The Love of the Creator
"He who does not love does not know God, for God is love"- 1 John 4:8
As the Lenten season and Easter Holiday closed it's chapter for this year, the past 40 days have been the most fruitful that I've had in a long time. The themes that I followed through lent was that God would provide my needs and learning to give up more of myself for His purposes (i.e die to self) I never mastered them by any means but I came across the verse above about God "being love" for God is love and it summed it all up for me. I've heard it before but again....believing it is where the heaven scrapes the pavement.
Though God "as love" is much more than I even know (see I Corinth 13 for more); for now I'm defining the love portion "as a voluntary, unselfish choice to commit to another person or persons despite condition, circumstance, feelings or merit"
We were created in the image and likeness of God- (Gen 1:26) Therefore, we are able to do things that resemble God. We must remember our "likeness" attributes only resemble God's and are not perfect. I have mentioned a few below but we still get it wrong at times. Our shortcomings should only magnify the perfection of these attributes in God
God is creative. Humans are much more than instinctive, we have souls. God breathes into us the 'breath of life'(Gen 2:7) that was not said of the animals. Like our heavenly Father we are creative. As He created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1) so we have been given the ability create things from art, music and architecture all the way to software engineering, air transportation, automobiles and even space shuttles. It's in our being to create.
God is just. (1 John 1:9) We all have a longing for justice. We "innately" understand that there is right and wrong in the universe. There is that feeling that those that commit offense of our laws should be punished. A life for a life, an eye for an eye. Those who slip through the justice system are still held guilty in the court of public opinion. This need, to set the wrongs to right, comes from the likeness of God in us.
God is love. John 3:16- talks of God's love for the world and the lengths at which He goes to demonstrate it to us. If God IS love than unlike us, He cannot NOT love. We have the capability to love and not love. As humans, we do this more than we know. We love ourselves more than our neighbor. We ignore parents and neglect children. We ignore the vows of marriage and leave our spouses for others etc...it is easy to see where we can lack love. God though, CANNOT. But, to the best of our ability that we can show our imperfect love to our children and our spouses and our families and how much we want to be involved in their lives, how much more does God, in His PERFECT love want to be involved in ours.
Before creation- God did not exist alone. Had he existed alone, there would have been no such thing as love, for love by definition is selfless. God cannot love himself alone. In the beginning with God, were the Holy Spirit and God's son, Jesus the Christ. (Gen 1:26) ..."let US make man in our image.) The existence of the other two formed a perfect community where God would give and receive from the Spirit and the Spirit from the Son and the Son from God and the Son to God and the Spirit to God...and around and around it went. This love, seemingly unable to be contained, flowed out in to creation.
God's love is not forced, God created us with free will to love Him back or not love Him at all. As all of us have sinned (Romans 3:23), the just part of God requires that these wrongs (sins) are made right before we can enter back in to this this relationship with Him, for "He chastens those He loves" (Heb 12:6). Unable to make these sins right on our own accord, as we were dead in our trespasses (Eph 2:1), God intervened and sent His son Jesus to pay the wages of sin, which is death (Rom 6:23). Those that choose to love God back, are justified by the faith they have in Jesus, for God has chosen to justify people not by actions but by faith.(Gen 15:5-6)
Those that do not choose to love Him back are faced with God's judgement. The question of 'Why would a loving God send people to hell?' is not biblically grounded. I Timothy 2:1-6 states that God our Saviour desires all men to be saved , not punishing sin that has not been taken to the cross of Christ would be against the character of a just God. He has chosen to deal with sin, through Jesus, people with sin left undealt with will be cast into the lake of fire (aka-hell)(Rev 20:15) reserved for the devil and his angels. We don't want to hear that part of the story but though disturbing, it is completely avoidable.
To conclude, God loves us. There is no part in Him that cannot love. But, we like sheep have been led astray, each to our own way... (Isa 53:6). Lets not be so prideful as to think we have done nothing wrong. Let us turn back to God and let us embrace the love of the Creator, the lover of our souls. We were made for this relationship and this is the relationship that completes us to the core.
