A Relationship Of Love
Posted by jerrywhite on Jan 17, 2013
“The heart and soul of a relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ the Lord is love. This is not ordinary human love; rather it is a love beyond human emotion and affection. It is a quality of love that is self-sacrificing for the highest good of another without any expectations of a return benefit. It is love where God alone is its source. John 13:1 contains a tender reference to this kind of love Jesus had for His disciples. ‘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 end’ (margin, ‘to the uttermost; or eternally’). He then commanded them to love each other with the same kind of love with which He loved them (John 13:34). Then He said, ‘If you love Me, you will keep My commandments’ (John 14:15).
The obvious inference is that this quality of love Jesus has for His followers is the kind of love that will motivate them to obey Him. He further expounds this essential truth when He says, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him’ (John 14:23). He adds to this paramount theme in John 15:9, ‘Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” The next verse explains that the way to abide in His love is by obedience to His commandments. He continues to emphasize this same indispensable truth of a love relationship with Him in later verses (John 15:12-14, 17; 16:27).
From this brief overview of Jesus’ last instructions to His disciples, it is plain to see that God’s marvelous plan for His children is that they enjoy a wonderful, loving relationship with Him as their heavenly Father. Nowhere is it in the heart of God that the Christian life should be a burden to bear or a drudgery to endure or mere duties to be done. He purposes that we live a life saturated with His love (Ephesians 3:18-19, 5:1-2). He wants and has made every provision for you and me to enjoy our Christian life with Him with joy and peace (John 14:27, 15:11).”
JRW
The Spirit and Presence of Christ, 49-50
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Contemplate God’s Love
Posted by jerrywhite on Jun 17, 2012
“Nothing so warms the heart of the saint as a spiritual contemplation of God’s love. As he is occupied with it, he is lifted outside of and above his wretched self. A believing apprehension fills the renewed soul with holy satisfaction and makes him as happy as it is possible for one to be this side of heaven. To know and believe the love which God has toward me is both an earnest and a foretaste of heaven itself. Since God loves His people in Christ, it is not for any amiableness in or attraction about them: ‘Jacob have I loved.’ Yes, the naturally unattractive, yes, despicable, Jacob—‘thou worm Jacob.’ Since God loves His people in Christ, it is not regulated by their fruitfulness, but is the same at all times. Because He loves them in Christ, the Father loves them as Christ. The time will come when His prayer will be answered: ‘That the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou has loved me’ (John 17:23). Only faith can grasp those marvelous things, for neither reasoning nor feelings can do so. God loves us in Christ: What infinite delight the Father has as He beholds His people in His dear Son! All our blessings flow from that precious fountain.
God’s love to His people is not of yesterday. It did not begin with their love to Him. No, ‘we love him, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). We do not first give to Him, that He may return to us again. Our regeneration is not the motive of His love; rather, His love is the reason why He renews us after His image. This is often made to appear in the first manifestation of it, when so far from its objects being engaged in seeking Him, they are at their worst. ‘Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest [manifestly] mine’ (Ezekiel 16:8).
Not only are its objects often at their worst when God’s love is first revealed to them, but actually doing their worst, as in the case of Saul of Tarsus. Not only is God’s love antecedent to ours, but also it was borne in His heart toward us long before we were delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son. It began not in time, but bears the date of eternity. ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love’ (Jeremiah 31:3).”
A. W. Pink (1886-1952)
The Nature of God, 156-157
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Knowledge Too High
Posted by jerrywhite on Feb 6, 2012
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 ESV
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“Just as an infant’s hand can grasp the acorn which holds the giant oak within it, so the youngest child who can lisp ‘the Nicodemus sermon’ of John 3:16 may with truth be said to know the gospel. And yet in every word of it there is a depth and mystery of meaning which God alone can fathom.
Tell me what it means to perish, and enable me to grasp the thought of a life that is eternal. Measure for me the abyss of man’s wickedness and guilt during all the ages of his black and hateful history, that I may realize in some degree what that world is which God has loved. Then, pausing for a moment in wonder at the thought that such a world could be loved at all, hasten on to speak of love that gave the Son. And when you have enabled me to know this love, which cannot be known, for it passes knowledge, press on still and tell me of the sacrifice by which it has measured and proved itself—His Son, His Only-begotten Son.
Make me to know, in the fullness of knowledge, Him who declared that the Father alone could know Him. And when you have achieved all this, I turn again to the words of Christ, and I read that it was GOD who so loved the world, and I crave to know Who and What God is.
I can rise to the thought of love, perhaps even to an evil world, and the conception of love giving up an only son is not beyond me; but when I come to know that it was GOD who loved, that GOD was the giver, and GOD’s Son the gift, I stand as a wondering worshipper in the presence of the Infinite, and confess that such knowledge is too high for me.
Sir Robert Anderson
His Victorious Indwelling, 50-51
Nick Harrison, Editor
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A Jealous God
Posted by jerrywhite on Dec 1, 2011
For I the LORD your God am a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 5:9 (ESV)
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“Believer, your Lord is jealous of your love. Did He choose you? Then He cannot bear that you would choose another. Did He buy you with His own blood? Then He cannot endure that you would think you are your own or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that He would sooner die than you should perish. He cannot endure anything standing between Him and your heart’s love.
He is jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh. He cannot bear that you should hew cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13).
When we lean on Him, He is glad. But when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely on our own wisdom or that of a friend, or worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, then He is displeased , and He will chasten us to bring us back to Him.
He is also jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To abide in Him alone is true love. To fellowship with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, is grievous to our jealous Lord. He wants us to abide in Him and enjoy His constant fellowship. Many of the trials He sends are to wean our hearts from the creature and fix them more closely on Him.
Let this jealousy, which should keep us near Christ, also comfort us. If He loves so much as to care about our love, we may be sure that nothing will harm us, for He will protect us from all enemies.”
C. H. Spurgeon
Beside Still Waters, 177
Roy H. Clarke, Editor
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Do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?
James 4:5 (ESV)
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Unreliable Feelings
Posted by jerrywhite on Oct 23, 2011
Through Him also we have [our] access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God’s favor) in which we [firmly and safely] stand. And let us rejoice and exult in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God.
Romans 5:2 (Amplified. Bible)
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“Our experiences are as fickle as April weather—now warm, now cold; now sunshine, now cloud; now dry, now wet. But our standing in Jesus doesn’t change. It is like Him—the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our sure position in Christ did not originate in us but in His everlasting love. It has not been purchased by us, but by His precious blood that pleads for us as mightily and successfully when we can hardly claim it as when our faith is most buoyant. It is not maintained by us, but by the Holy Spirit.
If we have fled to Jesus for salvation—sheltering under Him, relying on Him, and trusting Him—then we are one with Him forever. We were one with Him in the grave, one with Him on Easter morning, one with Him now as He stands in the light of His Father’s smile. No doubt or depression can for a single moment affect or alter our acceptance with God through the blood of Jesus, which is an eternal fact.
Our standing in Jesus is our invested capital. Our emotions at best are but our spending money, which is always passing through our pocket or purse, never exactly the same. Cease to consider how you feel and build on the immovable rock of what Jesus is, has done, is doing, and will do for you in times to come.”
The Best of F. B. Meyer, 22 ((1847-1929)
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Everlasting love never ends. Infinite love has no limit. Unchanging love is never affected. This is God’s love for His children. If you are born from above then you are secure in God’s measureless love for you. He knows your every weakness and loves you. He knows your sinful history and loves you. He knows your every flaw and loves you. He knows your feelings of unworthiness and loves you. Your Heavenly Father wants you to be at rest with great peace in His incomparable love for you. Do you believe this?
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