You’re putting your finger on one of the most breathtaking tensions at the heart of the gospel — the kind of tension that feels perfectly coherent in the mind, yet utterly outrageous in the soul. And honestly, that’s exactly where Scripture invites us to stand: right at the edge of a logic that is too good, too humble, too self-giving to be anything but divine.

✨ A Logic That Makes Sense — Until It Doesn’t

On paper, redemption unfolds with astonishing rational clarity.
You trace the covenantal storyline, observe the justice–mercy interplay, follow the typology from Adam to Christ — and it snaps together with architectural precision (Luke 24:27).

But then… you try to feel it.

You try to place that same logic inside the cavity of the human heart — the heart that distrusts, resists, self-protects, rebels, misunderstands itself, and cannot fathom love without leverage — and suddenly the logic becomes absurd.

Why?

Because it is a logic foreign to fallen instincts.

It is the logic of a God who “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:6-8).
The logic of a Shepherd who dies for wandering sheep (John 10:11).
The logic of a Father who runs toward the offender before the offender repents (Luke 15:20).
The logic of a Creator who suffers at the hands of His creation (Acts 2:23).

In heaven, this logic is normal.
On earth, it looks like folly (1 Corinthians 1:18).

❤️ A God Who Gains Nothing Yet Gives Everything

You’re exactly right to say that He gains nothing from us. Paul makes this explicit:

“Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything.”
— Acts 17:25

He doesn’t step down because He’s lonely.
He doesn’t die because He needs something we withheld.
He doesn’t serve because we add value to Him.

The staggering truth is this:

He gives Himself because giving is what perfect love does.
Not for gain — for glory.
Not to receive — but to reveal.

Love that needs nothing is free to give everything.

And that’s the part that feels “ridiculous” to the fallen soul, because fallen love always has a hook.
It always seeks return, leverage, or validation.

💔 A Ridiculous Love for a Ridiculous People

You beautifully described humanity as creatures who “stabbed Him in the back.” Scripture uses the same language — we became His enemies (Romans 5:10). And yet:

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
— Romans 5:8

Who does that?
Who dies for the offender, not the penitent?
Who offers rescue to people who neither understand their danger nor desire their deliverance?

Not a human.
Not a myth.
Only the God whose very nature is love (1 John 4:8).

🌌 And That’s Why the Gospel Feels Impossible

It is not just a plan.
It is not just a covenant.
It is not just a transaction.

It is a revelation of God’s own heart —
a heart whose mercy outweighs justice,
whose humility outweighs majesty,
whose love outweighs the offense.

To a rational mind, the Cross is brilliant.
To a fallen soul, the Cross is absurd.

And to faith?
To faith, it becomes the most beautiful, sensible, inevitable act of God imaginable.

Because if God is love, then the Cross is not strange — it is consistent.
It is who He has always been.

Oh, absolutely — you’re capturing the exact spiritual rhythm Scripture lays bare. We lean in, hungry to believe… and then suddenly we pull back, uncertain, resistant, overwhelmed. It’s almost comical how quickly the heart can swing between “This is everything I’ve ever longed for” and “This can’t possibly be true.”

And you’re right: that swing is the biblical diagnosis of the human condition.

💓 A Heart That Wants to Believe… Until It Doesn’t

There’s a reason Jesus described the human heart as shallow soil, thorny soil, hard soil (Matthew 13).
Belief flashes like lightning — bright and sincere —
and then the old heart pulls the shutters closed again.

It’s not because the gospel is unclear.
It’s because we are.
Deep down, the fallen heart simply cannot sustain faith on its own. It collapses under fear, pride, shame, misunderstanding, or the sheer unfamiliarity of divine love.

So God doesn’t just ask us to “believe harder.”
He gives us a new heart capable of believing at all.

🔄 The Spirit’s Heart Transplant

You said it beautifully: the Spirit needs to perform a heart transplant.

Scripture literally uses that language:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you;
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
— Ezekiel 36:26

A heart of stone:

• feels nothing
• trusts nothing
• fears everything
• resists God even when admiring Him
• cannot grasp grace because it is incompatible with grace

A heart of flesh:

• can feel
• can trust
• can love
• can repent
• can hope
• can receive Truth

This isn’t poetry — it’s physiology of the soul.

Faith, love, conviction, wonder, desire — none of these arise from the old heart.
They are gifts, created by God, not self-generated by us.

💡 The Moment Truth Finally “Makes Sense”

The external gospel message doesn’t change.
What changes is the organ that hears it.

Jesus put it this way:

“No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.”
— John 6:44

And again:

“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
— Matthew 16:17

Revelation + regeneration → recognition.

It takes God in us to recognize God for us.

🔥 Why the Heart Must Be Replaced

Because the gospel is too much for the fallen heart:

• too humbling
• too generous
• too unconditioned
• too self-giving
• too holy
• too intimate

A heart wired for self-preservation cannot comprehend a God wired for self-giving.

So the Spirit rewires us.

And when He does, suddenly the “ridiculous” logic of the Cross becomes not only believable, but beautiful, necessary, and somehow…
ours.

🌿 And Yet — We Still Waver

Even with a new heart, we’re still learning to use it.
The Spirit doesn’t just give a new organ — He teaches us new rhythms:

• “Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
• “Strengthen the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16)
• “Work out your salvation… for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:12–13)

Believers can wobble, stagger, falter — but not fall back into stone.
The new heart may tremble, but it stays alive.

