How does Jesus feel about me when I sin?

 

How does God feel about me when I sin?

What does Jesus feel about me, when I sin?

That’s a really important question.  It will determine whether you run towards God or away from him with your feelings of guilt.

For me gluttony is a sin I struggle with.  It’s serious because I know that it displeases God.  So, when I have lost control, pigged-out and stuffed my face, knowing full well that what I am doing is wrong, how does Jesus feel with me at that moment?

How does Jesus feel about you when you have just looked at that screen and satisfied your lust?   How does Jesus feel about you when you have just lost your temper and the state of your heart was reflected in the language you’ve used?  How does Jesus feel about you when you have just assassinated the character of another person, a person made in the image of God?  The Puritan Thomas Goodwin says that ‘your sins move him to pity more than anger.’

Let me tell you a little more about Thomas Goodwin.

Goodwin was born in 1600, into a Christian family.  He went to Cambridge University to train to be an Anglican minister.  However, his faith was superficial and he was vain.  He wanted to become a famous preacher who impressed people with his wisdom and wit.  Then he was moved by a sermon he heard at a funeral.  This caused him to look inward to see if he could see evidenced that he really was born again.  During these years of introspection, he was preaching, but he was a preacher who berated his people and portrayed God in a hard light.  Then he had a meltdown!  He recovered as he began to see the kindness and grace of Jesus.  His preaching changed, as he sought to melt people’s hearts with the love of Christ.

Goodwin’s most famous book is called, ‘The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth’, or more simply, ‘The Heart of Christ.’  It’s about how Jesus feels about us now that he is in heaven.

Jesus is the same approachable person in heaven as he was on earth

Goodwin suggests that some people think that now that Jesus is in heaven, now that he is seen in all his holiness, now that he resides in glory and is worshipped by angels, he ‘is therefore of a severe and sour disposition against sinners, and not able to bear them.  No, says he; “I am meek”, gentleness is my nature and temper.’

Goodwin says, ‘Christ is love covered over with flesh, yea, our flesh’.  He points out that while some people seem naturally inclined to compassion than others, Jesus ‘is of a softer mould and temper than the kindness of all men’s hearts put into one.’  Think of the kindness person you have ever met, multiply that by infinity, and you have Christ.  But he is like that now that he is in heaven.

We know that Jesus was approachable when he was on earth.  Children felt safe with him.  The sick found compassion in him.  He was known as a friend of sinners and tax-collectors.  But is he as approachable now that he is in heaven, now that he is enthroned at the right hand of the Father and now that he is worshipped by angels and robed in majesty?  Goodwin says that, ‘the heart of Jesus Christ, now he is in heaven, is as graciously inclined to sinners as ever it was on earth.’

 

Jesus hates our sin as we hate sickness in our children

Goodwin points out that we go to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need (Heb. 4:15).  We look to him for strength when we are tempted, but we also look to him for mercy when we fall.  Jesus is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and wayward (Heb. 5:2).  Wayward people are sinning people.  He is drawn to us even as we rebel against him.  He is gentle towards us even when we let him down.

You might have heard someone say, ‘God hates the sin and loves the sinner.’  That’s too much of a simplification.  Apart from Christ we were enemies of God.  But if you are born again then God’s anger has been turned away from you.  Sin is no longer your identity, you are a beloved child of God.  Indeed, your accuser, the devil, will point to your sin and say that this is who you are.  But sin is no longer the real you.  The real you is the you that you are in Jesus.  You are a child that is embraced in the father’s love.  You are a sinner who had your guilt washed away.  You are one who falls, but Jesus keeps on picking up.  Your sin is not the real you because ‘you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). 

To the Christian Goodwin can say that in your sin, ‘his pity is increased to you, even as the heart of a father is to the child that has some loathsome disease …’  It’s of the Christian that we see that God hates our sin but loves us.   When our children are sick, we hate that illness, but we do not hate them.  Our sin actually stirs up compassion in him towards us.  Goodwin states that ‘your very sins move him to pity more than anger’.  ‘If the holy God who has no sin reacts with pity to us, then how much more should we react with pity to others’ (Williams).

One good objection

Goodwin suggests that their remains one reasonable objection that arises to the idea that Jesus sympathises with us in our weaknesses: what about the fact that he never sinned?  He has not experienced the self-loathing and regret that we feel when we fall in the face of temptation.  Indeed, Hebrews links the sympathy of the high priest towards the ignorant and the wayward to the fact that he too was a man who had to offer sacrifices for his own sins (5:3).

I wonder if being tempted in every way left Jesus contemplating what it must feel like to fall into sin.  Surely, he can not have failed to imagine what we experience when we allow ourselves be overcome by temptation!  But there is something more: Jesus became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).  He took upon himself our moral filth.  He identified with our evil on the cross.  He experienced God’s holy anger for what we have done to displease God.  Indeed, when we feel guilt for what we have done, we are actually feeling the guilt for sins that have been forgiven.  On the cross Jesus felt the full weight of God’s displeasure so that these sins could be forgiven.

Conclusion:  The different deaths of two great men

Goodwin points out that Christ’s love is not a ‘forced love’ as if he only loves us because he must.  His disposition of love comes freely and naturally to him.  He is after all the son of the ‘father of mercies.’  He is not reluctant to love you, he delights to love you. 

The heart of Christ melted the heart of Thomas Goodwin.  His dying words were, ‘Christ cannot love me better than he doth.  I think I cannot love Christ better than I do; I am swallowed up in God … Now I shall be ever with the Lord.’

How you understand God’s heart to you when you fail Him will determine whether you run to Him or away from Him when you let Him down.

One of the greatest examples of falling to the fear of people was when the apostle Peter denied knowing Jesus.  Luke’s gospel records the moment highlighting that the Lord turned and looked at Peter (Luke 22:61).  One Christian writer points out that how you understand that look of Jesus is foundational to your perception of how He looks at you when you sin (Erik Raymond). 

We know that Jesus pursued Peter in mercy after the resurrection and restored him.  So, I think we can be safe to conclude that this was a look of love.  Spurgeon says, ‘I think that it was a heart-piercing look and a heart-healing look all in one—a look which revealed to Peter the blackness of his sin, and also the tenderness of his Master’s heart towards him.’  ‘Despite Peter’s sin, Christ would not abandon him.  In Peter’s darkest hour, the eyes of mercy peered out Caiaphas’s window and looked on him.  For Peter, and every other Christian, all God’s acts are mediated through him love.  His love was meant to pierce and heal the apostle (Erik Raymond).  

It is appropriate to be sad when we find ourselves letting God down.  But we must not stop at that godly sorrow.  Indeed, we must make sure we are not just nursing wounded pride.  The look in Jesus’ eyes said, ‘I still love you.  You have denied me, but I still look at you as mine.  I love you with an everlasting love, and even though you have deserted me, I am looking for you, and I am expecting to receive you back.  I have not turned my back of you’ (adapted from Surgeon).  

Don’t minimize your sin when you approach the throne of grace.  Don’t make excuses.  See it for all its horror.  But then remember that there is always more mercy in Jesus than there is sin in us (The Bruised Reed).  If you truly belong to Him you cannot sin yourself out of His love.  And if you are not sure you are not sure that you belong to Him, then listen to His promise, ‘I will never turn away anyone who comes to me’ (John 6:37).  Come sincerely and take Him at His word!