God is love and repeatedly it is mentioned, God spoke’ to convey some instruction or blessing to mankind to lead them into a holy and righteous life. God speaks to us sinners and listens to our prayers and supplications. Much greater proof of His love for us was manifested in the birth of His Son Lord Jesus, for in Him God put on humanity to be our Immanuel, live with us and free us from our slavery to sin. What could be the greater blessing from God?
Enjoying the love of God – Someone sent me a photo where a doctor tells a patient that to overcome all his pains, he needs love. The patient questioned, ‘if that does not work then what?’ The doctor replied, then you need a double or a triple dose. We can love someone or receive love only if we have love within us, for hurt people, hurt others and this chain goes on and on. Not so the Son of God, with the fullness of God’s love in Him, from the cross, the first thing He said was, “Father, forgive them for thy know not what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34). In like manner Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, when he was being stoned to death could say, ‘Lord, do not charge them with this sin (Acts 7:60).
In today’s world where life is such a struggle with both parents working, the children feel neglected. Earlier with the grand-parents living with them, the children enjoyed abundant love and summer breaks were a great joy for all cousins to get together. Today the houses of people are becoming bigger and their hearts smaller, with less space for others. People who have not experienced closeness in their childhood feel loneliness in their hearts and those who are mistreated by anyone in childhood, erect protective walls around themselves. On the other extreme are those who keep on searching, stumbling and carrying on hurting others and getting hurt
Apostle John has stated clearly, ‘He who does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 John 4:8). We may preach and teach any amount about love but if it is not manifested in our behaviour, first towards our family members and then towards others, it is all a lie. Both of my daughters are busy in their business and helping in the ministry. To avoid any undue stress to me, many times they tend to keep their problems to themselves. I feel uncomfortable in this and as any parent, I want to know everything, to be able to help them and my words hurt them. Over this, because of some situations in my army life, I am hard of hearing also and cannot hear clearly, adding to their anger.
Like most of us from poor families with not much social skills, we always carry the fear of rejection by others. This gets more dominant as we reach a certain status in life and we tend to create a false façade around us, just to win approval of others, creating further fears of being found out. As we grow strong in faith, our fears start receding into the background. At the beginning of His ministry, Lord Jesus healed people doing great miraculous deeds. The Pharisees and Sadducees presented His work to others as if He was possessed by the devil. His brothers, born of May and Joseph, ‘went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, ‘He is out of His mind’ (Mark 3:21). The Son of God was so filled with the overflowing love of God the Father, that He could fill others with the same love. He could condense all the law of God to say, ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another’ (John 13:34). The command is repeated by Him in the same sentence, for emphasis.
Apostle John had experienced this love, to say about himself without naming, five times in his Gospel, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. He was the only disciple who lived to a very old age and as Pastor of the Ephesians Church, as per legend, he used to be helped on to the pulpit to preach. He would then repeatedly say, ‘My children, love one another as the Lord loves you’. Loving others means to accept others as they are and that is the most difficult thing for us. We love someone and see the way we want Him to be and make efforts to change them. A wife, before marriage loves everything about her husband but after marriage starts making all out efforts to change him into her likeness. Husbands do the same, without realising that the sameness does not attract each other but repels.
God’s love for us is ‘agape’ love, a love that expects nothing in return and He honours the free-will He has given to everyone (John 3:16-17). He never forces anyone into loving Him, but He desires that through the sacrifice of His Son everyone be saved and not perish. We do not feel this love of God, because He never loves to lead us to do something for Him and He acts in us at a pace we can bear, for He knows us better than we know ourselves. For us love sounds great as a principle but impossible to do, seeing the way people are. I love myself even while knowing all my weaknesses, but I do not accept the same weaknesses in someone else. If you cannot love others as they are, including their weaknesses, think about how you love yourself. Then love others also as yourself and you can also feel the love of God to the fullness.
At the end of the work of creation, ‘God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31). God knew the state of everything beforehand but He looked around to rejoice in all of creation, including its expected flaws in the future. When we live in the fullness of God’s love, we rejoice in all those we have helped or have helped us in the past. This challenges us to work harder to be a blessing to many others.
Why do followers of Lord Jesus face hatred? God created heaven first and angels were also created to live in His presence and fullness of that love. His revealed name to Moses from the Burning Bush is ‘YHWH Esher YHWH’, ‘I Am who I Am’. God is complete and perfect in Himself and needs nothing else to become better or more useful for mankind and creation. Therefore, He has blessed the angels in heaven and mankind on earth with free-will to ignore, love or reject Him and His love outright. Neither our love nor our turning away from Him add or decrease anything from His Divinity. God desires for us to be like Him, be blessed with the fullness of His light and in His light be a light for others to show them the right way.
Apostle Paul defines the reason for the opposition and hatred for God’s Word. As per him, ‘even if our Gospel (salvation in Lord Jesus) is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them’ (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Satan, filled with pride in his perfection, wanted to be like his Creator, the Most-High God (Isaiah 14:14). In like manner he misled Eve and Adam to be like God by eating the fruit of the ‘forbidden tree’ in the Garden of Eden.