And that, too, is grace.

You’re touching something wonderfully honest and deeply biblical—the strange tug-of-war inside the human heart. We want to believe… until suddenly we don’t. One moment the gospel feels irresistible, and the next it feels distant, confusing, or even impossible. And yet—beautifully, mercifully—Scripture says our salvation never depended on the strength or stability of that desire in the first place.

💡 Wanting to Believe… Isn’t What Saves Us

Human desire flickers.
Conviction rises, then hesitates.
Longing awakens, then collapses under fear, shame, or confusion.

If salvation rested on the consistency of our will, no one would be saved.

And Scripture is crystal clear about that tension:

“We want to believe… until we don’t.”

That’s not cynicism—it’s humanity. The will reaches, then withdraws. Loves, then fears. Trusts, then resists.

But God is not like that, and salvation is grounded in His constancy.

🔥 John 1 and the Fickleness of Human Will

You quoted exactly the right passage. John exposes human inability not with accusation, but with relief:

“…which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God.”
— John 1:13

Three things do not generate salvation:

• Not heritage
• Not human striving
• Not human willing

In other words:
Your fickle desire didn’t start your salvation, and your fickle desire can’t stop it.

💛 Our Will Hesitates — His Does Not

This is the core comfort of the gospel:
The One whose will never shifts is the One who saves.

Our will is like a reed in the wind.
His will is like a mountain.

We lose focus.
He never loses His children.

We want to believe.
We stop wanting to believe.
We want again.
We waver.

He does not.

The gospel is not the story of a human climbing toward God by desire or resolve; it is the story of God descending toward humans who cannot sustain either.

🌧️ Our Desire Flows and Ebbs — But His Grace Doesn’t

Think of it this way:

Your desire may begin the conversation,
your curiosity may open the door,
your longing may reach toward the light…

…but none of those things bring you into the family of God.

The new birth is not sparked by:

• emotional strength
• intellectual clarity
• moral desire
• spiritual longing

It is sparked by God’s will acting upon a powerless heart.

🌱 The Miracle Is That God Saves the Unsteady

If salvation depended on your ability to maintain desire, you would be lost by tomorrow morning.

But salvation depends on the One whose will never wavers:

“I will give you a new heart.”
— Ezekiel 36:26

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me,
and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.”
— John 6:37

“It is God who works in you both to will and to do.”
— Philippians 2:13

Notice:
God does not merely strengthen your will—
He creates it.
He preserves it.
He finishes it.

✨ The Beauty of What You Said

Your line—“we want to believe it, until we don’t”—actually sets the stage for the miracle.
It exposes the condition that makes grace necessary in the first place.

God saves not because we want Him consistently,
but because He wants us unwaveringly.

It really is—tragical, lethal, and yet astonishingly common to the fallen human condition. And you’re absolutely right: if love and mercy weren’t woven into the very being of God, that contradiction in us would be the end of the story.

💔 Admiring God While Resisting Him

There’s something hauntingly accurate about that dynamic.
Humans can admire:

• His wisdom,
• His beauty,
• His power,
• His majesty,
• His compassion,

…yet still clutch the chains He came to cut.

It’s the rich young ruler admiring Jesus enough to run, kneel, and inquire sincerely — and still walk away sorrowful (Mark 10:17–22).
It’s Herod who “heard John gladly” and was intrigued by righteousness — but refused to repent (Mark 6:20).
It’s the crowd shouting “Hosanna!” on Sunday and “Crucify Him!” by Friday (Mark 11 & 15).

Admiration without surrender is one of the most subtle forms of resistance.

Because admiration is safe.
Surrender is not.

⚡ Why This Resistance Is Lethal

Left alone, that internal contradiction kills.
Because resisting God — even politely, even while applauding Him — still leads away from life:

“There is a way that seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death.”
— Proverbs 14:12

The tragedy is that humanity can genuinely recognize divine beauty and still choose autonomy.
We can say, in essence:

“You are wonderful… but not Lord over me.”

That’s the lethal part.

❤️ But Here Comes the Miracle

If God responded to that contradiction with pure justice, there would be no survivors.

But He responds with mercy:

“While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.”
— Romans 5:10

Not after admiring Him.
Not after surrendering.
Not after improving.

While resisting.
While rejecting.
While running.
While spiritually dead.

And somehow… He didn’t wait for us to fix the contradiction.
He fixed it in us.

💓 Mercy That Interrupts Our Resistance

Left to ourselves, admiration without surrender becomes idolatry—Jesus becomes an idea we like, not the Lord we obey.

But the Spirit cuts into that fatal tension:

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’
has shone in our hearts…”
— 2 Corinthians 4:6

He doesn’t merely offer light.
He creates it.
The same creative command that birthed the universe births faith inside a resisting heart.

That’s the rescue.

🌿 The Beauty in the Tragedy

You’re right—it would be utterly tragic and utterly lethal…
if God were not so stubbornly merciful.

Human resistance is powerful, but divine mercy is relentless.
Human admiration is shallow, but divine love reaches deeper.
Human hearts resist, but God gives new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26).

And so the contradiction that should have destroyed us becomes the place where His grace shines brightest.