Defiant Truth: You Are Radically, Irrevocably Beloved
Listen up, dear ones, because I’m about to drop a truth bomb that will shatter every false gospel you’ve ever heard. Are you ready? Here it is: You are beloved. Period. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
This isn’t some feel-good platitude. This is the raw, unfiltered Gospel truth that will set you free if you let it sink into your bones. Your essence – the core of who you are – is defined by one thing and one thing only: you are loved by God with a fierce, unrelenting love that nothing in heaven or earth can shake.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But what about my sins? What about all the times I’ve messed up?” To which I say: What about them? Do you really think your sins are more powerful than the Cross of Christ? If “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ, do you think your mistakes and blunders can? Do you believe your failures can somehow negate the finished work of Jesus? If so, I’ve got news for you: that’s not the Gospel. That’s a lie straight from the pit of hell, and it’s time we called it out for what it is.
Let’s get one thing straight: your identity isn’t found in your performance, your beliefs, or even your own sense of worthiness. Your true identity – your essence – is hidden with Christ in God. It’s unchangeable, unshakeable, and utterly secure. No amount of sin can tarnish it, and no amount of good works can improve it. It simply is, because God says it is.
Now, I hear you asking, “But what about how the world sees me? I am a nobody, I feel my nobody-ness every day. I’m trying to become a somebody, but it seems so difficult, so impossible.” Here’s the liberating truth: yes, you need tactics to navigate this world, and we wear masks, we wear personas to navigate this life. But your personas don’t define you. They’re just the roles you play. Some of them might be helpful, others might be harmful, but none of them touch the core of who you are in Christ.
The world will try to tell you that you need to craft the perfect persona to be accepted. Religion will try to convince you that you need to believe certain things or behave a certain way to earn God’s love. Both are lies that chain you to a treadmill of endless striving. But the Gospel – the true, defiant, liberating Gospel – tells you that you’re already accepted, already beloved, already enough.
This is the truth that sets us free: We don’t have to earn God’s love. We can’t earn God’s love. It’s already ours, given freely in Christ. Our job isn’t to try to become beloved; it’s to wake up to the stunning reality that we already are.
So let this sink in, beloved: Your essence is beloved. Your identity is secure in Christ. Your personas are just the ever-changing surface of a deep, unchanging ocean of belovedness.
This is the Gospel. This is freedom. This is the truth that will change everything if you let it. So stand tall, throw off the shackles of performance-based acceptance, and live in the wild, radical reality of your belovedness. Because you, yes you, are loved beyond measure, beyond reason, beyond change. And nothing – absolutely nothing – can ever take that away.