God Gave The Greatest Gift of All!

    "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16). This is arguably the most well-known verse in the Bible. These few words capture the reason why the events that we now remember and commemorate during Christmas happened. Yet it is also misunderstood by many. Now God loves you and me, that part is clear. What we may fail to grasp is the condition of the object of his love. Indeed, those who do not understand this nor accept this will find no reason to believe in Jesus Christ.

   DA Carson explains,

What is God saying to the world? "World, I love you"? Is he saying, "World, your scintillating personality, your intelligent conversation, your wit, your gift - and you're cute! I love you! I can't imagine heaven without you." Is that what he's saying? In other words, when God says, "I love you," is he declaring the loveable-ness of the world? There are a lot of psychologists who use the love of God in exactly that way. If God says, "I love you," it must be that "I'm okay, you're okay; God says we're okay. He loves us; it must be because we're lovable."

Biblically that is a load of nonsense. The word "world" in John's gospel typically refers not to a big place with a lot of people in it but to a bad place with a lot of bad people in it. The word "world" in John's gospel is this human-centered, created order that God has made and that has rebelled against him in hatefulness and idolatry, resulting in broken relationships, infidelity, and wickedness. 

   -DA Carson (The God Who Is There)

    People who live in this world can never be categorized as naughty or nice. Left to itself, the world is by nature, morally bankrupt. John McArthur said,

The dark and ugly side of Christmas is sin...sin. The heart of Christmas is this, Christ came into the world to save sinners. Christ was manifest to take away sin. "You shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sin." And the real beauty of Christmas is to understand the ugliness that it cures.

    God loved this world not because it was lovable, adorable, and beautiful, but because he is that kind of God. God is holy, meaning, he is morally perfect. Think then about how this morally perfect Being would love. To love perfectly is to love the most unlovable of creatures who "did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Romans 1:21). That's us. He demonstrates his love to us by giving his Son, who through his death on the cross and his resurrection, made the way to save us from eternal wrath and reconcile us to God.

    Christmas is the favorite holiday for many because of the decorations, gifts, food, Christmas lights, Christmas trees, family gatherings, and merriment but these are all fleeting pleasures. For the greatest and most excellent pleasure that we can experience this Christmas is being astonished at the fact that God would actually love us! God did not condemn us with our sin but loved us in a wonderful, surprising way by giving us His Son - the greatest Gift of all.

JOHN PIPER|Thankful for the Love of God! Why?

From John Piper's sermon on the love of God :

"Have you taken the American definition of love - being made much of - and so twisted God to fit that definition so that now the only way you would feel loved by God is if he makes much of you? When in fact, the love of God is so working as to change you so that you enjoy making much of him forever and ever and ever. And that's the end of your quest. There is not anything beyond it."

"You are being tricked, many of you, into thinking that the satisfying thing in life is to be made much of. If I could just get some people to clap for me, to like me, to approve of me, to give me a raise or to give me an advancement, if I could just get someone to pay attention to me, I would be satisfied. You wouldn't. I promise you. In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, you wouldn't. You will be satisfied when you forget yourself and are swallowed up in Jesus Christ, and he becomes your treasure and your delight and what you cherish and what you value and what you spend the rest of your eternity growing in your capacity to see and savor - to know and delight in him forever and ever - and it will get better and better and better."

LINK: Thankful for the Love of God! Why?

Reflections on the Greatest Commandment

Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment.

-Matthew 22:37 (NIV)

    Can we be commanded to love God? It would seem that being commanded to love is like being forced to love. We all know from human experience that true love can't be coerced. So why does God command us to love him with our whole being? Shouldn't love be freely given and not demanded?

    The reality is that in our natural state we would choose not to love God. Even if He were to suddenly appear before us we still wouldn't love him. In Romans 1:18-32, Paul says that God has made himself known plainly to man ever since the creation of the world. Man considered God and judged that God is unworthy to be loved.

   We do this in two ways :

1. We do not honor God as God nor worship Him. (Romans 1:21)

2. We exchanged the truth for the lie and worshipped the glory of the creation over the the glory of the Creator (Romans 1:25). We would rather love the world, ourselves, or a god of our own making.

So we have to recognize that this command reveals that human nature is fallen. We cannot just decide one day to flip an inner switch and start loving God. We don't have that capacity in our natural state.

