EVINING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/20/2025 8:50 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Perfect Love and the Coming of Christ”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 4:9-11
Message of the verses: “9 By this the love
of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the
world so that we might live through Him. 10 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed looking
at Warren Wiersbe’s commentary yesterday on these verses, and I learned that
this was the second of three comments that he wrote on what I have been going
over for the last few days, and so perhaps I will go back and write some of the
things that he had to say on the verses that I recently went over from 1
John. Today I will look at what John
MacArthur has to say about these three verses.
It
is not too hard to understand that Jesus Christ is the preeminent manifestation
of God’s love (John 1:14, cf. Rom. 5:8); He is God’s only begotten Son, meaning
unique. “For to which of the angels did
He ever say, "YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU"? And again,
"I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME"? (Heb. 1:5). It is known that Jesus Christ came in the
flesh to planet earth as seen in (Luke2:7-14; John 1:14, 18; Heb. 5:5). It is the incarnation that was the supreme
demonstration of a divine love that was and is sovereign and seeking; it was not
that [believers] loved God, but that He loved [them] and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for [their] sins. MacArthur
explains “The term propitiation refers to a covering for sin (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17),
and is a form of the same word (hilasmos)
used in 2:2.” Now we wrote about this in
an earlier SD back beginning on 9-12-2024.
Now hundreds of years before Christ came to planet earth, the prophet
Isaiah foresaw His propitiatory sacrifice:
“4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our
sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and
afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed
for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And
by His scourging we are healed. 6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each
of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him” (Isa. 53:4-6; cf. 2 Cor. 5:21: Gal. 3:13; 1 Peter 3:18).
MacArthur
writes: “By this the perfect love of God
was manifested in [believers], John wrote, that God has sent His only begotten
Son into the world so that [believers] might live through Him. The apostle’s point is that since God, in
sovereign mercy, graciously displayed His love in sending Christ, the saints
should surely follow His example and love others with sacrificial, Christlike
love (Eph. 4:32). The Father not only
gave His children a perfect love when He redeemed them (Rom. 5:5), but He also
gave them the ultimate model in Christ of how that love functions in selfless
sacrifice. The cross of Christ compels
believers to such love. Thus John
exhorted his readers: Beloved, if God so
loved us, we also ought to love one another (cf. John 15:13). The apostle really just restated his
admonition from 3:16, ‘We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us;
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ Now one who has ever
savingly believed in Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and thus been granted eternal
life, can return permanently to a self-centered lifestyle. Instead such persons will obey Paul’s exhortation
to the Ephesians to ‘be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in
love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and
a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma’ (Eph. 5:1-2; cf. 1 Peter 1:15-16).”
2/20/2025 9:25 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment