In one of his less gentle moments with a pen, my father once began an article in Tabletalk magazine this way, “Smile, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Unless your name is Esau.” While it is certainly true that God loves all people it is not true that He loves them all the same. Nor is it true that He hates no one. Romans 9:13 tells us, “Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated.” Make all the hay you’d like arguing that hate means “love less” or Jacob means Israel and Esau means Gentiles but it doesn’t change the truth that God does not love everyone the same.
That, however, that is the first place we go when hearing that phrase, “Smile, God loves you” shows us just how ungrateful and myopic we can be. Shouldn’t we, believers who have every assurance that our Father loves us infinitely and immutably, not because we are worthy of such love but because we are in union with the One who is worthy, before we get to logic chopping, proof-texting and buffeting our Arminian friends about the head, smile? Shouldn’t we rejoice? Shouldn’t we give thanks? Should we celebrate? Shouldn’t we repent because we are not grateful and joyful as we should be? And shouldn’t we rejoice all the more that even our ingratitude is covered by the blood of Christ?
I have long held that one good hint about the kind of husband a man is is the demeanor of his wife. Chances are that if she is downcast he is struggling in his role. If, however, she beams, he is likely an important part of that. How much more so we who have collectively not just a successful husband, but the perfect husband in Jesus? Has our perfectly loving husband not told us that we are to rejoice in all things?
To embrace our Father’s embrace, however, is not just good for our spirits. It’s honors Him. Adam and Eve sinned not just because they did what God told them not to, but because they believed that He was unkind, that He was trying to keep them from something good. When we move through our days with a grumbling spirit we act as though He does not care, or as though He is not able we disparage His character, besmirch His honor.
Of course we have hardships, what the Puritans called dark providences. Even these, however, are gifts from His hand. These are the tools He uses to reshape us into the image of His Son. We who are His, through no merit of our own, not only can but must smile, because He loves us. And He does indeed have a wonderful plan for our lives, the best plan imaginable. His plan is to wash us, cleanse us, remake us and then present us to His beloved Son as His bride. Let us beam like the glorious bride He is transforming us into, and give thanks.