Throughout scripture, and especially in John's writings, we find the "God is Love" message over and over again. In fact from John 3:16, one of the most well known scriptures in the bible we read "for God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, so that who ever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life." Often when defining this scripture, as we like to do in our western world, we equate love with God's sacrifice. Whilst there is no doubt God's love is seen as "He laid down His life for us", there is an underlying and deeper aspect of God's love that we often miss.
God's love is His character, in ALL that He does and says and imagine there is the resounding bell of Love. Those who study etymology will tell us that even in the first few scriptures of Genesis we have God's plan of redemption, not only for the Israelites, but all of mankind. God has always been working out His plan of love for us.
When we read the book of Hebrews and think of the great men and women of Faith found in chapter 11, it is easy to look at them with stars in our eyes and imagine them as some super apostles or pastors or leaders. Yet. they were not and even one of them listed for her faith, Rahab, was originally a prostitute in Jericho, hardly the pin up poster for righteousness.
We often think that faith comes out of a person's amazing abilities and exploits, yet we see that great men and women of faith are just normal people who believed God by His promises. So what then caused these men and women to respond this way? We know in scripture that it is not our righteousness that makes our way, but it is the righteousness of Christ and what He was able to do for us that makes the way. Revelations says it is the "blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony" that enable them to overcome..." A testimony is simply an eye witnesses account of what they saw and heard and experienced. A testimony in itself is not powerful anymore than watching on the sidelines your favourite team score a goal and cheering them on is.
The true power comes from what was achieved by the blood of Jesus when He took the sins of the whole world upon himself. Our righteousness is as "filthy rags" says scripture. In fact I recently heard that in Hebrew this statement literally means "excrement". Not very exciting to think what we do stinks. This resounds well when we consider what happens to Joshua when he is brought into the throne room of God and the first thing they do is remove his filthy robes and replace them with new ones (see Zech 3:5). What I find amazing about this scripture is that Joshua is permitted in God's presence with dirty rags, something I would have never imagined. Yet, this is the picture that all of us must remember when considering the things we do, we think are righteous allow us the right to God's presence and His love.
The truth is God's love and plans of redemption have always existed and always will until all has been fulfilled. What then does this say about the outworking of our own lives? It tells me, that whatever I try to do or be in my own strength will ultimately fail. But if I daily, die to myself and allow God's love to permeate every area of my life and follow the example of Jesus, then that which comes from me must be of God, who is love. Again, in 1Cor13, the love chapter, we read if we continue through to chapter 14, that the greatest of all gifts is "love", I find this no mistake, that chapter 13 and 14 follow on from chapter 12, the very chapter which list some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The question is if we truly desire this greater gift, is how do we get it? There is only one way and that is to have our focus on God and all that he exemplified in the life of Christ.
This brings me to think of Matthew 6:33, "Seek first the kingdom of God and all it's righteousness and all those other things shall come after it". Jesus summed up the law with two commandments, "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and spirit, and love your neighbour as yourself". How do we love God with all that is in us? All our heart (desire, love, longing), mind (thoughts, will), soul (emotions, feelings) and strength (power, purpose, might). To do this, we must FULLY have our focus on God and nothing else. Not on our fears or even strengths, not on the enemy of souls nor even on those who bless us, but wholly on the Lord.
One of the ten commandments says "you shall have no other gods before thee" and another, "you shall have no graven images before me...". I wonder, how many images, gods, do we allow to fill our thoughts and our focus each day?
God bless you on your journey!
James
