The Love of Christ for Us

 

The Love of Christ for us

He loves us:

Eternally-

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.

Ephesians 1:4b-6

Preemptively-

We love because He first love us. 

I John 4:19

But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 

Romans 5:8

 

Totally (at max capacity)

Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost. 

John 13:1

 

Sacrificially-

Greater love has no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ Jesus loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. 

Ephesians 5:2

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Galatians 2:20

Specially-

Greater love has no man than this, that one lay down himself for his friends. You are my friends is you do what I command you.

John 15:13-14

I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even a You have loved me.

John17:23

See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.

I John 3:1

But the lovingkindness of the Lord is everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children, to those who keep His covenant and remember His precepts to do them.

Psalm 103:17-18

Expressively-

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits; who pardons all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases; who redeems your soul from the pit, who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. 

Psalm 103:2-5

Righteously-

The Lord performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so great is His lovingkindness to those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. 

Psalm 103:6-12

Tenderly-

Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. 

Psalm 103:13-14

Tenaciously-

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

Loving God

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 

And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God 

with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."

 This love that Christ is speaking about is a personal love, an intimate love, a relational love. This love grows out of our knowledge of Him and is basic to our relationship with Him. 

 

To love our God with all our heart, soul, and mind is an unfettered love, a love without restraint, a love without hesitation. It is a full-on frontal embrace without reservation and without self-consciousness. It is a love that fully engages the object of its love. It is a love that knows it is accepted and a love that knows it is safe. Therefore, it is a love that trusts and a love of confidence; and, as such, is a love of commitment and a commitment that entails and engages our total person. 

 

This is a love that brings the fullness of joy; the deep and abiding joy that in and of itself is a source of strength. This joy is not subject to circumstance, but seems to thrive in the worst of circumstances. It is a joy that cannot be shaken, because its foundation is a trusting and confident love involving the entire person, soul, heart, and mind; and the object of this love is Himself immovable, unshakeable, unspeakably good, eternal, immortal, unchanging, and our soul knows it very well. 

 

Let us journey on, let us press on, to know our God and our Lord better…more deeply and more completely. It is in knowing Him and growing in our knowing of Him that our love for Him grows ever stronger and deeper; and in this and through this our lives are enriched and we experience the blessing of abundant life.

Certaintiy in a Time of Uncertainty

You are good and do good.

Psalm 119:68

The Lord is good to all and His

mercies are over all His works.

Psalm 145:9

For You are good and ready to forgive,

and abundant in lovingkindness

to all who call upon You.

Psalm 86:5

For I the Lord do not change
Malachi 3:6

The Glory of Israel will not lie
or change His mind.
I Samuel 15:29

Every good thing given and every perfect gift
is from above, coming down from the Father
of lights, with whom there is no variation
or shifting shadow.
James 1:17

And we know that God causes all things
to work together for good to those who
love God, to those who are called
according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting.
Psalm 138:8

In uncertain times, the one thing we can be
certain about is the unchanging certain
character of our good God.

To Know Jesus

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life;

no one comes to the Father but through Me.

If you had known Me, you would have known

My Father also; from now on you know Him

and have seen Him."

John 14:6-7

To know Jesus is to know the way to God, for He is the way, the very way to God.

To know Jesus is to know the truth of God, for He is the truth, the very truth of God.

To know Jesus is to know the life of God, for He is the life, the very life of God.

To know Jesus is to know God, for He is God, the very person of God.

"This is eternal life, that they may know You,

the only true God, and Jesus Christ 

whom You have sent."

John 17:3

God Made Visible and Knowable

In Psalm 77, Asaph the Psalmist says, "The sound of Your thunder was in the whirlwind; lightning lit up the world. The earth quakes and shook. Your way went through the sea, and Your path through the great waters, yet Your footprints were unseen."

The power of the invisible God is displayed all around us, and cannot escape our notice; but God has not remained unseen as He has become flesh and has lived and walked among us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is why when Philip said to Christ, "Show us the Father."  Jesus replied "If you have seen Me You have seen the Father." 

In Christ we have the fullness of God in bodily form. To see Christ was to see God, and to know Christ is to know God.

This is what is behind Christ's statement in John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." We come to the invisible God through the visible Son, and we come to know God, through that same Son.

May we all come to know Jesus Christ and know Him well, so that we can experience the fullness and abundance of eternal life.

A Daily Prayer

Lord, guide me with the wisdom from Your Word.

Protect me from the weakness and blindness of my pride.

Strengthen me to stand for You and speak Your truth.

