hell. We’re compelled to be ministers of reconciliation, willing to embrace the pain of a fallen world for the sake of our God. (2 Corinthians 5:16-21)
The heart of the gospel is that God loves the unlovely. Could it be that the jerks God places jerks in our lives to teach us to be more like Jesus, who loved the unlovely?
Most of us take for granted the incredible change God initiated in our own lives: we were once jerks to God, yet, even while we were still jerks, Christ died for us.
If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.