For God so loved...

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

I just saw the video, 3:16 by Max Lucado. He goes through this verse in a devotional sense looking at each part. What an amazing verse. It sums up the essense of the Christian faith. God is justified as good and righteous because he has so loved! He has not been cruel or mean. He is not like man that oppresses and does violence. He so loves. He has responded to our unloving ways with redeeming love. Love that brings forgiveness and eternal life. He has given for us that which is most valuable, his beloved and only divine Son.

When a perfect loving being encounters unloving, uncaring beings who hurt and cause pain, it is repulsive. He has the power to instantaneously do away with his sin-laden creatures. But love is patient and kind. It holds back and is longsuffering. Instead of reacting to the unholy with immediate destruction, he has given his only Son. The Holy meets the unholy and responds with giving love!

"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:17)

What else is left for the one whom God has offered forgiveness and eternal life, giving his Son, yet who rejects this undeserved love? In the final judgement, God will be justified because he gave all in love yet was still rejected. He continues to call out to his enemies to be reconciled. But what remedy is left for those who refuse? God's enemies continually accuse him of cruelity because of the wrath to come. But it is not God who is cruel. For God is loving and gracious toward his enemies; it is they who are cruel and unloving. And love must conquer the enemies of love as is just and fitting.

But what a great and marvelous joy to have one's eyes opened to the beauty and goodness of our great Father in the face of Christ! His love endures forever to those who receive it freely by faith!

John

The Lord longs to be gracious

"Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!" (Isaiah 30:18)

What an inspirational verse this is to me. It always reminds that God is loving and that his very nature being love moves him to be gracious to me. I worship him because he is good. I will wait for him because good will come.

This message from the Lord was written to a nation who had become corrupt. They rejected the Lord's console and protection (vs 2-3). They had become rebellious, deceitful and unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction (vs 9). They didn't want to hear the words of the prophets nor be told about the Lord (vs 10-11). Although they were being oppressed by a foreign nation, they did not seek the Lord for help.

How does Love respond to the antithesis of love? It must oppose it. Kindness is grieved by cruelty. Truth recoils at deception. The Giver seeks no communion with the selfish. Yet in all this God does not stop desiring to be gracious. He calls out patiently for reconciliation. To those who hate the Love he calls for repentance--the changing of the heart:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.' Therefore you will flee! You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.' Therefore your pursuers will be swift! " (Isaiah 30:15-16)

Though the obstinate want to flee from that which is good, The One who is Good still rises to show compassion. Just turn from fleeing away to fleeing toward. He will be gracious for that is what he longs to do.

Oh Lord, you give me comfort to know of you desire to be kind and good. You are patient with my selfishness and are ready to forgive and lead me on the path of love. Forgive me of my impatience, my quickness to anger, my lack of love. And lead me in the peace of Christ. Amen

The Love that Surpasses Knowledge

Ephesians 3:16-19

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I feel as though recently I have been renewed and strengthened once again in that knowledge of the glorious love of Christ. And it reminds me of my conversion years ago when that knowledge was first impressed upon my heart and my eyes were opened. The only words suitable: glorious rapture! How awesome it was. And how awesome it is. It is the soul coming to life. It is new birth!

When I was lost, I found no beauty in Christ. Only indifference. Like so many, the love of God was foreign to me. But God is worthy of worship because God is love--true love. Love comes from him and love is the path that all who find him travel on. The more He is known, the more His love becomes clearer and the more He is loved.

Love is the essence of godliness and sin is the absence of love and the presence of hate, hostility and bitterness. The lost are hostile toward Jehovah God and are blinded toward the pureness of his love. They attribute cruelty to God because of His Judgment upon sin. They can not imagine nor accept that God is good. But love, though patient and forbearing in great measure, can not indefinetly endure hostile enmity toward it. It must either change it to love or separate itself.

Such is God: He is patient and forebearing, not wanting that any perish but come to repentence (turn from hostility toward him to love and belief). He continues to shine down his benefits upon all his enemies and restrain His judgment. But in eternity the soul must either move toward Love or be separated forever from Love.

This is love: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. While we were still enemies, Christ died for sinners. God sent His Son to be the eternal sacrifice for our sin.