    The thing is God knows this. We can never obey this command unless our nature is radically transformed. The apostle John said that everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God and conversely, whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7-8). The work that God makes in the new life that is received through faith in Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to love God (and also love others) with all our our heart, soul, and mind.

    How?

    John Piper explains,

"The most immediate and decisive work of God in the new birth is that the new life he creates sees the superior value of Jesus over all else (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). And with no lapse of time at all, this spiritual sight of the superior value of Jesus results in receiving Jesus as the Treasure that he is. That is faith: receiving Jesus for all that he is because our eyes have been opened to see his truth and beauty and worth."

-John Piper in Finally Alive

   

    That's the key. We cannot see the truth about God. We cannot see the infinite value and beauty of Jesus Christ. God has to do something in us so that we will see that loving Jesus is better than loving the world, better than loving ourselves, and better than worshipping our man-made gods. We are able to love God because God first loved us. We cannot love him without his love being poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5) and without his mercy that looked beyond our fault (Ephesians 2:4-5).

    So we are not forced to love God, rather because God's love is in us, it is now in our nature to love God. Because now we see Christ as the precious treasure that he is, loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul becomes our passion and our delightful duty.

Love Your Enemies Part 2 : God Avenges, You Overcome Evil With Good.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:17-21 (ESV)

Before we get to the main subject, it's important to look at the context. This is found at the beginning of the chapter 12.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

-Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)

    We ordinarily think that mercy involves helping the poor or the weak among us. However, mercy shines brightest when it is given to the most undeserving. And who are the most undeserving of our mercy than our enemies? Consider this,

For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

-Romans 5:10 (ESV)

That's who we were before we came to faith in Christ! We were God's enemies and God showed his great mercy towards us. In the Old Testament, there was a propitiatory sacrifice and a dedicatory sacrifice. Propitiation means appeasement. The blood of Jesus is a propitiatory sacrifice that brought forgiveness of sins (Romans 3:25). We were objects of God's wrath but the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the propitiation that brought favor with God. A dedicatory sacrifice was a response of thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins. So Paul says that because we experienced God's mercy through the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus, we respond by offering our lives in thanksgiving as a sacrifice of dedication.

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Here is Love - a hymn

God's love is so infinite, words can't do justice to fully describe it. Yet we see divine love in action through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. How can we live if we forget what manner of love the Father has given to us? May this hymn help us remember.

Here is love vast as the ocean,

Loving kindness as the flood,

When the Prince of Life, our ransom

Shed for us his precious blood.

Who his love will not remember,

Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten

Throughout heaven's eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion

Fountains opened deep and wide,

From the floodgates of God's mercy

Flowed a vast and gracious tide.

Grace and love, like mighty rivers

Poured incessant from above

And heaven's peace and perfect justice

Kissed a guilty world in love.

Love Your Enemies Part 1

You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

-Matthew 5:43-45 (ESV)

    This is one of the hardest commands of Jesus to follow. Did Jesus mean to say that as Christians, we have to be chummy with our opponents, critics, and detractors? How do we love people who don't like us?

   First, let's begin with what Jesus said. To "love your neighbor" is a command that is found in the Law ( see Leviticus 19:18) but to "love your neighbor and hate your enemy" is not found anywhere in the Old Testament cannon. DA Carson explains,

One cannot be absolutely certain how the slogan “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy” developed, but it is not difficult to make some reasonable guesses. If the text says, “Love your neighbor,” then surely, some might think, there is implicit sanction for not loving those who are not neighbors. That may not be logically sound, but it is understandable enough. And then it is only a small step to the conclusion that it is entirely appropriate to hate certain people, especially certain enemies.

-DA Carson, "Love in Hard Places"

    The social mores of that time allowed some forms of personal hatred as acceptable. It still holds true in today's society. Hatred along ethnic or racial differences is both an ancient and modern day evil. Some harbor hate on those who do not agree with their values or those who possess a different moral compass. Favorite targets of purportedly "Christian" indignation have been : homosexuals, atheists, abortionists, and evolutionists. A "Christian" extremist sect has threatened to hold a public burning of the Koran.

    Jesus, however, mandates something completely different, "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." See how radical this is : not only should we love them but we should pray for them also! How very rare it is to find the names of our enemies in our prayer request list. This is not something that we naturally do.