Prepare my mouth and other's hearts for gospel opportunities.

May I be mindful of bringing glory to You.

 

Thinking on the Incarnation

Christ said, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father."  Colossians tells us that in Christ resides the fullness of Deity.  In Christ God came to man, because man in his sinful state could not come to God. Thus the blessedness and joy of contemplating on the incarnation; God in Christ reconciling man unto Himself.  What grace, what mercy, what love!

The Great Grace of God

The richness of the doctrines put forth in Ephesians is truly amazing. These doctrines are a plentiful provision for hours of meditation and enjoyment. It is always hard for me to read through the first three chapters without stopping and contemplating on one of the great truths that are included therein.

One of the things that makes this book so rich is how the the doctrines presented are interwoven with one another and support one another. One of the doctrinal strands that runs through this book is the grace of God. I am currently preaching through Romans and I have just finished with Romans 3:18, and if you are familiar with verses 9-18 of Romans 3,  you know that this section is God's testimony on sin's absolute dominion over man and its result. Man's utter sinfulness, his utter desperation because of his sin, his utter inability and complete lack of desire to come to God, and his utter unworthiness before God has been on my mind for the last few weeks. With this backdrop in mind, as I was reading through chapter one of Ephesians one this week, the grace of God presented in the first few verses literally jumped off of the page at me.

What does man need from God, the God whom man has spurned, the God whom man has sinned against, the God whose holiness we will all be measured against and found so so lacking? Man needs grace, not an idle grace, not a passive grace, not a benign grace, not an impotent grace, but an active all-encompassing, super-abounding, God-given and God-directed grace. So as Paul dives into the deep end of the pool in laying out the doctrines of salvation in the first 3 chapters of this letter, he lays as the foundation of our salvation, the marvelous grace of God, and he wastes no time as he weaves grace in at the very beginning of this epistle.

Here is a short outline of grace in the first eight verses:

The Declaration of Grace vs 2
"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

This is a familiar greeting from Paul and he uses it or something similar in every letter. In fact, it is so familiar that we tend to gloss over what is being said. Have you ever wondered why this greeting is being used, and used every time?  What is God saying to His church, His people, those that He has purchased through the sacrifice of His Son? He is declaring that grace has been given to us, mercy has been extended to us, His favor has been bestowed on us. It is a potent reminder of the wonderful gratuitous benevolence of God to us.

Paul gives us an explanation of what this grace to you means with his statement in Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God." When we also consider this verse along with Romans 3:24 "being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." we comprehend more fully just how gracious God is in His provision of salvation. It is a gift, and through Paul's epistles He has declared it is from Me to you.

The Definition of Grace vs 3
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."

Through the years I have heard many definitions of grace, from what the word means in the Greek to man's attempt to define it. I think this verse most completely sums up the essence of what grace is. It is God's blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Grace is God's blessing. It is a spiritual blessing upon the heart and soul of man. It has its origins and its climax in the heavenly places; and it is given and accomplished in and through Christ.There is an old song I learned in Sunday School and the chorus is, "Count your blessings, name them one by one, Count your blessings see what God has done." The blessing of grace is a multitude of spiritual blessings too numerous to count, and they go on for all eternity as we see in Ephesians 2:7 "so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." The phrase "mind-blowing" does not even come close to describing the riches of the blessing of His grace.

The Beginning of Grace vs 4
"just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world"

The grace of God did not come about as a result of the fall. No, the grace of God has been operative since before the foundation of the world. Before time and creation, God's grace was already being bestowed upon us in His choosing of us. Before we were born we were already the recipients of His marvelous saving grace as He placed us in His eternal redemptive plan.

The Purpose of Grace vs 4
"...that we would be holy and blameless before Him."

We know that the will of God for us is to be holy as He is holy in all our behavior (I Peter 1:14-16). We also know that in our flesh, in our own strength and by our own ability we cannot keep that command. It is by the grace of God that we are made adequate to be holy before Him. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Romans 5:20). There is always a greater supply of grace available than the sin that entangles us. Paul shows us the reality of this in his prayers for the Ephesians in 1:18-21 and in 3:14-20. There is abundant spiritual power and abundant spiritual resources for us to be holy before Him through this grace in which we stand (Romans 5:2).

