“Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, the we should be called the sons of God; therefore, the world knows us not, because it knew Him not.”
The first thing that I want to do in this article is to establish the fact that God loves us. I know that this is a theme that I have written about time and time again, but it is a theme that we can’t get enough of. Some people are so hung up on the judgments of God in scripture that they cannot see the great love that He has for them. John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” 1 John 4:8 says “God is love.” That is a statement of fact. It does not just say that God loves, but that God is love. The Bible depicts God’s love as being so great that it is His very nature. His love is so great that He will not let us off, and He will not let us get by with what is bad for us. It is called God’s discipline. Here is the proof text for it: “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as children, my son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, or faint when you are rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? God’s love for us is complete." (Hebrews 12:5-7) The second thing I want to do is to establish that it is because of God’s love that we can be His children. (“Sons” can also be translated “children.”) The fact that we can become children of God is the fulfillment of God’s love. The great God of the universe loves us so much that He wants to establish a relationship with us. As we saw in John 3:16, God went to great lengths to give us a personal relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ. Romans 5:8 gives us another glimpse of the greatness of the love of God: “But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In His matchless love, God did not wait until all of us got better; He showed His love for us while we were still sinners. In the New Testament this is called grace. God’s grace tells us that He loves us and will save us in spite of our sinful selves. We need to grasp the reality of this. There are people who will not come to Jesus because they think they are too sinful. They just do not understand the matchless love of God. He is in the business of forgiving all sinners, and He does not measure how deep in sin they are. All He wants to do is to dig us out of the depths of sin. Every individual on this earth is a candidate to become a child of God. That is how far-reaching His matchless love is. The third thing I want to establish is that when we surrender to God’s love and receive Jesus as our Savior, our lives take on a new purpose. It becomes our responsibility, and our purpose, to share the love of God with other people. The text tells us that “the world knows us not, because it knew Him not.” In other words, the world does not determine our lifestyles or our theologies. Our task is to show Him to the world in order for them to become His children too. This is why at the end of each of the gospels, Christians are told to go out into the world and witness about the matchless love of God. Just because the world doesn’t know Him, or us, does not mean that the world cannot come to Him or join us. Our purpose is to share the matchless love of God with a world that is filled with envy and hate. It was love that compelled God to save and it is His love in us that compels us to share that love with others. Pause now and thank God for His matchless love, and ask Him to give you opportunities today to share His love with others. Bro. Joe
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“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (CSB)
Have you ever sung this hymn: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong. Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so.” When you sang that hymn as a youngster, you had no idea of the profundity and the eternality of that love. Romans 8:38-39 gives us the full scope of the love that God, through Christ, has for us. I want to point out some things about this profound love for you to ponder today. First, the tone of Romans 8:38-39 tells us that Christ’s love for us is inescapable. You might disdain the whole idea about Jesus, being saved, going to church and all of that, but you can’t escape the fact that Jesus loves you. You can make fun of it, make light of it, preach against it, etc. but you can’t escape the fact that Jesus loves you. He loves you because the Bible tells us so, but beyond that He loves you because you are in this world, and He loves the people of the world. If you are running from that love– stop it. Second, the love of Christ for us is personal: “Jesus loves me." His love for you won’t mean anything to you until you take it personally. You won’t know the meaning of His love for you until you take it personally. I have discovered in my own life that no matter what I am going through, Christ's love is present, and helping me to keep going. We might think that because Jesus loves us, He would never let us go through difficult times, but that’s just not the way life works. It is comforting to know when things are hard, that Jesus loves me. He is not indifferent about anything in my life. When I feel close to Him, He loves me. When I feel that there is some distance between us, He still loves me. Reach out and take that personal love that Jesus has for you. Third, Christ’s love for us is sacrificial. We need to let this truth burn into our souls: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” We need to stop and meditate deeply about what this means. Among other things, it means that our salvation was dearer to Jesus than His own life. He said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” This is exactly the kind of love that He has for us. Let’s just pause here and praise Him for His sacrificial love. Without it we would be hopelessly lost in sin. Jesus loves you. Rejoice!! Bro. Joe "A new commandment I give unto you, That you love one another as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another."