    Why should we obey? Jesus pointed out that this is in keeping with our identity as children of the Father. In the ancient times, and even today to some extent, sons followed in their father's footsteps. For example, Jesus was a carpenter because his father was a carpenter. "Like father, like son,"is a familiar adage to us and this applies to the identity of a true Christian. DA Carson explains,

In a world where most sons ended up doing what their fathers did—bakers’ sons became bakers—the parallels between fathers and sons were often striking. One of the characteristics of the son in this sort of world is that he acts like his father. If you lie and want to kill, the reason must be that your father is the devil himself, for the devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). Conversely, since God is the supreme peacemaker, then if you make peace, it is entirely appropriate that you be called a son of God (Matt. 5:9). So also here: if you love your enemies, then you are acting like God, and in this respect you are rightly called a son of God.

-DA Carson, "Love in Hard Places"

    Jesus said that the Father shows his example by causing the "sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." In other words, God does not restrict his providence to good people only, he also gives this blessing to the unrighteous. This is God's common grace: blessings that are given to all people, whether they are good or bad, but not part of salvation. Jesus himself loved his enemies and prayed for them while nailed on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34)."


    Jesus continues on to say,

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers,what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

-Matthew 5:46-48 (ESV)

    What makes true Christians different from this world is the way they live out the love of God in their lives. They don't love only those who are like them, they also love those who are different and those who don't agree with their views and value system. It's a way of loving that is so radical, it stands out in this twisted and broken world.

    It's the love of the Father that we are showing to our enemies. As sons of God, we must love likewise. In the kingdom of God, no other kind of love exists. Jesus said, "You therefore must be perfect as the your heavenly Father is perfect." The bottomline is that we must aim for perfection with regards to our morality because, as sons of God, we bear the name of the perfect heavenly Father.

    We learned from this passage that one practical way of loving our enemies is to pray for them. And there's more which I will explore in future posts.

    Have a nice day!

"Crazy Love"

    I found Francis Chan's book, "Crazy Love", three years ago as I was searching online for Bible study material that I could use for our small group. Up to that time, I've never heard of Francis Chan but I became curious and wanted to find out more about him because he was of Asian descent and because my mother's maiden name was also Chan. At one point, I wondered if he was a distant relative.

    Little did I know that God would use this book to wake me up from religious complacency. Francis Chan wrote like a prophet. He accurately describes a common spiritual malaise experienced by many Christians today - a "half-hearted, distracted, partially committed, lukewarm" kind of Christianity. That was me. I was a regular churchgoer, tither, and ministry leader. I lived a good and moral life. My life outside work revolved around involvement in many church programs and activities. But I did not truly enjoy God nor fully love Him. I thought that I did. My works seemed to show that I did. But when I examined and looked honestly inside me, I knew that I didn't. Don't get me wrong, I believed in Jesus Christ but I found it too hard to live this faith consistently. It was frustrating!

God used the book to show me what I was missing :

1. I had an inaccurate view of God.

   Francis Chan admits that he grew up believing in God without having a clue what He is like.

I called myself a Christian, was pretty involved in church, and tried to stay away from all of the things that ''good Christians" avoid -drinking, drugs, sex, swearing. Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God. Whenever I failed (which was often), I'd walk around feeling guilty and distant from God. In hindsight, I don't think my church's teachings were incorrect, just incomplete. My view of God was narrow and small. 

-Crazy Love, p. 20

My experience was the same. The Bible shows us that we have an amazing, awesome, eternal God who loves us with an eternal, outrageous love. God loved us rebels and we are unworthy of his love. But God relentlessly pursued us to reconcile us back to himself through Jesus Christ his Son. I did not fully understand this in my life, hence my awe factor of God was small. I was living a "works righteousness" Christianity by generating a righteousness thru my own strength and effort so that God would approve of me. I thought that's how God loved me. Hence, I missed God's tremendous worth and power in saving me from the very thing that I was doing. I lacked the Biblical understanding of his grace. My inaccurate view of God and his love led me to miss the true meaning of the gospel.

