I quoted something in another post which JD Walt had observed ….that love which is defined by feelings and behaviors has a way of becoming all about license or legalism. I will give you an example:
At age 22 I was in a medical internship shared by another woman, along with a dozen other folks. She and I often talked about our respective families, lives and faith. My impression was that she held God at a distance because of her extreme view of His demands for perfection, viewing God as stern, wrathful, waiting for her to make a mistake to punish her. And at times she felt unworthy and unable to live up to God’s expectations. This was, she said, because of the hell fire and brimstone messages of her youth. What I would later come to call a legalistic and transcendent (or fearfully “other” kind of view)
I on the other hand, had a very loving, kind, merciful, babe-in-the manger, sacrificing savior view of God who was always ready to forgive me no matter what. It made me careless and bold (not in the positive sense either), but in a way that took liberties with the grace I had been given…. treating it like “cheap grace,” as Bonhoeffer, I believe, called it. Mine was the immanent, personal and present, best friend extreme view of God in Christ that I had taken from my church’s teaching.
The funny thing was, we had both been raised in the same Protestant denomination a mere 100 or so miles apart, but had come away with essentially polar opposite views of God. Neither was altogether correct. Hers focused on our sin(s). Mine focused on love as I understood it. Each was only partly correct. As an adult much later I found the balance between the two extremes in the loving, disciplining, intimate yet respectful and boundaried, knowing but not imposing nature of the wise but delightfully joyful God who made Himself present to me and who also took me to places beyond where I could have ever imagined. God is immanent. God is transcendent. But most wonderfully of all, God is an intimate part of my spirit, soul, and body in ways I never knew until after I had squandered an awful lot of time abusing His mercy and grace with my sins until I realized the depth and ugliness of the Sin, with its idolatries and roots of bitterness that had lain hidden in my heart and the deceptions and lies I had easily believed. God’s Holy Spirit has graciously and exquisitely pinpointed them and over time has transformed, circumcised, and refined me according to God’s own timing and purpose for my life. I am still a work in progress but I no longer test God’s love for me nor do I run from His discipline. I am both significant and secure in Jesus Christ, who knows all that is needed by this beloved daughter of our Father.