Ask any church member of a mainline church who the head of the church is, and he or she will probably say "Jesus." If He is the head of our particular church, why do we ignore what He tells us to do? One of the greatest ways we ignore Him is to pay no attention to what He tells us about loving one another. He said that the world would know we are Christians by our love for each other, yet a lot of what we do has nothing to do with love. It has to do with someone's ego, some deacon, pastor or matriarch. It has to do with who is going to make the decisions for the church. We get all snarled in the competition that is going on, and somehow the love that we are supposed to have for each other gets lost. We begin to see each other as rivals, or worse, as enemies. Where there is rivalry and enmity, love is smothered and, frankly, dies. What we need to do when this happens is to call a halt to everything that is going on, spend time in prayer together, love Jesus and learn to love each other again. We are not going to make a mark on our part of the world until we love each other, and others, as Jesus loves us. Continue to disagree, argue and blame, and your church will eventually die. The church at Ephesus in Revelation was about to die because it had "lost its first love." I think that is love for Jesus and for people. Let's stop ignoring Jesus and listen to what He tells us, particularly about loving Him and each other. Bro. Joe I always stand amazed in the knowledge that God loves all people and wants the best for all of them. However, not everyone accepts or returns that love, and not everyone wants the best of what God wants for them. It is true based on the Bible and Christian experience that God loves us. I want to take a little of your time and revisit John 3:16 and see what it tells us about the God who loves us.
God’s Love Is Universal: “For God so loved the world….” "The world" refers to everyone in the world. There is no one in the world that God does not love. No one can truly say that he or she is unloved. Jesus revealed this love in His earthly ministry. We read in the gospel accounts of Jesus that He loved the rich and the poor, the sick and the well alike. For example, Jesus loved the wealthy Zacchaeus, who was the wealthiest and the most hated man in Jericho because he was a tax collector who had stolen from the people. At the same time, we note that Jesus loved the blind beggar Bartimaeus. The cartoon character, Charlie Brown, or it might have been Lucy, said: “I love mankind, it’s people that I hate.” Well, God does not just love mankind in general; He loves every person in the world individually. This means that He loves you too. It also means that He loves those people that you do not particularly care for. God’s Love Is Sacrificial: “That He gave His only begotten Son….” Observe that God did not just send His Son – He gave Him. God revealed His love for every person by giving Jesus, His Son, to die for each one. In Matthew 1:21 the angel , told Joseph: “And you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” The meaning of this verse is revealed in Romans 8:23: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.” We further read in Romans 8:34: “It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is ever at the right hand of God, who also make intercession for us.” God gave His Son to die and rise again in order to make salvation possible for everyone. He gave His Son to die for you. You can truthfully say that “God gave His only begotten Son to die for me.” It is God’s intention that every person should take John 3:16 personally. God’s Love Saves: “That whosever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life….” According to this “whosoever believes in Him” can be saved. Notice that our responsibility is to believe. Those who believe in Jesus, those who trust their lives to Him, are saved, and “will not perish but have everlasting life.” There are many people who will not acknowledge the sacrificial love of God. They want to save themselves or find some other means of salvation. It is a pity that so many people who are loved by God refuse His great salvation and perish. This is not cruelty on God’s part, for in His great love He has done all that can be done to ensure eternal life to all. What more could people ask for than the life of God’s Son? What simpler course could people take than to believe in God’s Son? “Whosoever” includes you. You can be saved by believing in and giving your life to Jesus. “Whosoever will” also applies to all of the people to whom you need to witness. You can, and should, share the love of God with other people by the way you live and by witnessing to them. All people need to know that they are part of “whosoever.” Let’s celebrate the love of God. There is no other love that is both universal and sacrificial. There is no other love that can save. Bro. Joe “Open rebuke is better than secret love. 6. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” 28:23: “He that rebukes a man afterward shall find more favor than he that flatters with his tongue.”