2. I assumed that I was good soil.

   The concept comes from the parable of the sower that Jesus told (Mark 4) and also in a simile by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 6:7-8). In college, I was a student leader with Campus Crusade for Christ. I led Bible studies and organized mission trips. I was actively involved in church. I experienced blessings from God but that did not necessarily prove that my heart was a good soil that produced good fruit. Instead of fruit, I was producing thorns and thistles and I was choking. Thorns are anything that distract us from God and chokes the fruit of righteousness that grows out of faith in Jesus Christ. We're choked by too much of the good life. This is especially true in the Western world where people are able to earn higher income and enjoy the blessings that come with economic prosperity. This comfortable lifestyle ends up becoming toxic by making us complacent. We become the sort of Christians that love and obey God so long as he doesn't impinge on our lifestyle. All this talk about radical Christian living, self-denial, taking your cross, self-sacrifice, and suffering for the gospel are major turn-offs. We'd rather hear preachers and read books that teach us how to be more comfortable, influential, and successful and have God be a benefactor of all these niceties of life.

    I was glad that the Holy Spirit had removed the scales in my eyes such that I could see my spiritual condition. Logically, the next question for me was,"What must I do?" It was through this book that I got introduced to John Piper. Francis Chan quotes him,

The critical question for our generation-and for every generation-is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?

-Crazy Love, p. 100



That question penetrated deep down my soul and exposed where my affections lay. The antidote to lukewarm, selfish, comfortable living is love. Francis Chan writes,

And isn't that what God wants of us-to crave this relationship with him, as we crave all genuine love relationships? Isn't that what brings him glory- when believers desire him and are not merely slaves who serve him out of obligation?

There is often a great disparity between how we feel about faith and how we are meant to feel. Why do so few people genuinely find joy and pleasure in their relationship with God? Why do most people feel they have to either pay God back for all he's done (buy his love) or somehow keep making up for all their inadequacies and failures (prove their love)?

-Crazy Love, p. 101

Because it's in our nature to always want to be in control of everything, we try to control even our faith. We try to muster more love for God and end up loving him out of obligation. Living this way, makes Christianity a boring, guilt-ridden chore!

    I recall praying something like this :

God I need you to help me to love you. I need your help to love my wife, children, parents, siblings, and my friends genuinely. From now on, I want to pursue loving you and delighting in you. Show me how awesome you are. Open the eyes of my heart to see how wide, how deep, and how great is your love for me.

   Right around that time, I started blogging. My first post was a reflection of his bigness as told by the universe that He created. The second post was my futile attempt at measuring his love that had no bounds. The third post was a listing of who I am in Christ - something I first learned way back in my days with Campus Crusade for Christ and one that I must remind myself daily. These were my first steps to falling in love with Jesus Christ to depths that I have never experienced before.

   Gradually, comfort was no longer living the good life but tasting and seeing that the Lord is good! Delight was no longer just a day at the movies or at an ice cream shop but became meditating on the Word of God regularly, wanting to know more of God and his infinite worth. I became dissatisfied with settling for less on Sundays : sermons that make God seem small and man big, a worship experience that seems to say to God, "Lord watch me worship you, you're gonna like it," rather than exalting God's majesty and greatness. For the past three years, I have seen this law at work : if I replace Jesus with something or someone else of lesser value, I will never be truly satisfied.

   On second thought, I am related to Francis Chan through our faith in Jesus Christ. We're brothers!

Tim Keller : On True Love

In his book, The King's Cross, Tim Keller gives valuable insight on the difference between false and true love, fake and authentic love.

FALSE LOVE

1. False love's aim is to use the other person to fulfill your happiness.

2. Conditional - You give it only as long as the person is affirming you and meeting your needs.

3. Non-vulnerable. You hold back so that you can cut your losses if necessary.

TRUE LOVE

1. In true love your aim is to spend yourself and use yourself for the happiness of the other, because your greatest joy is that person's joy.

2. Unconditional - You give it regardless of whether your loved one is meeting your needs.

3. Radically Vulnerable - You spend everything, hold nothing back, give it all away.

OUR REAL PROBLEM

Nobody is actually fully capable of giving true love. Tim Keller writes,

"All our love is somewhat fake. How so? Because we need to be loved like we need air and water. We can't live without love. That means there is a certain mercenary quality to our relationships. We look for people whose love would really affirm us. We invest our love only where we know we'll get a good return. Of course when we do that, our love is conditional and non-vulnerable because we're not loving the person simply for himself or herself; we're loving the person partly for the love we're getting."

We feel abused or manipulated when we're on the receiving end of fake love. We must also be aware that our love may be motivated by self-interests.