But why did the All-Knowing God create the tree there? Why did God separate darkness from light and, as is natural darkness does not remain in the presence of light, did not remove it from the earth? Without the tree of good and evil or darkness, there will be no way to choose the opposite view and make a decision, for mankind. His command of not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is not to prevent some information but experiential knowledge. This would lead to oneness with that experience, for God knew that man is unable to control that experience and will be ruled by that. Despite the daily visits of the LORD God to teach them the right path to life, they faltered and succumbed to the devil’s lies. Lord Jesus came to face all the evil that the devil could hurl at Him and overcome all that. This simple message of salvation through the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God for sinners, is difficult to fathom by the evil controlled minds of people.
From the Gideons ministry we were distributing the Holy Bibles to all the MLAs and ministers of a state. While offering the same to an official of the assembly, he refused to accept by saying, ‘how can my hunger be satisfied by someone else eating my food?’ All of our efforts failed to convince him about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament and transference of sin to the animal to die in our place. We are faced with the allegation of money being given to convert people to the faith or the temptation of providing free education to their children. The devil invents new lies every day to lead people astray and their eyes are blinded to the truth.
I have been highlighting the four basic essential gifts that a believer receives through faith. First, all our sins are forgiven, however evil and dark they may be. King David in his deep and close relationship with the LORD God could prophecy about the work of the Saviour Lord. He could declare, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us’ (Psalm 103:12). Once forgiven, God the Righteous Judge will never afflict us, for His Son has already suffered for our sins (Isaiah 53:5). For the same offense two persons cannot be punished.
Second, thus sanctified He blesses us with His presence in us to ‘teach us all things and remind us of the Words of Lord Jesus’ to walk right (John 14:26). He fills us with His Spirit and through Him with ‘power and love’, blessing us with self-control to overcome the lies of the devil and walk right.
Third, an assured place in heaven. Lord Jesius has clearly promised to first prepare a place in heaven and second to come and take each believer at His right time there (John 14:2-3). On the cross, Lord Jesus, despite all the pain, promised to the criminal crucified with him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). What He promised to Him, the same is also available to every believer here on earth, to be with Him in heaven immediately at death, for the separation with God is removed due to forgiveness of sins.
Fourth, answered prayers. Lord Jesus promised answers to prayers, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you’ (Matthew 7:7). The promise to us is, ‘open your mouth wide, and I will fill it’ (Psalm 81:10).
There is no other authority or way that promises such great blessings, without asking anything in return and anyone who still turns down the offer is definitely controlled by the forces of darkness who have clouded their thinking.
Why are the wicked not punished for a long time? The LORD God revealed His glory to Moses by declaring His traits, ‘merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth’ (Exodus 34:6-7). He waits for a long time for a sinner to repent and turn to Him. I was presented a copy of the Holy Bible by a Pastor in a remote district in Nagaland in 1979 and I did not bother to read it for a very long time, though my wife was a believer and I used to go to the church with her on special occasions. It was this mercy of God that helped me and many others like me to turn to Him and receive forgiveness. Apostle Peter has confirmed the same, ‘The Lord is slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9). This is the great blessing of the love of God, for He desires that none should perish (John 3:17).
God’s justice is essentially of three types. First, immediate justice that is meted out before, during or immediately on commission of a sin through disease or suffering. Lord Jesus while elaborating the concept of His justice told the parable of a man desiring the chopping down of a fig tree not producing any fruit. The gardener sought another year to care and put fertilizer and then decide (Luke 13:8)
The second, delayed justice to avoid suffering of others connected to the sinner in any way.
The third is the final justice on the Day of judgement of the Lord. On the final day of the White Throne Judgement, books will be opened and all the dead will stand before God (Revelation 20:11-15). Then the dead will be ‘judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books’. On this final judgement ‘death and Hades’, the abode of the souls of the dead and the fallen angels ‘were cast into the lake of fire’. Those who submit to Lord Jesus by seeking forgiveness of their sins and accepting Him as their Saviour find their name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. On the day of judgement ‘anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire’. This is the revelation that Apostle John had received on Patmos Island about the ‘End Times’.
Lord Jesus declared about the uncertainty of the day of His Second Coming, ‘of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not the Son, but only the Father’ (Mark 13:32-33). While on earth as our Messiah, even Lord Jesus was not aware of that day, which is definite. In the meantime we as believers must try and reach out to all the people that we can and support all those actively involved in this. Also, we must ‘take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is’. We stay alert to avoid falling into the trap of lies of the devil and be misled. We continue to earnestly pray for others to turn to the Lord and seek His hand of mercy to save lives. Apostle Paul was also expecting Lord Jesus’ coming during his time and so must we, for no one knows the time.
God’s love expressed in the birth, sacrifice, resurrection and ascension of His beloved Son, continues to work in the lives of people on earth. This is a great blessing from Him that the Day of Judgement has not come so far, so that the message of salvation could reach everyone and souls could be saved. If you or anyone known to you has not yet turned to the Lord to accept Him as their Messiah, do so now, for who knows, whether another chance will be there or not. The decision taken now will affect your eternity and the destination could either be the joy of heaven or the fire of hell!