I had a good time “wrestling” with these two passages in Proverbs. Let me share with you what I concluded. I call it “real love.” Real love reveals itself. The gist of 27:5 is that love should not be hidden. Three of the sweetest words that we can share with friends is “I love you.” When those words are really meant, they are like a gift from God. Real love can also reveal itself through action. Acts of love and kindness are also like gifts from God. We should not hesitate to share the love that Jesus has put in our hearts with others. Real love is honest. This means that real love offers constructive criticism. (We just need to realize that constructive criticism is given to the person for whom it is meant, not to someone else. Otherwise it is gossip. Just Saying!) Criticism borne of the love of Jesus is also like a gift from God. It is also important for us to be able to accept constructive criticism. I know that I have grown in my walk with the Lord and in my ministry by friendly constructive criticism. I've had the unfriendly kind too, and was sometimes even helped by it. We just need be sure that our honest criticism is accompanied by love. According to 28:23, real love does not needlessly flatter. If we are going to flatter someone, let’s be sure that we really mean it. Jesus set the example for us in His conduct with people. When He called Simon Peter to follow him, He told Peter that he was a “rock.” (That is what Peter, or Petros in Greek, means.) That was not false flattery, because Peter was a born leader. But when the “Rock” bragged that he would protect Jesus at all costs, Jesus lovingly told Peter that he would not defend Him but would deny Him. Of course, you know Peter denied Jesus three times. Later, before He ascended, Jesus again flattered Peter by telling him to “Feed My sheep.” (John 21:16) This was, again, a reference to Peter’s leadership qualities. When we really love people, we love them openly and honestly. This is what real Christian fellowship is about. We need more of it!!!!! Bro. Joe “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The Bible reveals a God who is not one-dimensional. Some see Him as only a God of love, who loves us so much that He approves of everything that we do. Some see Him as mainly a God of wrath, who can’t wait to “sock it to us.” According to what I read in the Bible, God is a God of love and a God of wrath. We can’t pick and choose what we want the nature of God to be. He is who He is – period! From my own perspective, I consider that the Bible never says that “God is wrath,” but it does say that “God is love.” 1 John 4:16 reveals to us: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us, God is love; and He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.” The Bible tells me that God loves me, and that is enough for me, I don’t need anyone else’s reassurance. I love to read verses like Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” He loved us enough to send His Son to die on the cross in order for us to be forgiven for our sins. The New Testament makes it clear, as do Old Testament prophecies that Christ had to die as a sacrifice in order for us to be saved. What you need to know today is that GOD LOVES YOU. It is not enough for you to know in your mind that God is love; you must also know in your heart that He loves you. Christ died for you! The Bible reveals to us that God loves us so much that He will not let us get by with doing what we want to do. The Bible tells us that God will discipline us when we sin. Discipline is a result of love, not of hatred. The author of Hebrews wrote plainly and simply about this. Quoting from Proverbs 3:11-13, he wrote: “My son do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or faint when you are reproved by Him, for the Lord disciplines the one He loves.” Then he wrote: “Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons (His children, male and female). For what son is there that a father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:6-7 HCSB) I knew that my parents loved me, but that didn’t mean that they let me get by with what I wanted to do. I grew up in the days when it was open season on children. Parents would not get sent to jail for giving you a swat or two. I probably did not get swatted as often as I should have, but you couldn’t have told me that back then. Discipline is not pleasant, nor is it meant to be. God uses His discipline to remind us to obey Him. For an example of the greatness of God’s love for us, I want to draw four words out of John 3:16 and take a look at the dynamic meaning of them: “for God so loved the world.” Lift up “God” and “world” and see the contrast. God is all holy, while the world is the opposite. (Just read some world history and you will see what I mean.) But the words that come between these contrasting words are “so loved.” This holy God so loved this unholy world that He gave His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. I can’t explain to you why this had to be, but I can accept it as a token of God’s love for me. I pray that you will accept it as a token of God’s love for you. Don’t diminish God in your thinking by making a one-dimensional “teddy bear,” or a “cosmic meanie.”Accept Him as the Bible presents Him and see what He can do in your life. Jesus loves you – accept His love. Bro. Joe “For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my foot stumbles they magnify themselves against me.”
