In Love, Jesus Christ Laid Down His Life For Us! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 3:16a,

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Here is a foundational truth we all learned when we first had the opportunity to hear the gospel message. Key to the good news is that God loves us and has expressed that love by giving us his son Jesus Christ. He died on our behalf, to pay the penalty of our sins. The act of taking on a human body to sacrifice it for us speaks volumes of his love for us! It is, as I say, foundational, well known, and dear to the hearts of each one of us who have embraced Jesus Christ in faith.

I never want to feel so familiar, so casual, with this demonstration of love that it becomes old news in any way. I never want it to become "common", a pedestrian thought for me. I want it to penetrate my thinking, my understanding, my emotions, my attention every day. I want it to have a continual fresh impact on me every day. I hate to admit there have been those days where it never crossed my mind and I find that horrible. How can this be?

Gaining a grasp on this love, demonstrated by our Lord, is life changing. In Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:17b-19 we read, “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.” Paul prays for power for his readers to grasp the full dimension of this love in order that they may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Evidently there is a quality to this love that is not easy to comprehend, to grasp, to understand. Paul recognized it takes a God given power for us to comprehend it in its fullness, such that he prays for it in the lives of his readers.

There are many things in life we all need to stay aware of. I can’t think of any that approaches the importance of this wonderful love our Lord has for us! He is our example of what love is… he laid down his life for you and me!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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God's Seed Remains In Us! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 3:9,

“No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

Here is a fascinating statement. Our being born of God results in God’s seed remaining in us!

It makes me think of when someone speaks of having a certain heritage so they act in a particular way: “So and so has a temper, it must be his Irish blood”, etc. While we live in a day where it is not fashionable to speak in such terms, or to generalize in this way about a group of people, it illustrates the point. Those who have been born of God have his seed in them and so there is something different about them. John’s point is that living a sinful lifestyle is a contradiction to both being born of God and God’s resulting presence from that birth that remains within us.

I guess, giving it some thought, how could anyone go through the transformation that takes place during a spiritual rebirth and not reflect that rebirth? This reminds me of a passage Paul wrote, Romans 8:9, “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”

God’s presence in our lives, represented by the Holy Spirit, ensures we will live changed lives. This is so much so that John uses this reality to help us overcome struggles we may have with our consciences or when we possibly might entertain certain doubts. In 1 John 5:13 he says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

I simply find it remarkable that those of us who have embraced Jesus Christ in faith carry within ourselves “God’s seed”. It makes a new creation of us and results in our lives being changed!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

Spiritual Transformation! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 3:5-6,

“You know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”

John tells us here that Jesus Christ came to take away our sins. Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” As such he became the “sacrifice of atonement” we read of in Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10 and other places. So we see that Jesus Christ takes away the penalty of our sins. This is how I understand John the Baptist’s exclamation, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”, John 1:29.

But clearly in this passage, John is recognizing more than a judicial pardon for our sins, that removal of the condemnation we stood under as members of a lost and fallen race. Here John says none of us who have embraced Jesus Christ in faith keep on sinning! To make sure he is understood, he gets more specific, “No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”

John is not saying we lack the ability to sin, that we have somehow lost our own free will to sin. In the previous chapter he recognizes this, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” 1 John 2:1.

What would the point be for Jesus Christ advocating for believers (if they happen to sin) before the Father if the potential for that occasion didn’t arise? When John says, “No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” he is speaking of living a lifestyle of sin. We are no longer dominated by our sin nature. As Paul says, “Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Romans 6:17-18. Now as a “new creation” we are freed to live differently, no longer enslaved to our sin natures, set free to live our lives in the Spirit.

Here is my theme of worship for today: God set me free to live a new kind of life here in this world today. As I am reminded of what the old life was, dominated by my sin nature, things like “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy” Galatians 5:20-21, and as I see what life in the Holy Spirit is that I have been set free to experience, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”, Galatians 5:22-23, how can I not worship my Lord who has made this possible?

Spiritual transformation, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17, is a wonderful thing that our loving Lord brings about in each of our lives when we turn to him!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

Our God: Not Like Us! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 3:5,

“You know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.”