THE SOLUTION

"What we need is someone to love us who doesn't need us at all. Someone who loves us radically, unconditionally, vulnerably. Someone who loves us just for our sake. If we received that kind of love, that would so assure us of our value, it would so fill us up, that we could start to give love like that too. Who can give love with no need? Jesus."

A true Christian remains in the love of Christ. Being loved by Jesus enables us to love friends and family with true love, a love without neediness. All the fakery and manipulativeness of human love fades away and the love of Jesus Christ, the only true love, will be operative in our relationships.

God's Love and Your Obedience

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

-John 15:10-11 (ESV)

   Jesus' love precedes our love for him and we know this in Scripture (1 John 4:19). Abiding or remaining in his love is linked to our obedience. Now this connection may not be obvious. The key is in recognizing that a Christian's relationship with God is the same as the Son's relationship with the Father.

    A true Christian enjoys a loving relationship with God with the same kind of affection that the Father and his Son have with each other. God's love creates in us a desire to obey his commandments with the same gladness and willingness as the Son obeys the Father. The by-product of this relationship is joy to the fullest. What kind of joy? The same joy that Jesus has with the Father. This is the nature of our relationship with God. And we have it through faith in Jesus Christ.

    Hard to believe isn't it? Sounds impossible, you may think, as you look at the mess in your life. Maybe not. God's gift of salvation is infinitely lavish in accord with his glory and majesty! God does not give cheap gifts. The apostle Paul says this,

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

-Romans 8:32 (ESV) 

Two implications, one is a call to self-examination of your Christianity and the second is a clarification of your Christian identity.

1. God's love is not in you when your Christianity does not culminate in practical righteousness.

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

-1 John 2:3-6 (ESV)

    Alexander MacLaren commented, "We are tempted to make too much of the emotions of the religious life and too little of its persistent, dogged obedience." When we only seek the "spiritual high" on Sundays and prefer not to listen to sin-convicting, weighty sermons but only uplifting sermons that make us feel good, how can we learn how to live in righteousness? If we neglect the pursuit of holiness and tolerate the presence of "small, respectable" sins in our daily living, can we truly say that we're Christians? Unless your life backs it up, your public demonstrations of your love for Jesus are in vain.

2. The reality of God's love in you shows in how you live your life.

   John Piper says that when you experience God's love in your heart, you will renounce all known attitudes and behaviors that contradict this demonstration of love to you. Righteousness is attained first by faith then by love. We come to know and believe that God loves us, we love him in return, and love is perfected when we keep his commandments. Some Christians are frustrated that they are struggling in sin and hence, wonder about the reality of their faith. Yet this is exactly how the love of God works in us. We will hate the presence of sin in our lives, we will get rid of sin's entanglements, we will resist the enemy, and we will strive to obey the commands of Jesus Christ.

  So where do you think you stand? Does your Christian life affirm the love of God or does it confirm the absence of divine romance?

God's Love = 3 Septillion kilometers?

"Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam McBratney is a classic, best-selling children's book. The story is about a Nutbrown hare and his son trying to outdo each other as they answer the question. If you're not familiar with the story, I've embedded the "animated" version of the book.




In the end, the son was looking out into the big dark night and realized that nothing could be farther than the sky. So he tells his daddy that he loved him right up to the moon. The daddy hare, touched by statement, tenderly looks at his son who was already sleeping. Then lovingly he whispers that he loved his son right up to the moon - and back. Daddy couldn't be outdone!

Now imagine a similar storyline. Perhaps with a title like this: Guess How Much God Loves You. Well, we really won't need guessing. That's because the Bible already gives us an idea.


For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. (Psalm 103 : 11)

I could paraphrase that verse this way : God's love for us extends as far as going from earth to the outermost regions of the universe - and back. We can then perhaps quantify it. If the farthest galaxies are about 15 billion light years away from earth, then God's love would extend as far as 30 billion light years. This distance is roughly 30 billion x 10 trillion kilometers which is equivalent to 3 septillion kilometers! That's 3 followed by 24 zeros.

Ok, I admit that it's just a silly mathematical exercise. The bottomline is that God's love for us has cannot be bounded by any number. No, not even googol (10 followed by 100 zeros) nor infinity!

Paul says this :

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

How can we grasp God's love? A good start would be reminding ourselves again why we care to put up lights, decorate trees, buy gifts, send cards, and go to parties at this time of the year. Read John 3:16.