“Yea, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” We do not normally think of David as having relationship problems, but some of his psalms prove otherwise. The two selections from Psalms gives us two examples of relationship problems. In these two examples David was beset by people who wanted to humble, or shame, him and by a friend who betrayed him in some way. Just read on in the psalms and you will find many passages similar to these. David knew what we should know, i.e., one of our biggest problems in this world is with people. Think about it, how many of your heartbreaking, or heartrending moments have been because of what other people said about you or did to you? If this has never happened to you consider yourself fortunate. (We might also consider the times that we mistreated someone else. Just Saying!) Jesus spent a lot of time trying to help us love and relate to people, because He knew that they would not always be easy to love and would not always be our friends. Paul wrote about relationships with other people, because he knew that they would be the cause of a lot of our problems. This is why it is so important to practice loving people on a daily basis. If we are to ever "love the unlovable" we will have to be filled with God's Spirit of love and really apply it. I'm afraid that in our churches we too often fail the "other people" test. The New Testament tells us only to love them. Let’s take David’s example from Psalm 41:9. There was someone he had trusted who betrayed him in some way. I don’t think that there is anything more disappointing than to be betrayed by someone with whom we have been close. Proverbs 17:17a says that “A friend loveth at all times…” This means that a true friend will not betray that friendship. We can’t do anything about others who are not true friends, but we can be careful ourselves to always be true friends and “love at all times.” What should we do in adverse circumstances like these? First, I would think that the first thing we should do is to pray for the person. Ask God to help your friend, and ask Him to help you continue to love your errant brother or sister. When I have prayed for people with whom I have had personal problems, I have found that I can’t dislike them. God knows what the situation is and He will answer our prayers. The second thing that we should do is to fight against the temptation for pay the person back. The Bible always tells us that vengeance belongs to God. It is difficult for us to not want to avenge ourselves when we feel that we have been offended in some way. But if we will look at Jesus, and how He reacted to such situations, we will see that we cannot really avenge ourselves. All that happens is that the strife continues on and on. Romans 12:17 tells us: “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” Evil can never stamp out evil; therefore, we do not return the evil done to us. The third thing that we should do is to seek to reconcile with the person. I know that this is difficult, and it should not be done until we have prayed about the situation and have forgiven the person in our hearts. We want reconciliation to be sincere. In order for this to be the reality, we will have to forgive. You might be thinking: “Bro. Joe, you have lost your mind. I want to insist that they apologize." That would be good, but I don’t remember that anyone who crucified Jesus apologized to Him before He forgave them. If the other person will not reconcile with us, we should simply wish them well and move on with our lives. Life is too short to hold grudges against people. We will always have to deal with people in one way or the other. Let’s just make sure that we deal with them in a Christlike manner. . Bro. Joe “Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. 5. For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. 6. Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplication. 7. In the day of trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me.”
Someone mentioned to me one day that a lot of my articles are based on Psalms. I thought about that and came to the conclusion that since I am in the process of reading the Bible through all of the time, and there are one hundred fifty psalms, a lot of my Bible reading time is spent in psalms because there are so many of them, and they teach us a lot about life and about God. The text that I have used today is a case in point. David gives a wonderful description of God in the entire 86th psalm, but verses 4-7 especially spoke to my heart. In verse 4, David was rejoicing in the Lord and was in a spirit of prayer. He stated it “I lift up my soul.” When David thought about God, he was touched in the deepest part of himself – his soul. When is the last time that you meditated on God and He touched your soul? I asked myself the same question and concluded that I don’t do it nearly enough. In verses 5-7, David points out why he chose to go in this way. David meditated on the goodness of God: “For thou, Lord, art good.” There are many people who dwell on the judgments of God, and dismiss Him. That is a bad mistake, because God is not just a wrathful deity; rather, He is the God who sent His Son into the world to die for our sins. Take a little time today and meditate on the ways that God has been good to you, and you will feel Him in your soul. If you can’t think of the ways that God has been good to you, you need to do some soul searching and discover, or rediscover the ways that God has been good to you. What about your family? What about your children? What about your grandchildren? What about your Christian friends? What about the fact that you live in this great country? What about the fact that he died on the cross for you that you might have everlasting life as well as a relationship with Him. These ought to give you a few hints about how good God has been to you. David meditated on the forgiveness of God: “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive." I don’t know what point in his life that David wrote this psalm, but if you know the full story of David, there was plenty for God to forgive. I like to think that David wrote this psalm after he wrote Psalm 51, which was David’s prayer for forgiveness after his sin with Bathsheba. Take a little time and read David’s heart cry to the Lord to take him out of the misery of his guilt. We should praise God, for He is a forgiving God, who will cast our sins behind us and lead us on to a better life. The problem with a lot of people is that they think that they have no reason to be forgiven. Whatever you need to be forgiven for today, take it to the Lord in prayer and you will find that He is still “plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Him.” David meditated on the willingness of God to hear his prayer: “In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me.” David didn’t have to wonder if God would answer him; he knew that God would answer him. He will answer you too. He might answer immediately, or He might tell you to wait for the answer, but He will answer. He is, after all, Sovereign God, and He will answer you based on what is best for you. I have heard people say that they prayed and God did not answer. This is because they do not realize that God answers in His time. Take a little time today and meditate on these verses and draw closer to the God who is good, who is plenteous in mercy, ready to forgive and to answer your prayers. Bro. Joe “We love God because He first loved us.”
