The God Who Came For You

So I just realized that Redeeming Love is being made into a movie. That kind of news is enough to make you buy a movie ticket for the first time since Covid-19 and get your bum to the theaters with some Popcorn.

For those of you who don’t know, Redeeming Love is a Christian novel written thirty years ago about a man named Micahel Hosea and a prostitute named Angel and the love story between the two. Honestly, it is one of the best love stories I’ve ever read, and there’s a reason for that. Redeeming Love is based on and almost mirrors the scriptural book of Hosea.

Hosea in the Bible tells a story of a prophet who is told by God to marry a prostitute, take her as his wife, and love her for life. The problem was, that Gomer (the prostitute turned wife) had a hard time letting go of the past, and felt compelled again and again to return to her former sorrid life. Hosea, both out of deep love and also deep duty, goes after her - again, and again.

This book is representational of us and God.

This week I have spent a lot of time thinking about Jesus coming to save us. The dramatic nature of His rescue. God coming down to earth to search us out, to find us, and to save us. If the Bible is the greatest story ever told, Jesus on the Cross was the climax. The cross: an intimate look at a God-man coming to save the people He loves.

There are tons of stories about people heroically risking everything to save the one they love. Think The Last of the Mohicans where Nathaniel yells to the woman he loves: “no matter where you are, no matter how far, I will find you.”  The emotion was not lost on me as I watched that movie the first time. The desperation and the assuredness in Nathaniel’s voice was clear: whatever it takes, WHATEVER IT TAKES. Everything would be risked, and his salvation would be sure. To save the one he loves.

Or the story of Hercules, swimming through a pool of death to save Meg. Giving up his god-portion to come after her, his human body begins to decay as he swims downward. With each inch further down to retrieve her, the more his body gives way, the more he loses his life. Until finally, he reaches her, and dies.

Does this rescue sound too dramatic to you? Not religious enough? Too intimate to be the story of God? Well, it is.

The God who came for you is the most fantastic love story, and the most dramatic tale ever told.

Philippians 2 talks about a God who gave up his God-rights, and who went into the bowels of a fallen earth in dramatic form… on a rescue mission. He came to seek the one He lost, and when He found them, to save them. Giving up His Kingship, he came down with the peasants. He walked where they walked, felt what they felt, bore what they bore. And then came His rescue.

Getting up on a cross, He became sin. The man who knew NO sin, BECAME sin. For us. The King who had rights to all, let go of all. For us. The God-man who was uncreated, became created. For us. The life that deserved no death, received death in full… For us.

Yes, His rescue is dramatic.

The most amazing climax to the most amazing story ever told. That’s His rescue of us.

May your understanding of salvation be a little less religious today. May you understand more fully in your heart the passion of the God who risked everything to find you. May you be wooed by the One who came for you in a new way. And may the drama of it all overwhelm your heart, as you thank God for His rescue.