An Invitation: What Changes If This Is True?
by Dr. Peter A. Kerr
Theology often ends where it should begin. After definitions are clarified, assumptions examined, and doctrines carefully traced, a quieter question remains: what changes if this vision of God is actually true?
If God’s holiness is not distance but fullness, not severity but holy-love, then Christianity is no longer primarily about managing outcomes, avoiding punishment, or securing approval. It becomes an invitation into participation. Faith shifts from anxiety to trust. Obedience moves from fear to love. Hope becomes durable rather than fragile.
Seeing God differently changes faith and prayer. Faith and prayer allow God to work without compromising free will. They are pre-surrendering human will so God may act without coercion. Prayer no longer functions as persuasion or leverage, nor as a ritual performed to keep heaven attentive. Prayer becomes response and attunement to the Holy Spirit’s movement.
God is not distant: He is already reaching toward the world in generosity and patience (Matt 7:11; Jas 1:17). Prayer opens oneself to God’s motion—aligning attention, desire, and will with a goodness already at work. It can also assist others to hear the Spirit’s music. It also aligns the “dancefloor” of physical reality to better usher people toward God’s love. Prayer genuinely matters because it makes room for God’s life to be received (Rom 8:26–27).
Seeing God differently changes ethics. Moral life is no longer about external compliance or reputation management. Holiness ceases to mean withdrawal from the world and becomes proper participation within it. Love of neighbor is no longer an optional outcome of faith but its natural expression (Matt 22:37–40; 1 Jn 4:20). Ethical formation becomes the slow reordering of loves—learning to desire what heals communion and to resist what deforms it (Rom 12:1–2). Goodness, Truth, and Love are not forced upon others, but rather people are invited into their communion.
Seeing God differently changes how suffering is understood. Pain is no longer interpreted as evidence of divine intent or absence, but rather caused by sinful choices. Just as pain in the body indicates something is wrong, pain in the world indicates the presence of disordering sin. Rather than the origin of pain, Scripture presents God as near to the brokenhearted, patient with the wounded, and resolutely opposed to what destroys life (Ps 34:18; Isa 63:9). Suffering does not become good, yet it is never abandoned to meaninglessness. God works within it without having willed it, bringing good not by erasing freedom but by redeeming what freedom makes possible (Rom 8:28).
Seeing God differently changes hope. Hope ceases to be a thin optimism dependent on circumstances. It becomes confidence in the character of God. The future is no longer imagined as escape from creation, but as its healing and fulfillment (Rev 21:1–5). Salvation is not merely rescue from judgment but adoption into God’s own life (Rom 8:15–17). The Christian hope is not that God will finally overpower the world, but that more people will follow Christ, accept and reflect God’s holy-love, and so become the sons and daughters of God.
At the center of all this is a simple but demanding claim: Christianity is not primarily a belief system to defend, but a life to enter. Scripture consistently frames salvation as participation—abiding in Christ (Jn 15:4), walking by the Spirit (Gal 5:16), sharing in divine life (2 Pet 1:4). God does not merely declare forgiveness from afar. God gives Himself.
This vision does not ask the reader to abandon tradition, intellect, or careful theology. It asks something more vulnerable. It asks whether God can be trusted as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ—crucified, risen, and still extending His life toward the world (Jn 14:9; Heb 1:1–3).
There is no coercion here and no final pressure. Holy love never forces its way in. It invites, waits, and remains faithful. The question is not whether this vision explains everything, but whether it names the God worth trusting.
If this is true, then faith becomes less about arriving at certainty and more about learning to receive. Worship becomes delight rather than duty. Love becomes the measure of truth. The invitation remains open, not as a conclusion, but as a beginning.
Matthew 7:11 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”
James 1:17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
Romans 8:26–27 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Matthew 22:37–40 And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
1 John 4:20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Romans 12:1–2 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Psalm 34:18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.
Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Revelation 21:1–5 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
Romans 8:15–17 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
John 15:4 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”
Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
2 Peter 1:4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
John 14:9 Jesus *said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
Hebrews 1:1–3 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
