Like I proposed yesterday, I watched our good Pastors this morning and took a couple of lines from them regarding their perspectives on the love of God.
Pastor Paolo was passionate in emphasizing the unconditional aspect of God’s love for us. He went on to quote that one Filipino movie line, ‘Maging sino ka man.’ In other words he was sharing on how God’s love for us is absolute, no matter who we are.
I also enjoyed Pastor Ronnie’s opening line, when he quoted Ephesians 1:4 – That we were chosen before the foundations of the world. He emphasized how sweet it was to be chosen versus being rejected, and that we were chosen before all that we perceive came to existence.
Finally, Pastor Mavin also stepped up, and I liked his take on how God’s love for us is literally unfathomable. In other words, it’s deep. It’s wide. How deep? How wide? Yes.
Beautiful perspectives. As I took some time to listen to them, I found myself saying, yeah, that’s something I would say, and the more I got into it I just have to say that I became more and more fascinated – There’s a different level of sweetness to be had when you hear other people say what you had in mind.
Friends, we are loved. But, see, in our discussion of the Gospel, in our discussion of the Good News, we could not but mention love. This is because love is infused with the Gospel, and the Gospel is infused with love. These two could not go without each other.
Therefore, considering this perspective, it is quite impossible for us to discuss love apart from the Gospel, and vice versa. This is because the Gospel is love, and love is the Gospel. As I mentioned earlier, I only learned of my Dad’s tough but true love for me and my brothers by way of understanding the Gospel – or, rather, the depth, the width, the height, and the length of God’s infinite, perfect, eternal and everlasting love for me.
Consider the Word, which reinforces itself by proclaiming it its verses that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Consider that in its other verses that the Word itself had been made flesh, and dwelt among us: That something so much more than pages and volumes and chapters made its way to us. This, of course, was Jesus Christ, the Living Word. Over the course of our time and by the power of the Holy Spirit we have come to realize that Christ, who was the Living Word, was the Life found in the Word, and the Word found in the Life. Christ, who is the Living Word, is the Living Gospel.
Consider all we have been discussion when it comes to the Gospel: That once, we were sinners doomed to die. Christ became sin and took all the death there was to be taken. Death could not hold Him down, and therefore He rose from the dead. Presenting Himself as the sacrifice, He died, so we died, and so when He rose, so we rose, new creations.
We are New creations, reconciled to the Father, and therefore we are as close to God as we could ever be – we are one with Him, and He is one with us.
And since Christ is the Living Gospel, so we are – we overcome by His blood and our literal lives being words of our testimonies.
I go through all this effort, only to say this: We have been united with Christ, both now and forever. This is why I proudly proclaim: Christus est, ergo sum – Christ is alive in us, and we are alive in Him. And since Christ is the Living Word, He is the Living Gospel, which cannot be told apart from God’s everlasting love for us.
We are one with Christ, who is the Living Word, and Everlasting Love is in our being.
What does this mean? Friend, this means that for us who believe in Christ, we have been made new – once, we were sinners, now we are proclaimed righteous, sweet aromas that rise to the throne, most pleasurable to God. Rick Warren says we have been made for God’s pleasure, and Christ’s finished work makes this true.
This means that for us who believe in Christ, we have been placed into a new reality. Read up on Romans 5 and you would understand that we were once in Adam – literal sin, doomed to pay its wages, of death and oblivion. But we have brought out of darkness into His kingdom of endless light – Light which stretches beyond borders, infinite; Endless, beyond time, eternal. Christ said that which is perceived by our senses is temporal, and that which is unseen is eternal – Friends, for us, this means that our priorities have changed – no longer do we toil for material wealth enjoyable by our senses, but now we understand what Christ meant when He directed us to prioritize investing in that which is unseen – relationships, and the hearts and souls of men.
Most important of all, however – and I would implore that we would understand this most of all – is that we no longer operate from fear, as sinners… No, we operate from perfect love, which casts out all fear.
Please do not take this in as a mandate from your pastor, but understand that this is our new nature as a new creation.
Understand that once we were in sin, and all that we did, no matter how noble or right or good it seemed – all was meaningless.
Now, because we have no less that Christ, and because He has us now and forever, all that we do is done in love – in fact, even our mistakes are made to work for good, for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
The ultimate point I am building up to in all of this is that in true love, Christ paid such a huge, HUGE price in order for us to understand that we have been blessed, and indeed infused with love – a true love which is perfect, eternal, everlasting, and infinite, love that only the Creator of the Universe can give, for this is who He is.
TAKE NOTE: This is not to say that we ARE love. This, therefore, is not to say that we ARE the Living Word, and this, therefore, is not to say that we ARE Christ. We are NOT little gods, as some charlatans would have you believe. No, I believe we have something better – we are who we are, and no matter who we are, Christ’s finished work has guaranteed that God is with us, and His love for us is full and absolute, no matter what we do or don’t do.
We are one with Christ, who is the Living Word, and Everlasting Love is in our being.
I’ll end with this. Consider Christ, and all that He did – All creation beheld its Creator’s perfect, infinite, and everlasting love in His birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
God’s love for you is perfect. This means it’s reliable. You can trust it. You can’t trust your ex, but you can trust in the truth that God loves you perfectly, meaning God loves you absolutely. No question. God loves you 1000% of the time regardless of what we do and feel.
I’ve often asked myself – is perfection a static state, or is it dynamic in that it is eternal, and perpetually expanding? I would vote for the latter – why? Because I believe that God is the Creator of space and time, and as such, is beyond space and time – He is infinite and therefore His love is also infinite. It is borderless. Uncontainable, and as such, is not only absolute and perfect, but constantly growing, constantly expanding. The Psalmist says His mercies are new every morning, and I am led to believe His infinite love is the same way – growing and expanding so that the love we have to day is greater than the day before. Fine, sweeter than the day before.
And, of course, since we understand that God’s love is borderless and infinite, so it is timeless and eternal. God loves you 1000% of the time, to the end of time, and beyond time. God loves us with an everlasting love, and if it’s hard for us to take in that God loves us absolutely, then maybe our hearts would respond better to understanding that He loves us forever.
Because of Christ’s finished work, we have been reconciled, and therefore we are guaranteed God’s perfect, infinite, and everlasting love!
I say all this because this is what we ought to be hyping more than anything else. We need to put each and every other ‘blessing’ in its place. We need to understand that healing, provision, and other miracles are possibilities, but this love we have from God has been fully guaranteed in Christ.
We place our full trust and invest our full beings in the Gospel of Christ, understanding that He has guaranteed how God loves us.
Believe in the possibilities, but trust in the guarantee: We are one with Christ, who is the Living Word, and Everlasting Love is in our being.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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