Knowing Love, A Tribute

We can know that God loves us. How? The Bible tells us so.

“Knowing” proceeds on several levels, so “knowing God loves us” is perceived in several abilities.

First the mind can grasp a truth from the Bible translated into our language.

Our language learning has given us an ability to take hold of meanings.

If the Bible has meaning to me, it happens because something in me can relate to something outside of me. The relating brings the Word in.

In me are the tools of creation, the faculties of humankind, created in His image and likeness. Outside of me, the Word initiates a friendship.

This friendship occurs as we give authority to this Word by lending a worshiping ear to it; this implies that we comprehend it, believe it, reckon on it, position our focus on it, become a willful servant to it. (see Roman’s 6)

God Himself enables all of the above as we set Him before our face, in Psalm 16:8 To “set” means to “compose” which implies imagination gets involved. We become: (as we behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into that selfsame image.)

So God is love 1 John 4:8.

In His likeness, we become that same Love in our own version.

God commended that love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.  (us). Romans 5:8

The character of God’s love on display reveals His self-sacrificing nature — it overwhelms us, the utter degree of this love toward undeserving sinners.

What hinders this love?

Friends we must realize that right here, centered in God’s love display, lies the pivotal juncture between soundness and insanity.

Yes, the God-man interjects His intercession into our mind and heart, dies in our place; crying out forgiveness, removing the penalty for our sins, releasing us as a bird set to flight, He becomes the rare and essential secret to our peace, joy, sanity, love, patience, gentleness, goodness, etc.

Nothing else can do this.

Yet it flees our consciousness.

Our Christ, by Harry Webb Farrington, helps us here:

• I know not how the Bethlehem’s Babe
• Could in the godhead be;
• I only know the Manger child
• Has brought God’s life to me.
• I know not how that Calvary’s cross
• A world from sin could free;
• I only know it’s matchless love
• Has brought God’s love to me.
• I know not how that Joseph’s tomb
• Could solve death’s mystery;
• I only know the living Christ,
• Our Immortality.

Love’s mystery, is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

When love Comes Home. Song by Matthew West