PT-1 "Hope Is Established by Love" (1 John 3:1)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/27/2024 9:20 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus: PT-1 “Hope Is Established by Love”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                           Reference:  1 John 3:1

 

            Message of the verse:  “1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”

 

            As I began to read the first part of this verse my thoughts were what an awesome truth it is to realize that because God bestowed love on me.  I know that what I am and I know that I don’t deserve God to bestow His love on me, yet because of His grace, and what Christ did for me I receive that wonderful love that comes from my heavenly Father.

 

            MacArthur writes “The opening phrase of this verse, see how great a love, reflects the apostle’s amazement.  The word translated see (idet) is both a command and an exclamation that exhorts readers to give close attention to the rest of the statement.  How great (potapen) is a seldom-used term that has no precise parallel in English.  Concerning this word, D. Edmond Hiebert wrote,

 

“The adjective rendered ‘what manner’ [‘how great’] (aotapen) occurs only seven times in the New Testament and implies a reaction of astonishment, and usually of admiration, upon viewing some person or thing.  The expression conveys both a qualitative and quantitative force, ‘what glorious, measureless love!’ (The Epistles of John [Greenville, S. C.: Bob Jones University Press 1991], 133; cf. Matt. 8:27; 2 Peter 3:11).”

 

            The truth is that God loves believers with a love that is impossible to articulate in any human language and that is utterly foreign to normal human understanding and experience.  I have talked about the word for love that in the Greek is agape love.  God’s volitional love that He, or His own free and uninfluenced choice, has bestowed on all whom He has called to bring salvation to believers through Jesus Christ.  Now the Lord summarized it this way according to John MacArthur “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13).  And later in this letter, John notes,

 

            “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  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. (4:9-10; cf. vv. 16, 19; John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; 8:39; Eph. 2:4; Titus 3:4).”

 

12/27/2024 9:43 PM