Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! –Romans 11:33

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God. –I Corinthians 4:3-5

God as my Judge. What an AWESOME concept it is to know that it is ultimately before an Audience of One that I stand or fall! And that from time immemorial into the boundless infinite of the future, this One is unchanging.

I have been marveling this past week—silently, and sometimes very sleepily late at night over a cup of tea in the kitchen while having stare-down competitions with one of my landlord’s many felines—over the eternal, undying, permanent, life-giving nature of the freedom which is ours in Christ.

If freedom were simply the removal of finite chains, this would be such a poor excuse for liberty, because chains—both mental, physical, and spiritual—are so easily put in place again…sometimes by others, and sometimes by ourselves.

But the freedom which is ours through Christ is so much more than that…something that quietly, insistently, gloriously, permanently transforms us from the inside out, takes all that is dead and broken within and breathes life and health into it again. And we are changed, and made new, and we are given purpose, and meaning, and significance, and worth—because He is the God Who sees, the God Who is there, the God who loves with an undying, transformative, redemptive love that changes and purifies and breathes life into everything it touches…the God who sees us in our insignificance and beckons to us, woos us, draws us, loves us, invites us to be a son, a daughter...to be a part of His worth, to share in His life, to be loved perfectly, to lose our insignificance in the grandeur and splendor of becoming a part of His omnipotent infinite holiness.

To love—and be loved by—such a God is to be changed; to be healed; to be made alive; and to be exceedingly, radically, counter-culturally different for the rest of your life.