No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us (1 John 4:12).
I’ve often wondered about that first statement that no one has seen God. Why, the Old Testament is full of sightings of God. But I believe the point that is being made is that God has no form. He is not shaped like a human being or anything else, for that matter. Of course, He can take whatever form He wants, whenever He wants to. People in New Testament times have “seen” God, but being in the New Testament times means we live on a higher plane spiritually. The fact that God lives in us changes the whole dynamic of life. I believe the point being made is that if God lives in us, then when we love one another, when we look at each other, we see God. The more we see God in someone else, the more His love is perfected in us. The most frequent references in the Bible where God is mentioned, He is referred to as fire. He is made of fire. It says He is fire from the waist up and fire from the waist down. Fire burns away the dross. Fire heats up passion. Fire defeats our enemies. I don’t know about you, but I want the baptism of fire! So if we want fire, what do we have to do? Love our neighbor just like God loves us. After all, He’s living in there!
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Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:11).
You may find this strange, but, in my opinion, the best screen depiction of a true Christian can be found in the movie, “Gone With The Wind.” I believe the character’s name was Melanie, who happened to be married to the man Scarlett thought she loved. Even though Scarlett behaved abominably, manipulating events to be with her “beloved,” scheming, pretending to be Melanie’s best friend, Melanie treated Scarlett with pure love, acceptance, and grace. I want to be like that. Now, this verse doesn’t say we are to love the world, which Scarlett represented, but we are to love one another. I take that to mean our brothers and sisters in Christ. Most of us have enough trouble with that. But it’s where we start. I’m so sick of people coming to church to see what they can get, spiritually and materially. Church isn’t a network, but we treat it that way. I rejoice when I come across a church where people come to give! That means that before one goes to church, one asks the Lord who He wants them to bless that day, and how. In fact, every day our prayer should be, “make me be a blessing.” For that matter, daily we should be asking, “show me someone who needs whatever I have to give them.” Let the love times roll! In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).
When I vicariously allow myself to experience what Jesus went through, I am always stunned. He paid for every sin to have ever been committed or ever will be. He took these sins right into His own body in order to cart them away and dump them in hell where they belong. Of course, all sin is propagated by Satan, but that doesn’t excuse us. Satan can’t do a thing without our participation. The old line of “the devil made me do it” just doesn’t hold water. We choose our sins. Imagine becoming the murderer, the thieving tax collector, the batterer, the liar, the destroyer, and so on. Imagine every evil thing entering your body, especially after you’ve kept it so pristine! God loved us so much He subjected His Son to this hell. The Son loved us so much He subjected Himself to this hell. Imagine our own sins being placed in the body of Jesus, things we’ve never told anybody else. He took them all. He paid for them with His blood, with His death, burial, and resurrection. The Bible says we went through all that with Him and we came out victorious, just like Him, and now we are seated in heavenly places with Him. Glory be to God! In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9).
As a parent, I am in awe of what God did. If I were the parent in heaven I would have said to Jesus, “Son, don’t go out there! It’s dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt. Stay inside heaven where you’re safe.” But God didn’t do that. He sent His only Son. He could not generate more because this Son came from the very essence of God. When God sent Jesus to the earth, He risked everything. At any point in time during His earthly venture, Jesus could have said no, He would not finish the course. If I had been the child God sent, after my own townsmen wanted to push me off a cliff, after I was mocked and jeered, after I would have had to be strong and go ahead and heal, or proclaim the Word, time after time, while those around me were looking for ways to turn me into the Sanhedrin, after the fatigue of working day and night, I would have said, “Enough!” He who does not love does not know God, for God is love (1 John 4:8).
God is love. God is made out of love. All He can do is love. He has been angry with me, and even then He speaks with love dripping from His voice. So if you know God, then you know about love. If you don’t know God, then you know nothing about love. You may make a good partner; you may make a good friend, but you will never make a good lover. Love completely submits itself to the other person; accepts him or her just exactly as they are. Love never tries to change someone; love is patient with who the person is. Love is never mean; love is gentle, good, kind, thoughtful, giving. Love is never jealous; love cheers others good fortune. Love is never self-serving; love serves others. Love never flaunts itself as if it were better than others; love knows and honors differences without judgment. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7).
