GOD LOVES YOU – ACCEPT IT AND LIVE IT OUT
Sakkie Parsons
Translated from Afrikaans: “God het jou lief – Neem dit aan en leef dit uit.”
As I was thinking of our Lord's love for us reading my Bible, our Lord laid the next on my heart which I would like to share with you.
First, just read the part that drove me to write down what came to my mind:
1 JOHN 4:7-10
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Let's look again – even if we're still going to get just a glimpse of what it means when we read:
1 JOHN 4:10 … but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
We read:
ISA 53:3-10
3 He (Jesus) was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. (For your sake and for my sake.)
Do you remember what the Word tell us, how did Jesus experience the sorrow and anguish on the cross?
PSALM 22:16-19
16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet–
17 I can count all my bones– they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
19 But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Then He hung there on a cross, and He looked at His murderers and enemies and at all the people over the ages – including you and me – and we read:
JOHN 19:28-30
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst."
29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
How does this love of God Almighty look like that He has revealed to us through His Son Jesus Christ and what our Lord want, that we should reveal to Him and also to our loved ones and neighbour, and live it out to them?
Let us first look at how Jesus Himself, who, as you read above, lived it out for us in totality, – how He explained this law to us so simply:
We read:
MAT 22:35-40
35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
37 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.
38 This is the great and first commandment.
39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
Because our Lord knew that people would add something this or there, to complicate His great love, He led Paul under the guidance of the Holy Spirit – whom He also entrusted with most of the New Testament – and Paul write:
ROM 13:8-10
8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
How does this great love look like that God Himself has revealed to us in the flesh, and now require from us to live it out towards our loved ones and neighbour?
Paul explains it this way:
1 COR 13:1-10
How indispensable love is
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
You know, I read up to here and I think:
I do not know if I will ever in this life pass the test completely towards everyone around me – but as a child of our Lord I will never stop as long as I live, to strive for it.
To use my great hero Paul’s words on another occasion and make it applicable on this writing on myself and in love on you who read here – if you would like to apply it on yourself in the context of this writing.
FIL 3:12-14
12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
In reading the following, I want to show you something that remains a mystery to many people that they don’t see when they read this passage:
1COR 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Listen carefully:
1COR 13:13 So now faith (in God, but to God there is something I can give to Him and my neighbor, which our Lord value higher and greater than faith in Him, and we read 🙂 But the greatest of these is love!
We read:
13 ..hope (in God – but for God there is something I can give to Him and my neighbour, which our Lord value higher and greater than hope in Him), and we read:
But the greatest of these is love!
Now read the whole verse again:
1COR 13:13 So now (these are all three characteristics of a true Christian’s discipleship as you read it here) faith (in God), hope (in God) and love (for God and for my loved ones and neighbour); these three.
But the greatest of these (as far as our Lord is concerned) is love !
I conclude with Romans 13:8
ROM 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Greetings,
Sakkie