God’s Love in Christ: The Answer to Mug Shot Theology

Do you suffer from “Mug Shot Theology?” Do you question God’s love in Christ—for you? We’ve all seen mug shots of people who have been arrested. It’s that photo the police take of a person when they’ve been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. We’ve all seen Hollywood personalities looking their worst and having it all captured, for posterity, in their mug shot. These glamorous and handsome stars are almost unrecognizable when you catch a glimpse of them on that tabloid paper at the check-out counter at your local store. The image of one’s mug shot follows one around forever, coloring everything.

What does that have to do with Christians, you may be thinking? Mug shot theology is that picture we’re sure God has of us and always looks at when we’ve been behaving at our worst—when we’ve really blown it. We’re sure that God sees us as that guilty criminal, stunned and humiliated in the camera’s flash.

I’ve not known very many men who don’t suffer from mug shot theology, especially when it comes to their deep and unrelenting sexual temptations, struggles, and sin. It just seems to come with the territory.

When we labor under this burden of believing that God still sees us as criminals, it affects everything in our life. So it’s a very practical issue. When you have mug shot theology, it’s rare to experience any joy in your life. It’s virtually impossible to possess the ability to run to the throne of grace at your time of deepest need. It keeps you from access to the power of God to help counter temptations. It turns your face away from God because of your shame and guilt. You are shut down from communicating with God. You feel left all alone with your temptations and sin, not knowing what to do, because mug shot theology will make sure the cross is the last place you’ll run to.

“You stand in grace, you do not slink into it, you do not creep into it, you do now shuffle into it, you do not crawl into it. You stand in it, fixed, firm, established, because of Christ.”

When you don’t know what to do with your guilty heart and your sins, you will (because you’re a sinner) always adopt one or more of the following strategies:

1. You’ll let yourself off the hook, explaining, excusing, or rationalizing your sin, falsely believing it’s not as bad or deadly as it is.
2.  You’ll put yourself under “house arrest,” only going through the motions of faith, severely limiting your attempts to love and serve God and others well.
3. You’ll just try to say “no” to your temptations while constantly resolving to do better and white-knuckling it along the way.
4. You become you own executioner, punishing yourself relentlessly.
5. You’ll put yourself on probation with God, only slinking back to him when you’ve put enough distance between your temptations or failures until you get up the courage to approach God again.

All these behaviors are the ways most men deal with their sin and struggles. But when we change that mug shot theology to a gospel theology—in which we understand and admit that we always stand guilty before a holy God, and yet our God beckons and invites unworthy sinners to his throne because of Jesus—then everything changes. In gospel theology, we see God’s love in Christ on full display, and we know that God’s love and welcome is for us—not because we deserve it, but because of his unchanging, eternally faithful love.

Martyn-Lloyd Jones, in his commentary, Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 5, Assurance, states it quite well:

God has become one who delights to see us coming, receives us, loves us and sits us at a banqueting table. God is always looking upon us with favor and smiling upon us . . . So it is in prayer . . . we remind ourselves of this and rush into his presence . . . we rush in with boldness and full confidence, having access to the throne room. . . . You stand in grace, you do not slink into it, you do not creep into it, you do not shuffle into it, you do not crawl into it. You stand in it, fixed, firm, established, because of Christ. You own this great truth and act upon it in your prayer life . . . knowing He is a Heavenly Father who delights to see us, to receive us . . . and whose love for us is way beyond our imagination.

What a way to blast away mug shot theology! It captures the essence of what it means to be dearly beloved children, ransomed by our God. It also moves us, in humility, towards God in our worst moments, daring to believe, once again, that the gospel is for us—that, because of God’s love in Christ, instead of a mug shot, our Father now looks at us and sees the perfection of Jesus.

To learn more about these concepts of Christ’s love and grace for the downcast and disheartened, be sure and check out John’s book, Hide or Seek: When Men Get Real with God About Sex.