EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2025 9:13 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Intro
to 1 John 4:7-21”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 4:7-21
Message of the verses: “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not
love does not know God, for God is love. 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. 12 No one
has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His
love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us,
because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the
Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever
confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We
have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love,
and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.17 By this,
love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of
judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear
in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and
the one who fears is not
perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone
says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one
who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not
seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God
should love his brother also.”
I have to say again that this is unusual for John
MacArthur to look as so many verses at one time. I think that when he was going over this
section that it took more than one sermon.
I will once again probably use a lot of his quotes to go over his
introduction which is lengthy, but not as lengthy as some of his
introductions. Once again I remind you
that John MacArthur was recently released from the hospital after having a
great deal of problems with his heart, and so please keep him in your prayers.
Now
we have been writing about the trinity and so I will continue to quote from
MacArthur’s commentary, and pick up where I left off yesterday as it is still
about the trinity.
“In
describing the Trinity, the New Testament clearly distinguishes three persons
who are all simultaneously active. They
are not merely modes or manifestations of the same person (as the heresies of
Modalism or Sabellianism and the more modern Oneness theology incorrectly
assert) who sometimes act as Father, sometimes as Son, and sometimes as
Spirit. At Christ’s baptism, all three
persons were simultaneously active (Matt. 3:16-17), with the Son being
baptized, the Spirit descending, and the Father speaking from heaven. Jesus Himself prayed to the Father (cf. Matt.
6:9), taught that His will was distinct from His Father’s (Matt. 26:39,
promised that He would ask the Father to send the Spirit (John 14:26), and
asked the Father to glorify Him (John 17:5)”
Now I want to quote from Matthew 26:39 at this time “And He went a
little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My
Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as
You will.’” Okay that one got me
thinking a bit, but it is cleared up now.
“These actions would not make sense unless the Father and the Son were
two distinct persons. Elsewhere in the
New Testament, the Holy Spirit intercedes before the Father on behalf of
believers (Rom. 8:26-27), as does the Son, who is our Advocate (1 John
2:1). In the gospel of John, the apostle
reports that Jesus said the Holy Spirit would abide in believers (14:16), that He
Himself would abide in them (vv. 18, 20-21), and that the Father would abide in
them (v. 23). Again, the distinctness of
each person is in view.
“The
Bible is clear. There is only one God,
yet He exists, and always has existed, as a Trinity of persons—The Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit (cf. John 1:1-2).”
I will do that now “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was
in the beginning with God.” “To deny or
misunderstand the Trinity is to deny or misunderstand the very nature of God
Himself.
“The
doctrine of the Trinity is crucial on an infinite number of levels, since it is
at the very heart of the doctrine of God.
As one writer explains:
The Trinity is the highest
revelation God has made of Himself to His people. It is the capstone, the summit, the brightest
star in the firmament of divine truths….We must know, understand, and love the
Trinity to be fully and completely Christian.
This is why we say the Trinity is the greatest of God’s revealed truths.
(James White, The Forgotten Trinity [Minneapolis:
Bethany House, 1998], 14-15).
“It
is ver significant that the Trinity has implications not only for what
believers think about God, but also for how they relate to Him and to one
another. After all, it is the truth of
the Trinity that explains God as a relational being. From eternity past, the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit have enjoyed the fullness of interpersonal relationships. They have always glorified in the infinite
closeness that they share. To put it
simply, God has never been lonely, but has always been satisfied in the perfect
fellowship of inter-Trinitarian bliss.
As John Piper explains:
From all eternity, before
creation, the one reality that has always existed is God. This is a great mystery, because it is so
hard for us to think of God having absolutely no beginning, and just being
there forever and ever and ever, without anything or anyone making him to be
there—just absolute reality that everyone of us has to reckon with whether we
like it or not. But this every-living
God has not been ‘alone.’ He has not
been a solitary center of consciousness.
There has always been another, who has been one with God in essence and
glory, and yet distinct in personhood so that they have had a personal relationship
for all eternity. (The Pleasures of God [Sisters,
Ore.” Multnomah, 2000], 41).
I
will make every effort to finish this introduction in my next SD.
2/14/2025 9:40 PM
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