How Much Does God Care?

Last time at http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2017/03/why-would-god-care-about-us.html we presented 5 reasons and evidences why God would care about us. The last one was that he sent his son to die for us.

Why would he need to send his son to die for us? 

God’s aim is to dwell with us, but for this to work, we have to be like him.  He is love.  Later, we will see that he tells us that love is expressed by a series of principles and that violating those principles is sin (I John 3:4).  He established that in end only love would survive, and he accordingly determined that sin would cease by the sinner ceasing.  Sin earns its own reward, and that reward is death.  God’s solution to that is at Romans 6:23: “For what one earns from sin is death; but eternal life is what one receives as a free gift from God, in union with the Messiah Yeshua, our Lord.”  Perhaps the best known verse in the Bible is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life, instead of being utterly destroyed.”

Is this fair? If he made us the way we are, then he is responsible for our tendency to sin, and he should be able to forgive us easily enough with no death.

He made us with the capacity to sin.  A capacity is different than a tendency. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that he made us upright, but that WE “have devised many schemes”

There would be nothing eternal gained by living in this world of evil if we didn’t acquire such distaste for sin that we would be totally repulsed by it.  (Amos 5:15: “Hate evil, love good…”) When we are made alive in a permanent form and we no longer have the human weaknesses that now beset us, we will be totally adverse to sin, as God intended.  This intention is demonstrated by making it clear that

a.     He does not abide with sin.  He sets the perfect example.

b.    He determined that the penalty for sin is death (to uphold the principle that sin must be rooted out). 

So God cares for us, but since he is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-loving, why do we need to pray?  If he is already as informed as he can get, why doesn’t he just give us what we need without being asked?

          The question assumes correctly that “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him”⁶ (Matt. 6:8).  What we are building with God is a relationship.  Relationships are built upon focusing on each other and by communications.  By the way, this communication can be two-way.  Sometimes when we calm our minds and in prayer cut ourselves off from distractions, our minds can be open to God’s thoughts to us: sometimes comfort, sometimes correction, and sometimes specific instruction.  Just be sure to try the spirits (I John 4:1):  are these communications according to God’s written teaching?

Why is it that prayers go unanswered by a God who cares?

          Who can say that they go unanswered?  When the answer is “No”, has the prayer gone unanswered? There is a lot that has to be considered by God when determining how to answer our prayers, such as what is ultimately good for us, and what is good for others. We do not have the view that he has, not only of the impact different answers to our prayers would have on others, but also on what our own situations will be. 

Is It Reasonable that God Would Care About Us?

At http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2017/02/and-when-evil-is-greater-than-good-from.html I discussed why it is that God doesn’t eliminate evil that is just so great there seems to be no surpassing benefit from it. I tied this into the role of God’s love.

That might seem easier to swallow if it could be explained why God would even care about us in the first place.   Why should we mean any more to him than a bacteria does to us?

1.     The Bible often alludes to characteristics of God which seem to be quite human.  There is a reason for that, and that is that we are made is his image, after his likeness.  There are implications to that, aside from the important one that man can become God (in a sense) and God can become man.  It is doubtful that this is a reference to physical appearance since God is not physical, but to personal qualities.   There is that statement of Ecc. 7:29, “God made mankind upright”, which brings takes the focus of man’s likeness away from physical appearance.  There are things about man that appear designed to make him compatible with God.  It is quite deliberate.  Man was made that way by God.   We just happen upon bacteria; we don’t make them the way they are.

2.     We mustn’t confuse our powerlessness with meaninglessness.  An infant is small and powerless beside his parents, but does that diminish their affinity?         

3.     We mean something to him because he is Love. 

4.     God’s care for us is what we ought to suppose would result if he made us specifically to have certain characteristics that are so identifiable with his own.

5.     The proof that God personally cares about us is that he demonstrated this care by sending his son to die for us.

If we rely upon the Bible, we see that we are a very big part of his plan.  He has made a people for himself: “You are my people” he says in Isaiah 51:16.   Hebrews 2:10: “For it is fitting for Him, for who are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory…”  Just because we seem so insignificant against the backdrop of eternity and against the totality of the universe is no evidence that we actually are when we assume that it was all built for him to share with us.   We see that all things exist for Christ (Hb. 2:10) and that he will share it with us (Revelation 3:21).  He is “firstborn among many brethren” (Romans. 8:29).