As the Lenten season and Easter Holiday closed it's chapter for this year, the past 40 days have been the most fruitful that I've had in a long time. The themes that I followed through lent was that God would provide my needs and learning to give up more of myself for His purposes (i.e die to self) I never mastered them by any means but I came across the verse above about God "being love" for God is love and it summed it all up for me. I've heard it before but again....believing it is where the heaven scrapes the pavement.
Though God "as love" is much more than I even know (see I Corinth 13 for more); for now I'm defining the love portion "as a voluntary, unselfish choice to commit to another person or persons despite condition, circumstance, feelings or merit"
We were created in the image and likeness of God- (Gen 1:26) Therefore, we are able to do things that resemble God. We must remember our "likeness" attributes only resemble God's and are not perfect. I have mentioned a few below but we still get it wrong at times. Our shortcomings should only magnify the perfection of these attributes in God
God is creative. Humans are much more than instinctive, we have souls. God breathes into us the 'breath of life'(Gen 2:7) that was not said of the animals. Like our heavenly Father we are creative. As He created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1) so we have been given the ability create things from art, music and architecture all the way to software engineering, air transportation, automobiles and even space shuttles. It's in our being to create.
God is just. (1 John 1:9) We all have a longing for justice. We "innately" understand that there is right and wrong in the universe. There is that feeling that those that commit offense of our laws should be punished. A life for a life, an eye for an eye. Those who slip through the justice system are still held guilty in the court of public opinion. This need, to set the wrongs to right, comes from the likeness of God in us.
God is love. John 3:16- talks of God's love for the world and the lengths at which He goes to demonstrate it to us. If God IS love than unlike us, He cannot NOT love. We have the capability to love and not love. As humans, we do this more than we know. We love ourselves more than our neighbor. We ignore parents and neglect children. We ignore the vows of marriage and leave our spouses for others etc...it is easy to see where we can lack love. God though, CANNOT. But, to the best of our ability that we can show our imperfect love to our children and our spouses and our families and how much we want to be involved in their lives, how much more does God, in His PERFECT love want to be involved in ours.
Before creation- God did not exist alone. Had he existed alone, there would have been no such thing as love, for love by definition is selfless. God cannot love himself alone. In the beginning with God, were the Holy Spirit and God's son, Jesus the Christ. (Gen 1:26) ..."let US make man in our image.) The existence of the other two formed a perfect community where God would give and receive from the Spirit and the Spirit from the Son and the Son from God and the Son to God and the Spirit to God...and around and around it went. This love, seemingly unable to be contained, flowed out in to creation.
God's love is not forced, God created us with free will to love Him back or not love Him at all. As all of us have sinned (Romans 3:23), the just part of God requires that these wrongs (sins) are made right before we can enter back in to this this relationship with Him, for "He chastens those He loves" (Heb 12:6). Unable to make these sins right on our own accord, as we were dead in our trespasses (Eph 2:1), God intervened and sent His son Jesus to pay the wages of sin, which is death (Rom 6:23). Those that choose to love God back, are justified by the faith they have in Jesus, for God has chosen to justify people not by actions but by faith.(Gen 15:5-6)
Those that do not choose to love Him back are faced with God's judgement. The question of 'Why would a loving God send people to hell?' is not biblically grounded. I Timothy 2:1-6 states that God our Saviour desires all men to be saved , not punishing sin that has not been taken to the cross of Christ would be against the character of a just God. He has chosen to deal with sin, through Jesus, people with sin left undealt with will be cast into the lake of fire (aka-hell)(Rev 20:15) reserved for the devil and his angels. We don't want to hear that part of the story but though disturbing, it is completely avoidable.
To conclude, God loves us. There is no part in Him that cannot love. But, we like sheep have been led astray, each to our own way... (Isa 53:6). Lets not be so prideful as to think we have done nothing wrong. Let us turn back to God and let us embrace the love of the Creator, the lover of our souls. We were made for this relationship and this is the relationship that completes us to the core.
posted by tone614 | 6:55 AM
1 Comments:
I like the point you made that we are made in God's likeness, and, therefore, we carry many of His attributes, though imperfectly--one attribute being that we have the ability to love with whatever tiny bit of love is in us. Also, though God is love, He seems capable of hating what isn't love, like sin. Of course, He dealt with sin in the most perfect act of love ever imagined--through the sacrifice of His Son.
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