Ah! This verse and the next one make up one of my favorite songs. I’ll sing it for you next time. For right now, make this your slogan: “I love everybody and everybody loves me.” If you’ll keep repeating this to yourself, it will very quickly become true. It’s so much more fun to love everybody, than it is to keep people at a distance, to be suspicious or critical. It’s so much more fun to know that everybody thinks the best of you to the point that they love you. Love really is unconditional. Anything less than unconditional isn’t really love, it’s manipulation. I’ll love you if—isn’t love. So stop thinking about whether you measure up, or whether the other person measures up, and just enjoy each person for who they are. After all, God sent them to the earth to be a gift. So open your present and be delighted! When you love like that, you and God are truly united. We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 John 4:6).
People who are born again are those who are of God and who know God. Now, if we know God, we know each other. There is a recognizable identity. One time, while I sat at a table in a coffee shop, drinking coffee and reading a book, a gentleman came to my table and said, “My wife and I were noticing that you are a Christian. We’d like to have you join us and talk awhile.” I did, and we formed a fast relationship. I was just reading a book; how did they notice I was a Christian? We can identify the spirit of God in one another. Another time, in a restaurant a woman walked through the front door, and I knew she was a Christian. How did I know? I don’t know how to answer that. I just knew. I stopped by her table on the way out of the restaurant and asked, and she said, “Oh, yes, honey. Jesus is my Lord.” We do hear each other. We do know the spirit of truth and we can recognize the spirit of error. Thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph! They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them (1 John 4:5).
There is such an enormous gulf between the world and the Kingdom of God, which is the spiritual world. That gulf is not noticeable to the physical eye; it can only be seen by the spiritual eye. The people in the world have only their reason to live by, whereas people who are right now citizens of heaven, due to their new birth in Christ, have God the Father hovering over them to meet their every need with His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. They have the Holy Spirit giving them counsel and direction, helping them make sound decisions that will benefit them, now and/or later. They have Jesus Christ making intercession for them after having given His blood and His body to redeem them—to pay for their sins, and their sicknesses—as well as giving them Agape love, or the God kind of life. Whatever you do, don’t listen to the world. They will give you bad advice; even what the great sages have to say will never work, unless of course they belong to Jesus. For instance, the Bible instructs us to pray for our leaders, our presidents, heads of state, etc. However, to listen to the world, who speak constantly about politics, they would eat our leaders for lunch if they could find a restaurant that would serve up human flesh! The only way God can break through to these heads of state is if we pray. Prayer gives God permission to operate in the earthly realm. So if we want changes made in our governments, we’d better get on our knees and pray, and not rip our leaders to shreds with our words. Words work: good and bad. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).
As a baby Christian, I loved to sing this song: Greater is He that is in me, Greater is He that is in me, Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world. I really didn’t know what it meant until one day, my toaster wouldn’t work. The kids were eating breakfast, and toast is a big part of an American breakfast, so when I put the bread in the toasting slots, pushed the handle down, and the bread descended (oh so slowly) and the grill did not light up, I was dismayed. I tried to toast the bread numerous times, all with the same result. To my credit I did not immediately try to solve this problem myself by thinking of what else I could serve them. I just focused on that toaster. Then I thought, “I’ll try some words.” I said, “Toaster, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you work now! Toast this bread and feed these children.” I pushed the handle down again, it went promptly to its spot, and the grill lit up immediately. That toaster worked perfectly for years until I sold it in a garage sale before moving to France. Jesus is in me. When I invoke His name, all creation must move accordingly and do whatever I have said to do. Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world (1 John 4:3).
Think about this! If Satan can get us to believe that the Bible is not really the Word of God, that Jesus did not come in the flesh, that all our sin and all evil in the world was not deposited in hell, that Jesus did not so royally defeat the devil that he has nothing left with which to fight, that the Blood of Jesus did not pay for all our redemption, that Jesus was not raised from the dead, what is left of our Christianity? If we believe the devil, we are participating with the Antichrist. That spirit of Antichrist is already ravaging the world! Aren’t the Muslims declaring that the Holocaust never took place? Aren’t they saying Jesus was only a prophet, not the Son of God? Don’t they broadcast that God has never had a Son? Don’t the Hindus believe that man has a succession of births, when the Bible says it is given unto man once to die? Don’t the Hindus believe in a hierarchy of men, with the vast majority being “unclean”? Yet Christianity believes in the sanctity of man as God’s precious creation! Every one of them! Speak up! Jesus Christ, Son of God, came in the flesh and redeemed us all! Now is the time to choose Him as Lord! |
Marty
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