God Loves You as You Are--So Change!

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.--1 Corinthians 14:1-8

People often say, "Love me for who I am."  "Accept me for who I am."  "If you really loved me, you would love me for who I am and not ask me to change."

  And there's an element of truth in this expectation.

For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.  Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.  But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.--Romans 5:6-8

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.--1 John 4:10-11

God loves us as we are, where we are, no matter what we've done or are doing or will do. God loves us. God is love. (1 John 4:8)

And yet--and yet! God loves us as we are, and calls us to become radically transformed because of his love.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?  So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."--Matthew 5:43-48

Or, as Andrew Lloyd Weber puts it:

God's love--all love--is transformative.

To love is to contemplate, to be transformed.

And true, self-donating, self-emptying love always confounds evil.

So love reaches us where we are, enfolding us, suffusing us, holding us in life. And then it lifts us up where we belong.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”--C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

And when we, by God's grace, take the risk of loving God, ourselves, and our neighbor, what happens then? Deification. (For more, see here.)