From time to time, as many do, I attempt to think of what God could have been like, and set that against what he really is like as I read of him in the pages of Scripture. As a brief activity I always find it a refreshingly wonderful spiritual exercise that helps me appreciate him for who he is and what he is like.

As one of those counted “among the redeemed”, I come from the fallen race of a lost world estranged from God and quite different from those many-splendored qualities that make up God’s character and nature. Cast against what I find in myself and the world around me, he shines in a glorious splendor and majesty this world is clearly unable to comprehend, grasp, understand or deal with. Certainly, the transcendence of glory that reflects his character is breathtaking.

In what we know as Paul’s first letter to Timothy, 6:15-16 we read, “God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.” Our God lives in an “unapproachable light”! Paul should know as one who had true visions of the things of heaven, 2 Corinthians 12:1-6. Just exactly what this “unapproachable light” is, I don’t know for certain, but I suspect it has everything to do with the manifestation of God’s glory and that which is expressed in his wonderful qualities.

One such quality is that he is perfectly consistent with himself!

If we define sin as that which is un-godlike, whether thoughts, words and deeds, etc. then, from my verse today, I understand God as perfectly consistent with himself, “in him is no sin.” What might it be like to serve a god who shifted, who had shadows in his character, who changed from time to time? What if God was like us, expressing that which is good and right and then did something else from time to time? What might an eternal existence be like spent with a god like that?

But not our God! All of the law we read of, in the pages of Scripture, reflect his character and nature. The love, the mercy, the kindness, the compassion we see of him in Scripture reflect his character and nature. The judgments, the devastating execution of his justice reflects his character and nature. And he is always, and always will be, eternally consistent with what we see of his character and nature in the pages of Scripture.

So unlike me. So unlike what we find in the world! As I say, what a refreshingly wonderful spiritual exercise to consider just how different our God is from us! “In him is no sin”!

How wonderful that is!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.

Why Christians Are Viewed As "Odd Balls" - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, and majestic in his radiant splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him today and what came to my heart and mind in 1 John 3:1b,

"The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

Have you ever wondered why Christians seem to be often portrayed as weirdos and wackos by the entertainment community in movies, television shows, and (although I don't subscribe to it) social media, etc.?

Of course, not always, and occasionally we do find some great pieces of entertainment that do not misrepresent who and what we are. But from my perspective, all too often, the character in a movie that is a weird nut-job is also somebody that quotes their Bible as a Bible thumper, is hostile and judgmental to all around them and generally a grade-A jerk. I'll often turn to my wife and say, "Here we go again", as the "Christian" is portrayed as someone you want to hate in the movie.

I'm sure there may be many reasons for it. Maybe the script writer was verbally abused (or otherwise) by someone, maybe even an elder or pastor, in the church they attended as a child. Maybe there are misguided and overzealous "Christians" in their orbit who have yet to learn Peter's words, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." 1 Peter 3:15-16.

We ran in to some of these misguided and overzealous "Christians" in New Orleans this past Mardi Gras when we went to share the gospel message to the revelers there. While handing out tracts and sharing the gospel with those who would listen (and there were many who did!), we would hear some obnoxious person nearby on a bull horn excoriating the crowds for every conceivable infraction that came to mind, as his cohorts pushed their oversized "protest" signs in their faces - certainly not done in the spirit Peter exhorts us to.

However, John here offers another perspective. The people of the world cannot know us, cannot understand us, cannot figure out what we are up to, simply because they don't know God, they cannot understand God, and cannot figure out what he is up to.

The fault for this is entirely on their part. God has gone well beyond meeting mankind more than half way. He has reached out to all, he has drawn all (John 6:44, John 12:32), he has provided mankind with his prophets, with his word. He is clearly manifested within the creation we live in. Yet for all this there are many who will not come to him.

They don't know him, and consequently, they have absolutely no idea why the rest of us have embraced him. They don't know us because they do not know God.

John says, "Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you." 1 John 3:13.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just reply and let me know.