Jonah: Navigating a God-centered Life

by Colin S. Smith

The strongest love is not a general benevolence but a passion for the good of a particular person. All of us want to believe that God loves us like that. Those who take a lesser view of grace often try to get there by saying, “If I was the only person in the world, Christ would still have suffered and died for me.” It surprises me how often I hear Christians say this and the degree to which they seem to be helped by it. The statement is a theoretical one, relating to a circumstance which is self-evidently not true. I am not the only person in the world. I’m convinced that the reason some Christians raise this theoretical scenario is that all of us want to know and to feel that we are uniquely loved by God, and a general benevolence in which God opens the door of salvation to all people doesn’t feel like God loving me in any direct or personal way. So people who don’t believe that God has taken any special initiative to save them resort to saying that if, in theory, nobody else existed, God would still have sent Jesus for them. Here’s the crux of this chapter: I want you see that God does love you in a unique and special way. The way you know this is not by speculation over a theoretical scenario in which you might be the only person in the world, but by the glorious reality of His grace intercepting your life, to draw you to faith in Christ. If you are in Christ, God has done more than open the door of salvation for you. He has brought you in! Christ has done more than mak...