The Most Blessed Attribute
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
God is love. 2nd John 4 declares this twice and we so deeply need to believe, to know, the truth of this statement. For some reason Evangelicals today seem to shy away from declaring it. Maybe it is because the term was misused during the 1960’s and 70’s by those who mistook love for license. Perhaps it stems from our strong repudiation of the spirit of Universalism which has infected so many churches that call themselves Christian, but do not understand the magnitude of sin. The problem is that in counterbalancing this error we have sometimes forgotten that the love of God springs from the His very nature. God doesn’t love begrudgingly, God loves because He is love itself.
We also know the Lord has the capacity to hate. He hates what is evil, that which is contrary to His good and perfect will, that which destroys the human race which He created in His image. We know that He is capable of justifiable wrath. Yet, at the same time, scripture never describes God as hate. He hates but, if we believe John, it is not the core of His nature. If God’s anger was greater than His love none of us would have any hope at all. The essence of love is grace and it is only grace that makes possible the redemption of sinful human beings. The redemption found in the cross of Christ provides the triumph of love in fulfilling the divine mandate for justice.
It is so easy to fear God in the worst sense of the word. Our consciences tell us not only that we are capable of terrible things but that we have done terrible things. The enemy of our souls sees an opening to torment us and constantly whispers in our ears (or shouts) that we are too evil to hope for true repentance and reconciliation with our Creator. At such times a believer is tempted to despair. The Christian starts to doubt whether a holy God can love him or her. It seems that divine anger is greater than divine love. We fear the God of justifiable wrath and lose sight of the God of gratuitous love.
He, however, has not stopped loving us. It is the nature of God, and thus the nature of love, to be steadfast. It is the nature of God, and thus the nature of love, not to give up on its object. Our feelings, subjective and influenced by so many things which are not real, may tell us that God does not love us anymore. Our feelings may even tell us that He never did. Our feelings are not to be trusted. Sometimes emotions are in harmony with the truth, but very often they are not. In and of themselves they may lead us to believe in what seems to be ultimate reality, but is actually the spirit of error.
When, through deceptive emotions, the believer has come to fear God in the wrong sense and for the wrong reasons he or she is in desperate need of recalling the foundational truth communicated in 1st John 4. As we will to believe, to know, that our Lord is love we will be able, with the help of the Spirit, to put our fear away. 1st John 4:18 go’s on to tell us that “perfect love casts out fear”. God is perfect thus His love is as well. Love will triumph because He is the Lover. Love is greater than fear because it is grounded in the character of almighty God.
2 thoughts on “The Most Blessed Attribute”
This Reminds me of the Great Need to Understand (Below)
Put on new self. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self…(Ephesians 4:22-24a). “Experiencing our habit of (Abiding In Christ) is to be the posture of the heart”
Putting off the old and putting on the new is the principle by which the possibilities that are In Christ can become evident in our experience. Notice there is recognition of the pull of the old life on the Christian. The admonition/posture of the apostle is to be constantly recognizing and rejecting these false, underlying assumptions that come from the old way of living. The problem It is not merely a focus upon our deeds, you will notice, but outlooks and attitudes we may have grown up with. For example it could be thoughts, speculations, contemplation’s over wants or upon ones unknowns, fears or worth . This is what causes the problem, and this is what we must reject.
Put off means to divest yourself of something, to take it off. Paul is using the simplest of terms to illustrate what we must do in the realm of thoughts, with the attitudes of life. We must reject those basic assumptions that have caused our trouble—putting them off, rejecting them, divesting ourselves of them—just as you would put off your dirty clothes.
We must do this because the corruption of life comes from these wrong attitudes. Paul says the former manner of life is corrupt—decayed, dead, foul, selfish, unhappy, restless. These are the things that have made life unhappy or miserable. He points out we can recognize these attitudes by the way they operate and produce. They are deceitful lusts, full of lies against all truth of our New Life in Christ. The word lust is much broader than any urge or basic drive. We will get closer to the essential meaning of this word if we use the term urge. These deceitful emotional causing urges/lusts are constantly coming to us to be acted upon or not to be acted upon. The first step in experiencing what God intends for us is to recognize just that, put off the old and put on the new. That is the first step. The other is to recognize the wonderful possibilities of living out of our new life. In that phrase, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, you have the fundamental difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. It is true that non-Christians sometimes realize that things are wrong in their lives, and so they change them. But they merely change to another expression of the same basic disability. They change only the outer form, but the problem remains basically the same.
But of all human beings, Christians alone have the possibility of doing something entirely different, living by an entirely different principle, because they have been renewed in the attitude of their minds. And that happens in the regenerated life as the Spirit of God comes into the heart that believes in Jesus Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as our Lord and Savior, we are renewed in the attitudes of our minds. The new self is in the likeness of God: it is the life of God; it is the image of Jesus Christ; it is His life lived in you. So put on that kind of life, because it is available to you.
Father, cause me to understand and put into practice this great principle of putting off the old self and putting on the new.
Edward – FCAP
Edward Church
Did you write this recently, Ed? Quite an in-depth commentary…
Shea Oakley