EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/18/2025 8:14 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Perfect Love and the Character of
God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 4:7-8
Message of the verses: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
“That God is love explains a number of things in the
biblical worldview,” is how John MacArthur writes in his commentary and there
are four “things” that he is referring to and the first two were looked at in
my last SD, and so as promised I begin with the third in this Spiritual Diary.
“Third, the reality that God is love also explains His
providence. He orchestrates all the
circumstances of life, in all their wonder, beauty, and even difficulty, to
reveal many evidences of His love (Pss. 36:6; 145:9; Rom. 8:28).” And so we will look at these three verses to
help us understand what was just written.
6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep. O LORD, You preserve man and beast.
9 The LORD is good to all, And His
mercies are over all His works.
28 And we know that God causes all
things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called
according to His purpose.
“Fourth, that He is love explains
the divine plan of redemption. If God
operated only on the basis of His Law, He would convict people of their sin,
and justly consign everyone to spend forever in hell (cf. Ps. 130:3). But His love provided a remedy for sin
through the atoning work of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:21; Gal. 4:4-5) on behalf of
all who repented and trust in His mercy (John. 13:14-15). In the most well-known statement of His
earthly ministry, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have
eternal life” (John 3:16; cf. 2 Cor. 5:19-20; 1 Tim. 4:10; Titus 3:4-5).”
“ God’s general love for mankind
manifests itself in several ways. First,
He expresses His love and goodness to all through common grace. The psalmist wrote, ‘The Lord is good to all,
and His mercies are over all His works’ (Ps. 145:9; cf. Matt. 5:45). As part of this, God reveals His love through
His compassion, primarily in that He delays His final judgment against
unrepentant sinners (Gen. 15:16; Acts 17:30-31; Rom. 3:25; cf. Gen.
18:20-33). That compassion is further
expressed in His myriad of warnings to sinners (Jer. 7:13-15, 23-25; 25:4-6;
Ezek. 33:7-8; Zeph. 2:1-3; Luke 3:7-9; 1 Cor. 10:6-11; Rev. 3:1-3). He finds no pleasure in the damnation of
anyone (Ezek. 18:23, 32; 2 Peter 3:9). Accompanied
with His warnings, God extends His love to every part of the world through His
general offer of the gospel (Matt. 11:28; John 7:37; 1 Tim. 2:4; Titus
2:11). As Jesus told the apostles, ‘Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’ (Mark. 16:15; cf.
Matt. 28:19).” Now in thinking about
this last statement and verse along with Ephesians 2:10 which says “For we are
His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them,” this explains why I write my
Spiritual Diaries and put them onto my blots which the Spirit of God takes
around the world each and every day, and this is a joy for me to do by obeying
what I believe the Lord has called me to do.
“That general love, however, is
limited to this life. After death,
unrepentant sinners will experience God’s wrath and judgment for all eternity
(Dan. 12:2; Matt. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 20:12-15). But God has a special, perfect, eternal love
that He lavishes on everyone who believes.
The apostle John aptly characterized that love Jesus displayed to the
apostles when he wrote at the beginning of the upper room narrative: ‘Having loved his own who were in the world,
he now showed them the full extent of his love’ (John 13:1b NIV). Paul later celebrated tat special love in his
letter to the Ephesians:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His
great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made
us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with
Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph.
2:4-7).
Now if anyone is looking for more information on the
discussion of the love of God, John MacArthur has written a book entitled The God Who Loves and this was first
published in 1996, and then again in 2001 by Nashville: Word.
2/18/2025 8:46 PM
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