Victim & Victimizer

"The father heart of God passionately searches the earth for those who would be voluntary lovers of His Son. God's heart is ravished by my love. And life is all about Jesus prying open the locked heart of a wounded girl (his bride) so she might have intimacy with Him forever." (David Keesling)

Someone shared this quote with me recently and, as so often happens, it spawned a reaction. I will be accused of not being very sentimental when, in reality, I’m a real softie and very much a sentimentalist in some things.

The view of ourselves as “a wounded girl” who needs to have her heart pried open by the love of God is certainly a compassionate thought. And I think that one can perhaps claim that from God’s perspective He realizes our sin has wounded us in a way that cannot be healed apart from His medicinal grace. He offers this love to us in overwhelmingly unconditional grace.

However, to view ourselves as nothing more than helpless wounded victims is to flirt with a rather unbiblical view of how we came to be victims in the first place. From this perspective we discredit the reality of our own wicked, deceitful, rebellious hearts. In claiming our status as wounded victims of sin we must never forget that the assailant who has viciously victimized us is none other than ourselves. We are both victim and victimizer.

We have sinned against a holy God and in the process wounded ourselves fatally. However, God has demonstrated His infinite love in that while we were yet “victimizing ourselves in sin” Christ bore the fatal result in Himself on the cross.

“Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”