When we were yet enemies

Rom 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

When running across this scripture in times past, I would read this scripture and think that it was talking about me being an enemy of God...BEFORE I was born again. This is often the interpretation that most Christians would give anyone who would enquire about this verse as well, however, that is a wrong assumption. Let's assess who would be God's enemy, shall we?

Well, we can correctly assume that the devil is the enemy of God, seeing that he stands for the opposite of what God stands for. God is Righteous, Satan is rebellious (Is 14:12). God is Truthful, Satan is referred to in the Bible as the Father of lies. God is Life in Christ, Satan is called the Lord of the flies, ( and anyone who has ever studied anything about flies knows that when something dies, it soon produces worms and flies are born from these disgusting worms.) God is good, while the devil is cruel. God edifies through the Holy Spirit, while the devil condemns and discourages. So we can safely assess that the devil is God's opposite and His enemy.

And the bible DOES make reference to us being satan's spawn before we are "converted" or born again, but people often take this as an implication to assume that we were God's enemy because we were not born again. Let's re-examine the scripture we began with in Rom 5:1 though: it states that "while we were yet God's enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son..." Let's use some reasoning here: If we were God's enemy, then how could He reconcile us to Himself by killing His Perfect Son that He loved? That doesn't make sense. So some would say, "Well, that's just God, He just has mercy." Tell me something, have you ever seen someone that truly had an enemy, have mercy on them? The answer is NO! But the Bible clearly states that we were redeemed by Christ. Hmmm, allow us to try from a different angle here; if anyone that is reading has children, they know that they love their children. Could we safely say that we love our own children more than we love someone else's child? Any good parent would not take their child, whom they love more than they love themselves and kill their child so that someone else's brat kid could be saved! I wouldn't give up my beautiful loving little boy for someone else's problem child, yet God took His ONLY Son, (The Only person to EVER walk this earth in total Perfection, pleasing God in every way, form, fashion, thought, word and in deed). If God looked at us as though we were His enemy, than how could He give up Jesus for us, (we would be the "brat kid and problem child" in this scenario.)

Could there possibly be something wrong with they way that WE have thought about GOD? Meaning, could the phrase, "while we were yet enemies" mean that in our own minds, we thought that we were God's enemy? If we truly think about it, we could safely come to the conclusion that there quite possibly could have been something wrong with our own thinking and assumptions about God. God has NEVER seen us as His enemy, even when we were not acting like His children would act. EVEN when we were not truly "born again" and we still acted like the devil, He still looked at us as His kids. How can that be true?

Hosea 2:23 speaks about this subject when the prophet states that even though we had never obtained mercy, He would give us mercy. And even though we were not His people, He would say to us, "You are my people," and because He said that to us first, we would say, "You are my God."

People paint a picture of God as though He is this mean judgmental fireball in the sky looking down on us from a distance, just waiting for us to mess up enough times so that He can smite us and send us to hell to burn forever and forever. That has NEVER been the heart of God, nor will it ever be. In fact, if we never knew of God's love for us, we would never turn to Him. 1 John 4:19 says it like this, " We love Him, because He first loved us."

I am convinced that the reason that people don't come to Christ is because: 1. they don't acknowledge that they NEED God or His Love, 2. they don't think God really loves them, or 3. they don't think that they are worthy of His Love. But God's not like us, He doesn't require that we earn His love, He just loves. We can get mad at Him, cuss Him, shake our fists, even give up on Him, and He is still there and doesn't love us any less than before we did all those things. He loves us so much, that while we were yet sinners....let's go back even further, 2000 years ago He killed the Son He loved, that WE might be able to be with Him forever! We were FAR from being thought of....and He thought of us. When we were in our sin, we were too deep, too dark, too dirty...but He reached way down, into the darkness that we were, and got dirty just to show us His love.

Beloved, God's not mad at you. He loves you with an "everlasting love" (Jer 31:3), that means forevermore, into eternity, long lasting and never failing, always...won't you come to Him and let Him love you?!