Saturday 10 August 2013

The Law of Love


1 Jn 4:18  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Made in the image of God, we are wired for love.  We were created to receive, respond to and give out love.  I was contemplating on the law of love as I was having a walk down by the beach this morning and ended up lamenting because we don’t walk in the law of love as we should do.  We know that God’s “perfect love cast out all fear” so therefore the opposite of love is fear.  When we are safe in God’s love, we have no fear of the future.  We are content to wait for God’s timing and for His plan to be worked out in our lives. We know that He has a perfect plan in His Love for us, and He will see His perfect plan accomplished.  Not only do we have no fear for the future but we look forward to it with great expectation as we abide in His Love.

Psa 23:4  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Psa 46:2  Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Love is the highest law there is in the universe and it is a law that should supersede the law of sin and death that is in our members.  If we put the law of love in its rightful place, we would not cater to the law of sin and death in the flesh.

1Co 13:4  Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

1Co 13:5  does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

1Co 13:6  does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

1Co 13:7  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1Co 13:8  Love never fails.

Love is the more excellent way, and grows out of continued devotion to God, being filled and filled again and again by His Love.  Love is the higher path and love brings meaning to life.  Where there is no love, there is all kind of bitterness, fear and envy.  Love is tender, yet love can bring discipline where needed.  Love always forgives and restores. 

The Law of Love supersedes prejudices and emotions.  Jesus was weary and resting at the well in Samaria when a woman, caught in the bondage of looking for love in the wrong places, came to draw water at the well. The Jews disliked the Samaritans so much that many of them would not even step foot in Samaria.  Enmity was so great that no Jew would have spoken to a citizen yet alone a woman.  Jesus could have totally ignored this woman because of the years of ingrained prejudice between Jews and Samaritans.  He could have turned aside from her in His weariness but the Law of Love in Him reached out to her and brought her into freedom.  Jesus knew her sin.  He knew the darkness in her soul but He brought her into the light and love of His mercy.  In doing so, salvation came to her and the townsmen.

Love doesn’t push boundaries but keeps everyone safe within those boundaries.  Love also contemplates the consequences before it is put to the test.  It protects.  It does no harm to anyone. Love prefers others over and above oneself.  This is why Jesus said to follow Him, we need to die to ourselves take up our cross and follow.  Love walks in the light because it has nothing to hide and where all can be seen and everyone kept safe.  Love is clearly seen by the way we treat each other.

Joh 13:35  By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

This kind of unconditional, pure love is hard to find in the world today.  This is why when others see genuine love displayed in the church it draws them in.  There is nothing like being an eyewitness of a loving encounter to warm and soften the heart.   Nor is there anything like being the giver or reciprocator of a genuine loving gesture.

Let us pray every day for God to so fill us with His Love that we are compelled in the overflow to reach out and touch others for the Kingdom so that His Love can be perfected through us as we obey Him in all we do because our love for Him.

Rom 13:8  Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Thoughts on the Trinity


It is so hard for our finite minds to capture and understand the Trinity, that God is One in 3 different and distinct personalities.  Yet throughout the Word, the work of the Godhead is clearly seen and demonstrated. “In the beginning” of what we know as the creation account, we see God saying “Let there be... and we know God is at work and the Holy Spirit is “hovering over the waters”, waiting for the Word to act on it.  In the creation of man, God says Let us make...” John’s gospel teaches us that “in the beginning” which ties us right back to the creation event, “was the Word and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God”.  So we see, right from the beginning God the Father, God the Son (the Word) and God the Holy Spirit.  Yet they are one.  I don’t think that we can understand this mystery but have to take it by faith believing what God has revealed to us in His Word. 

God gave the Israelites the Shema which is “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” (Deut 6:4, Mar 12:29)  Jesus Himself when questioned by a scribe regarding which is the first commandment of all repeated this phrase from Deuteronomy and later also went on to confirm that He and the Father were One. (Joh 10:30)

Throughout the Old Testament, we see the hand of God and the power of the Holy Spirit at work but the Old Testament is seemingly relatively silent about Jesus, or is it?  No, it definitely isn’t, but is packed with shadows, types and prophecies of the coming One who would bring the human race into the salvation through the Jews.

From the outset when Adam and Eve sinned, God spoke of the Seed that would come through the woman to crush satan’s head. (Gen 3:15)  Jesus ties the seed, who He is to the Word in the parable of the Sower who sows the seed and as he is scattering the seed, it falls upon four distinct and different soils representing the hearts of humankind, some receptive to the Word and others not.  John’s gospel, which introduces the deity of Jesus, tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.  Clearly Jesus, The Seed is the Word of God.

One of the best scriptures for me concerning the power of the Word is Rom 1:16  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” and another in Revelation 12:11, “And they overcame him [that is satan] by the blood of the Lamb and the power of their testimony and they did not love their lives unto death.”  Speaking the Word of God is powerful for it brings those who hear it and mediate upon it into freedom, overcoming the power of the enemy’s accusation in their lives.

It amazes me every time, how from cover to cover, God completes for us a beautiful puzzle of the Godhead’s predestined action plan and love for a fallen people to save and deliver from the kingdom of darkness and the power of sin.  God loves and care so deeply for the human race.

Right from the Old Testament, God begins to build a nation through whom He will send a Deliver and Saviour.  He promises Father Abraham that through his son Isaac, his descendants will be numerous and Abraham would be a “father of nations”.  Through the story of Abraham offering up Isaac (although an angel holds his hand and God provided a ram for the offering instead), we see a prophetic type of another Father, God, who offered up His only Son Jesus on the altar of the cross for the nations of the world.  Isaac, as far as God was concerned, was Abraham’s only son being the son of promise.  Jesus is God’s only Son too, and who is the Son of Promise to a dying and hostile world.

According to some archaeological evidence, where Abraham presented Isaac as a offering is the same place of the crucifixion of Jesus - being a literal fulfilment of Abraham's offering of Isaac when God said, "On the mount of the Lord it [the final offering for sin] will be provided."

What an amazing truth for us that God provided His Son, Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins, and brought us into “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit” 2 Co 13:14 (a)