Counting the Cost: Reconciliation

At TheGoodNewsCast.com we believe that true love is freely given by God, paid in full through Christ, and powerful enough to reconcile the brokenhearted. In a world seeking true affection but afraid to let go, we proclaim a love that is true.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” Luke 14:28

Christ’s question about the cost of reconciliation with God is, at its heart, a question about the world’s capacity to love. Too often, both sheep and shepherds enter the field without counting that cost—believing that love, faith, or reconciliation can be earned through performance, through deeds, or sacrifices. Yet Holy Scripture reminds us that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)—a cost no one could ever pay. The shepherds of Zechariah’s prophecy sold their flock for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave, not realizing the cost is beyond measure.

In our own time, we continue to miscalculate this cost. In a single week, pop star Justin Bieber, tech titan Elon Musk, and musician Sufjan Stevens each became commentators on the modern soul’s search for true affection. Bieber confessed exhaustion with conditional love—the kind that demands performance. Musk questioned empathy, suspecting it of manipulation. Stevens, through grief and faith, turned sensuality into theology, embodying a religion that risks it all.

Their stories, different yet intertwined, echo Christ’s question: what does it truly cost to reconcile with God and with one another? Our culture, obsessed with validation, too often reduces the cost into something measurable, marketable, and safe. But the price, as the Cross reveals, is anything but cheap. It requires death to self, the surrender of control, and the willingness to give freely.

To count the cost, then, is not to calculate but to recognize what it requires. For it is in this account we find true love.

• The Shepherds and the Sheep for Slaughter

• The Cost: Love, Obedience, and the Fear of God

• Flesh and Faith: A Love That Touches Heaven and Earth

• The Cost Paid: True Love and How It Feels

The Shepherds and the Sheep for Slaughter

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” (Luke 14:28).

Zechariah’s prophecy paints a haunting image: God stepping in as the true Shepherd of a doomed flock—“the oppressed of the flock” (Zechariah 11:11). Humanity, blind to the depth of its need, tried to set a price on God's Favor and Unity—thirty pieces of silver, the sum for which Judas would later betray Christ (Matthew 26:15). That silver bought a potter’s field, a burial place for those who could not pay the cost—a quiet symbol of grace extended to the poor. The cost of sin was beyond measure, yet Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep (John 10:11), overcame, paid the price, and rose again.

Two thousand years later, that same economy still defines our world. The transactional mindset—give to get, perform to belong, earn to be loved—influences how we work, worship, and relate. Even our pursuit of true love has turned into a kind of marketplace, and amid that noise, a pop star’s tired confession rang out.

On June 8, 2025, Justin Bieber posted two black-and-white selfies with a simple caption: “Tired of transactional relationships. If I have to do something to be loved, that’s not love.” It sounded like more than celebrity fatigue—it was a spiritual confession (Bieber “Tired of Transactional Relationships”). On his Instagram Stories, he expanded, “We wanna make our life about work so bad, but this life is about God loving us so we can love each other.”

His words struck a nerve because they exposed a shared ache: the exhaustion of performing for affection, of mistaking worth for achievement. “‘LOYALTY’ is manipulative language,” he added.

“Love is not a duty. Love is a delight.” Justin Bieber

Beneath the post’s raw honesty lay a deep truth—the same truth Zechariah revealed centuries ago. Humanity's futile attempt to buy what can only be given freely.

Bieber’s realization echoes the gospel itself: love is not a transaction but a gift. The same God who paid the cost for reconciliation still calls us to count the cost—not in silver or gold, but in surrender of life and will.

The Cost: Love, Obedience, and the Fear of God

Christ’s obedience was born from a perfect love, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of the One who sent me” (John 6:38). In those words, Jesus reveals a love—rooted in surrender. “I do as the Heavenly Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31). From that love flowed God's gift: a love that cost Jesus his life so that others may be reconciled with God and one another.

To love, then, is to obey—to seek a heart with the will of the Father in mind. Without that anchor, love becomes detached, reduced to emotion, theology, or philosophy. Christ showed that true love begins not with the self, but with reverence for God; only then can true love rightly flow to others.

Yet in our age, love has been given a new name. Just months ago, on The Joe Rogan Experience, Elon Musk declared, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit.” To him, compassion had become a form of self-sabotage—a “civilizational suicide.” He argued that emotion clouds judgment and that empathy enables manipulation (Musk par. 4). His view, echoed by some cultural voices, suggests that feeling deeply emotional is now a liability.

Musk’s skepticism exposes something deeper than a theological or philosophical disagreement; it reveals a crisis in the very nature of love itself. Bieber’s confession of exhaustion spoke to the pain of conditional love; Musk’s words reflect the fear of costly love—the kind that requires a sacrifice.