No one will argue with the suggestion in our title that God's love is great. The love that we are referring to is agape (ah-gah-pay) love, which is the Greek word translated as love in our text and in other texts like John 3:16. It is the Greek word always used in New Testament references to God's love. Love really is great, especially as it is revealed in the New Testament. This article will explain what I mean. God loves us We need to be careful not to say this too glibly or take it too lightly. It is amazing that the God of the whole universe loves us. Think of the misery if God had chosen to hate us instead of loving us. If you are like me, you do not want to think of the alternative. We would not have John 3:16 in the Bible about God loving the world so much that He gave “His only begotten Son” so that we could be saved. We would not have 1 John 4:8b in the Bible: “For God is love.” The Bible reveals that God is a jealous God and that He is a God of wrath, but it never tells us that “God is jealousy” or that “God is wrath.” The very essence of God is love, and we should be grateful for that. When we put love, grace and mercy together, we realize that we can be saved for eternity because of the great love of God. Rejoice today, not only that God loves the world, but that He loves you. We love God! Our text makes it clear that if God did not love us, we would not love Him. Through Jesus, God has shown us what love really is. He set the example. We need to ask ourselves, however, whether or not we really love God. It is easy to say, “I love God.” It is quite another to actually love Him. Jesus said that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments – we will obey Him. If we love God, we will want to serve Him in our churches and in our communities. We will share His love with the world through witness and ministry in the name of Jesus. Paul gave us a good example of what genuine love for God will do. He traveled extensively in obedience to his call to minister to Gentiles. Because he loved God, Paul was able to overcome his prejudices against Gentiles and preach the gospel to them. We should not simply say that we love God. We should prove it by our obedience to Him. What is the last thing that you did for someone because of your great love for God? We love each other!
Love’s greatness is revealed in the New Testament as threefold: God loves us, we love God and because of this, we love each other. Let’s practice New Testament love in our lives. Bro. Joe “He that does not love, does not know God, for God is love." God’s love is my favorite Biblical theme, if theme is the right word. According to 1John 4:8, love is the very essence of our faith. God’s love is not discriminating. Through Jesus we know that God loves everyone. He is not pleased with everyone, but He loves everyone. When we are told that “God so loved the world” no exceptions are given. It does not say that God loves most of the world, but that He loves the world – period. We should be glad because that means that God loves us. Also, it means that God never stops loving us. He is not always pleased with us and will discipline us, but He never stops loving us. It would follow that through Jesus, the love of God dwells in us; therefore, we should attempt to love all people as well. It will never be easy, but it will be the Christian thing to do and will make us more Christ like. God’s love is immeasurable. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Romans 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” This passage describes a love that has no bounds. God’s love is so deep and wide that nothing can separate us from it. Can’t we see this emanating from the cross? You cannot measure a love that will hold true even when the recipients of that love are not worthy of it. (We call it grace.) After all, Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We can put our own names on “they.” God’s love is active. We read it in Romans 5:8: “But God commends love for us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s love is not a mere feeling; rather, it is an action. Remember: “God so loved the world that He gave….” This means that God acted on our behalf to save us. God demonstrated His great love for us by having Christ die for us. He did this though we are all sinners. We can go back to the Old Testament and see God’s love at work for His people. We see God's love in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. We see God's active love in the protection of Israel during their years of wandering in the desert. Throughout the Bible, we see the active love of God, working in behalf of His people. What was true in the Old and New Testaments is still true today. God loves us and He demonstrates it through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. During this month of love, concentrate on the fact that God is love and that He loves us in spite of our sins and in spite of ourselves. There is nothing more reassuring than the fact that we have a God who loves us. We can depend on the fact that Jesus loves us. It is true that, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so….” Shouldn’t we feel compelled by the love of Christ to tell others about this God who is love and who loves us? Go look in the mirror and say to the image that you see there: “God loves me.” He really does. Bro. Joe |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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