The Foundation of Grace vs 4b-5
"In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself"

The foundation of grace is the love of God. The love of God for those whom He would call as His own, those whom He would adopt into His family, those to whom He would give His name. Because God is love, He is a God of grace. Grace operates and flows out of the great love of God. Paul says this very distinctly in Ephesians 2:4-5 "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)"

The Graciousness of Grace vs 5
"according to the kind intention of His will"

The Greek word for "kind intention" carries with it the idea of a benevolent purpose. God's grace for us has as its end a benevolent purpose. It is for our good and our blessing and our benefit that God bestows His grace upon us. His grace for us is purposeful and deliberate, not random or whimsical.

The Result of Grace vs 6
"to the praise of the glory of His grace"

God's grace is indeed glorious, and should be praised. Inherent in praise is the idea of thanksgiving. In our praise of Him we should indeed thank Him for His grace to us. In consideration of all that His grace is and all that we have because of it, we should open our eyes to its glory and respond in praise.

The Cost of Grace vs 6
"which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved"

Grace is the unmerited favor of God. We have done nothing to earn it, and our actions and attitudes toward God in our pagan state would not warrant it, so He freely bestowed it on us in Christ. We have grace because of what Christ has done on our behalf. As I have mentioned in a previous post, we stand before God with no merits of our own, but with all the merits of Christ.

The Power of Grace vs 7
"In Him we have redemption, through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace"

Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin. A line from a hymn that states well the power of grace. Sin cannot overcome grace, grace is greater than all our sin. Where sin abounds grace abounds all the more (Romans 5:20). We are forgiven our sins, not because of anything we have done, but because of all that God has done; and it is all of grace. God extends His grace to us in His forgiveness of all of our sins, having nailed them to the cross.

The Measure of Grace vs 7b-8
"according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us"

The riches of His grace are immeasurable. When we stand in grace, there is grace as far and as wide as we can see. We cannot outlive it, we cannot exceed its reach, we cannot use it up, we cannot diminish it in any capacity. For whatever we need grace is available. For whenever the need grace is available. There is no limit to the grace of God, and He has lavished it upon us. He has generously given us all the full measure of His grace, and it is inexhaustible.

We need grace from God, in all of its aspects, in all of our life.  Let us marvel together at the great grace of God that has been given to us through Christ.

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ignorance of the Scriptures

Ignorance of the Scriptures has given rise to thousands of evils.

From this seed the great corruption of heresies has blossomed;

from this spring have flowed careless living and wasted labors.

Just as anyone deprived of the light of this world cannot walk 

straight, so those who do not see the rays of the divine Scriptures

walk in thick darkness. They regularly and inevitably fall into many sins.

John Chrysostom 

Early Church Father

As it was then, so it is now. 

A Daily Perspective

 

It matters not the praise of men.

It matters only the pleasing of Him.

 

(Galatians 1:10)



A Truth for the Day

God’s discipline will always match our disobedience!!!

 

 

A Thought for the Day

 

You cannot be guided by circumstances when

you are refusing to be guided by God's word.

 

 

 



His Goodness and Ours

Psalm 119:39b...Your ordinances are good.
Psalm 119:68 You are good and do good, teach me your statutes.

Why would the Psalmist ask the Lord to teach him His statutes?  So that he may be good and do good just like his heavenly Father (Matthew 5:48), as it is from His statutes that he learns what is truly good.

Father, this day, this week, this month, fulfill our every desire for goodness, and attend our works of faith with Your power so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified in You and You in Him.  Amen. (II Thessalonians 1:11-12)

Our Response to Answered Prayer

Too many times when God answers our prayers we

 disregard it because it doesn't come packaged as we "expected."

Victory in Christ

For Jesus Christ the road to Calvary was the road to victory.

For us, the daily taking up of our cross is the key to victory in 

the living out of our Christian life.

The Longings of the Christian Heart

The longings of the Christian heart are

inspired by God and fulfilled by God.

Psalm 37:4

Biblical Confidence

If we are going to restore confidence in the Bible,

we must start with restoring it in the hearts of  church

leaders.  If the Doubters lead the Doubtful they will 

never arrive at Certainty.

Colin Adams

The Key to Focusing on the Things of the Lord

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;

Your lovingkindness, O Lord is everlasting;

Do not forsake the works of Your hands.

Psalm  138:8

The truth that the Lord will accomplish what

concerns me frees me to focus on what

concerns Him.

A Satisfying Life

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst

for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Matthew 5:6

The Christian life rightly lived is a life that

is well lived; and a Christian life that is 

well lived is a life that satisfies.  This is a

life that leaves a good taste in your mouth. 

The Test of Our Christianity

Remember, the test of our Christianity,

both as to its genuineness and maturity,

is not just what we know, but how

we live it out.