But Christ’s life offers a counterpoint. His empathy may have weakened him, but it did not define him. The Son’s obedience to the Father was the fullest expression of love—not sentimental, but sacrificial. Where the world sees empathy as weakness, heaven sees it as God's power. The Cross stands as the ultimate paradox: mercy as victory, compassion as strength.

Our culture may fear that love will weaken us, yet in the obedience of Christ, we see the opposite: it is indifference, not empathy, that destroys civilizations. To love as Christ loved—to obey as Christ obeyed—is to take courage despite the fear, to care without losing oneself, and to live as children of a Father whose will is to love without measure.

Flesh and Faith: A Love That Touches Heaven and Earth

“For I am convinced,” Paul writes in Romans 8, “that neither death nor life… nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Here lies a heart of flesh: reconciliation that does not depend on the impossible but on the unwavering love of God. The world falls short, but God's love endures—immeasurable and unstoppable. Through Christ, the impossible is paid; mercy and justice meet, and the flock is held secure by the Shepherd who lets go. Humanity cannot save itself—but God can and did: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). From beginning to end, salvation is God's love story—infinite, fleshy, and near.

Yet even as Holy Scripture declares this cosmic faithfulness, the human heart searches for it in tangible form. Musician Sufjan Stevens has spent years tracing that line between spirit and flesh. In a May 2025 interview with Vulture, he described religion as “very sexual,” even “erotic,” noting that in the Eucharist, believers “literally eat the flesh and drink the blood of God.” His words—provocative, poetic, and real—emerged from grief (Stevens). After losing his partner, Evans Richardson, in 2023, Stevens began to see faith as a bodily encounter: love made real through spiritual longing.

To some, his views felt radical. To others, it rang deeply true. For what is Unity if not the meeting of the infinite with the intimate? The Word became flesh—and dwelt among us. Stevens’s sensual theology, in its own way, explains this truth: that Godly love does not hover above humanity but descends into it. The bread, the cup, the ache of loss, the warmth of skin—each becomes a site of sensation, where heaven brushes against the earth.

In a world that often separates the sacred from the sensual; Stevens’s vision and Paul’s conviction speak with one voice. God’s love is not detached or aloof; it is embodied, enduring, and eternal. It is a love that bleeds and breathes.

And so the story comes full circle: from the infinite to the intimate. The love that nothing can separate us from is not only spiritual—it is physical and reminds us we are loved.

The Cost Paid: True Love and How It Feels

“For the natural man is an enemy to God… unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh holy through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” Mosiah 3:19

The story of reconciliation is, at its core, a story of cost. Humanity, left to itself, cannot pay the price. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the flock—because God's love is never broken. Through Christ, the cost is paid, the separation bridged, and the love of God remains. It is an eternal love, rooted not in human will but in God’s unwavering mercy—an unshakable gift that endures beyond measure.

Yet the struggle to understand that kind of love continues. In the shattered mirror of our modern age, three individuals—Justin Bieber, Elon Musk, and Sufjan Stevens—each reveal how the human heart still wrestles with the cost of reconciliation.

Bieber, weary of performance and conditional affection, confessed online that he was “tired of transactional relationships.” His words struck a nerve because they exposed a spiritual longing that runs deep in our culture—the exhaustion of constantly earning real worth. Musk, by contrast, declared empathy a weakness, a “civilizational suicide.” His fear was not of apathy but of vulnerability: that to care too much is to lose it all. Stevens, meanwhile, turned faith itself into an art of intimacy, describing religion as “erotic” and “embodied,” seeking God not in heaven but here on earth and passionately.

Together, they form a trinity of confession: the one who longs to be loved freely, the one who fears love's power, and the one who dares to feel love's touch. Their voices may diverge, but their questions converge—what does it mean to love freely? What does it mean to believe? To be in a world that measures loves worth in silver and gold?

In that tension, the truth still speaks: love is not a transaction to manage, nor a weakness to fear, nor a sensation to master. It is a gift to receive. A cost already paid. A love that flows through every heart that dares to believe.

As the noise of productivity, ideology, and self-gratification grows louder, these confessions invite us to pause—and remember. The love that holds creation together has never depended on our capacity to give. It only asks that we receive it fully paid from the Son who counted the cost.

Works Cited

Bieber, Justin. “Justin Bieber Says He’s ‘Tired of Transactional Relationships’ in Cryptic Post: ‘That’s Not Love’.” People, 8 June 2025, people.com/justin-bieber-says-hes-tired-of-transactional-relationships-instagram-11750334.

Stevens, Sufjan. “Sufjan Stevens: ‘The Bible’s Very Gay’ — Singer Opens Up About Religion, Loss, and Healing.” them., 16 May 2025, https://www.them.us/story/sufjan-stevens-interview-carrie-lowell-tenth-anniversary-partner-grief-anniversary.

Wazer, Caroline. “Yes, Musk said ‘The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.’ Here’s context.” Snopes, 10 Mar. 2025, https://www.snopes.com/.