God exists but, He is Love….

It occurred to me that I had gotten my outline out of order and skipped this installment. However, as it turns out, the sequence will be better this way. Glad that I am not in control of things. I had originally thought about including some current events in today’s post. The more I thought about it, the less it seemed important enough to include. We are all well aware of the Pope’s visit to the USA and the rhetoric in the political realm. Today we are looking at the “God is love” topic and the world’s desire to see Him in that light.

We already identified the first point in the opening and the pointless argument that exists so let’s move on. Today’s big social media talking point is #lovewins. From civil rights for all races to the right to love and marry whomever we deem appropriate, this is the new (and not so new) cry. We understand that God does love His creation. We see that “God so loved the world” and “God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. While these are all very true statements along with many others, we are leaving out so much more. To get a perspective on God’s handling of sinful people, let’s look at how he handled the people of this planet in Genesis 6.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7 ESV)

Here we see a clear picture that God’s patience runs out with man and He determines to wipe him off the face of the earth. God is holy, period. We understand that His very character doesn’t allow for anything unholy to be in His presence. God does find Noah, while an imperfect human, who has a fear, or holy respect, for Him. God saves Noah and his family while removing everything else. Basically, to use a modern term, Earth got a “re-boot”. However, things did not improve. Whenever we, the human element, get involved, we have this tendency to mess things up. We follow up this mess with excuses. Then we justify the excuse. Finally, we reason that God still loves us “because God doesn’t make mistakes”. The sad reality is that while God loves us, we miss the next point. God condemns sin and pronounces judgement. John 3:16 is probably one of the most quoted verses in all of the Bible, yet the next two verses paint an interesting picture and put this verse in perspective.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18 ESV)

Understand this, those who reject Jesus, those who continue in the natural sinful state, are already condemned. Our destiny is hell, eternal separation from God and a subject that is spoken more of by Jesus than Heaven. While God loves us, His calling on our lives is that we enter into a relationship with Him through the gift of His Son. When someone, like Lady Gaga celebrates that “I was born this way”, she does tell a partial truth. We are born into a sinful state as a result of Adam’s sin. As a result, we are “dead” in this state.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)

If we stopped there, God would be fully justified to allow us to stay there and spend eternity separated from him. Yes, God is love. But, He is also fully just, holy and righteous. He does extend wrath to those who would reject Him and His Son, Jesus.

The good news is that God didn’t stop there. Back to what was quoted earlier, while we were yet sinners, separated from a holy God, Christ (Jesus) died for us. Outside of this truth, we are hopeless. There are those who will tell that God is love and would never condemn anyone and yet, as we stated earlier, Jesus was concerned enough about the reality of hell that He spent time (more than heaven) warning people.

The finish to what Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus is this;

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7 ESV)

“But God”!! To this writer, the most amazing words penned in all of the Bible. God loves His creation. In fact, He called it “very good” after the creation of man and woman. We fouled things up and are still doing the same thing today. God’s promise is that He will pour out His wrath on those who oppose Him and will find their destiny eternally separated from their Creator.  But, God has provided a way back to a relationship to Him and we will be looking at His story as told through His word.

In His Name,

Scott