“God islove,”
is the way the apostle
John expressed it (1 John 4:8, 16).
A
lesson in
the greatest love
When you come to know,
as the disciples did, the real Jesus and the
real story, it makes
all the difference in the world.
This demonstration of
love was so powerful. Do we grasp it? “For
God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that who
-
ever believes in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life. For God
did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world,
but that the
world through Him
might be saved”
(John 3:16-17).
Those who have not
experienced love from those who
should
have
given it, namely
parents or other family members, often have a difficult
time loving others.
Without the example of love from others, we would
not know love. Love is
something that cannot be explained to us; we
simply have to
experience it firsthand. We don’t know how to love until
it is shown to us
first.
Without experiencing
the goodness of others, we have no compel
-
ling reason to do what
is right. Without experiencing the love of God
expressed in the death
of Christ, we would have no compelling reason to
love others. Without
coming to the realization that God died for each of
us personally and
individually, we could not be convicted of our personal
sins to the point we
would never want to sin again.
God the Father and
Jesus Christ knew just how to go about accomplishing Their plan to bring
children into Their divine family—children who
would always want to
remain in this sacred and loving family relationship.
For Jesus—who was the
Creator of everything and who had lived for all
eternity—to live as a
mortal and among mortals and then die for them so
that they might have
eternal life also, can be nothing less than godlike.
The same is true for
the Father, who gave up His eternal companion,
closer to Him than any
human relationship can approach, and allowed
Jesus to go through
the suffering He did for the sake of all humanity. For
both, the sacrifice is
unimaginable.
It is unheard of in
human experience. Human goodness does not
come close. As Paul
wrote in Romans 5:7-8: “Indeed, rarely will anyone
die for a righteous
person—though perhaps for a good person someone
might
actually dare to die.
But God
proves
his love for us in
that
while
we still were sinners
Christ died for us”
(NRSV).
Paul concludes that
Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians
1:24) and that the
idea of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2) is “the hidden
wisdom which God ordained before the ages”
(verse 7). God’s plan
provides a way for our sins to be forgiven, but is
also designed so we
would not choose the way of sin ever again.
God knew how to solve
the problem of sin and predetermined His
purpose before the
first man ever drew breath.
At its heart, the story of Jesus
Christ is a love
story—the love of the Father who
gave His
only Son and the love of the Son who
gave
His life so that all who are willing
may ultimately share eternal life in the family of God.
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GOD IS GREAT
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