Everlasting Grace—How Expansive Is God’s Love? – Steve Orr

This question is posed in a pop music hit by the Bee Gees, which is among the top 500 greatest contemporary songs.

Despite the pop culture overtones, this is a serious question. “How deep is your love, ’cause we’re livin’ in a world of fools, breakin’ us down.”

There are spiritual overtones: “I believe in you. You know the door to my very soul. You’re the light in my deepest, darkest hour. You’re my savior when I fall.” “It’s me you need to show, how deep is your love?”

To this I would like to ask another question: How deep is God’s love?

I believe the Word of God, Jesus incarnate, demonstrates the width, length, height, and depth of God’s unfathomable love for his children. When we deeply understand God’s eternal, never-ending love for us, his love is inescapable, and we cannot resist it. Sure, many are hard-hearted, but eventually, love conquers all.

God loves the outcasts that our “cultured” society rejects.

Consider chapter four of John’s gospel, about the woman at the well, is among Jesus’ most significant teachings on God’s love. Here, and elsewhere, he breaks down the deep-seated hatred and social barriers between the Jews and the Samaritan outcasts.

The hatred was so deep that Jews habitually avoided the entire region of Samaria. Instead of taking the easiest and shortest route from Galilee through Samaria to Jerusalem, they crossed the Jordan River, not once, but twice. They walked 15 miles from Nazareth to Jordan, then a few miles through the land of the Decapolis, then about 60 miles through the lands of Perea. Then they went back across the Jordan to the headwaters of the Dead Sea. Finally, starting below sea level, they trudged up the mountains about 20 miles to Jerusalem.

The route Jesus chose was shocking to the Jews.

Why does the passage say, “[Jesus] had to go through Samaria” when the common practice was to avoid that foreign territory?

Obviously, Jesus was on a mission. By taking his disciples on this mission, he demonstrated his love for the outcasts. He was teaching his disciples by example how to model divine reconciliation in their ministry. He wasn’t just reaching out to a people; he was reaching out to an outcast among the outcasts, the woman at the well.

This was the holy ground of Jacob’s well. The story of Jacob’s well goes back a few thousand years to the time of the Patriarchs in the book of Genesis. In chapter 28, Jacob dreams about a mysterious “stairway to heaven” which the angels use as the junction between heaven and earth. Earlier, in chapter eleven, the Tower of Babel shows the futility of men trying to reach heaven by their own effort. Jacob’s stairway shows that the divine connection is provided by God.

In chapter 32, Jacob wrestles with God; even though he loses, his loss was gain. He suffered a lifetime of limping to learn that through his vulnerability and weakness, he was strong. The conflict from his conniving hostilities with Esau ended, and peace won the day.

Jesus’ rendezvous with the woman at the well was no accident. This was holy ground.

This woman, an outcast among outcasts, came to the well in shame during the heat of the day to avoid the gossip of the townsfolk. She was a fallen woman. When Jesus asked for a refreshing drink of water, she said, “You are a Jewish man and I am a Samaritan woman. We are not supposed to associate with each other, so why are you asking me for water?”

Jesus wastes no time. He gets straight to the point and identifies who he is. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

The woman retorts, “Who do you think you are, acting like you’re greater than our father, Jacob?”

Jesus is relentless, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

“Sir, give me this water so I don’t bear this heat getting water every day.”

The Master Fisherman casts his bait. “Go get your husband and bring him here.”

“I have no husband.”

“Yes, I know. You have five husbands, and the man you’re shacking up with now is not your husband.”

The woman gets a clue that she has encountered a true prophet, but asks, “You Jews say we must go down to Jerusalem to worship God.”

Jesus: “The time is coming when you won’t worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem. Instead, the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.”

The woman responds, “Hmmm. Well okay. When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us both.”

Then comes the great revelation, the great revealing, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Isn’t this banter between this fallen woman and God Incarnate delicious?! It hauntingly sounds similar to this previous article: Our Road to Emmaus

The rest of the story…

Just before his ascension, Jesus instructed the apostles to take the gospel to Samaria. Many Samaritans became Christians, and Philip the Evangelist effectively spread the gospel to the South.

The Samaritans did not suffer like the Jews with the utter destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. It is estimated that there were a million Samaritan Christians in the “Holy Land” until the third century, when the Roman persecution came. Many were killed, but many were able to assimilate themselves as Christian Roman citizens throughout Europe.

Let’s be honest, who among us has not wrestled with God? This is the human struggle with darkness and fear, emptiness and loneliness.

Perhaps we felt outcast in our childhood on the playground when our classmates didn’t include us. Maybe we weren’t one of the popular people at school dances. Perhaps the pretty girls wouldn’t dance with geeks and nerds, or the handsome athletes only danced with beauty queens.

Of course, it goes deeper when all the posers at church look down on us because we don’t measure up to their self-righteous standards. Maybe we feel shame because of some spectacular failure, and the last thing we want to do is go to church only to be judged by the plastic people who are just as guilty but live in denial of their own failures. The most common experience is a dull limbo in the nether-lands where we experience neither victory nor defeat.

I apologize for this negative tone, but the contrasting point for emphasis is that we have everything to celebrate.

I love how Frederick Buechner sums up Jacob’s encounter with the Almighty as the “magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God” (The Magnificent Defeat, Harper One, 1985).

Our victory comes with practicing vulnerability. It’s when we give up human effort and surrender to God; when we give our hearts to Jesus, who is our stairway to heaven.

How deep is God’s love for us?

“[Jesus] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20)”

Hallelujah! Death is swallowed up in victory!

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Steve Orr writes to us from Montana. After working in the mecca of technology, Steve traded the rat race of Silicon Valley for the adventures of High Tech in Big Sky Country. Steve has an MBA with experience in accounting, finance, technology, and management. He occasionally writes a little software code, but mostly he likes writing about Matters of the Heart.

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