Waiting with Love

Isaiah 9:6 ESV

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

After returning home from a long tour, Bono, the lead singer for U2, returned to Dublin and attended a Christmas Eve service. At some point in that service, Bono grasped the truth at the heart of the Christmas story: in Jesus, God became a human being. With tears streaming down his face, Bono realized,

The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself by becoming a child born in poverty … and straw, a child, I just thought, "Wow!" Just the poetry … I saw the genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this … Love needs to find a form, intimacy needs to be whispered … Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.

LOVE A feeling of deep affection. A central theme in Scripture and Christian theology and ethics. Defines our relationship with God and dictates how we should treat others.

Old Testament Love

General Terms of Love

The Lexham Bible Dictionary (General Terms)

The most frequent verb for “love” (אָהֵב, ahev) in the Old Testament occurs over 200 times in both its noun and verb forms. It refers to the relationship between two people, either a parent and a child (Gen 22:2; 25:28; 37:3) or a husband and a wife (Gen 24:67; 29:18). The Pentateuch also uses the word to describe the relationship between God and the people of Israel. Deuteronomy 6:5 commands the people to “love (אָהֵב, ahev) the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:5, compare Deut 10:12; 30:6). The nation manifests their love for God by following the law (Deut 11:1, 13, 22; 19:9; 30:16, 20).

Loyal Love

The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Loyal Love (חֶסֶד, chesed))

The most frequent noun for “love” in the Old Testament, חֶסֶד (chesed) occurs over 250 times in the Hebrew Bible.

When loyal love is used it represents a type of fidelity or loyalty that leads to action. Promises between two people display this relationship dynamic more closely. For example David reminds Johnathan of a previous promise. Loyal love can also refer to acts of mercy or good deeds.

The term also refers in reference to God and his “Loyal Love” that protects and sustains His people, at times offering protection from their enemies. God’s loyal love also stands in contrast with His wrath. “Chesed love is frequently tied to the Abrahamic covenant and the Davidic Covenant as long as they maintain a relationship with Him they will be blessed.

Concept of Love

The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Old Testament Concept of Love)

The Old Testament concept of love assumes that there is a relationship between two people or groups of people. The Pentateuch describes God’s love for the nation of Israel through election (Deut 4:37; 10:15) and declares that the nation should respond with love (Deut 7:9, 13). The context of Deut 7:13 suggests that God will bless the nation through this relationship, which is outlined later in the book (Deut 28:1–14)

The nation of Israel should respond to God’s faithfulness by following the law, which directs the community to love others.

Love in the New Testament

The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Love in the New Testament)

1. the ἀγαπάω (agapaō) word group

2. the φιλέω (phileō) word group

The New Testament terms agapao and Phileo are used synonymously. For example, both word groups are used in theological and nontheological ways, and both are used in reference to positive objects (e.g., “Love your neighbor”) and negative objects (e.g., love of money or love of worldly things).

The exception is the noun in reference to a positive love a special kind of love that refers to:

God’s Love (Rom. 5:8) The Father’s love is a love in a sacrificial way for the world. This also refers to the Fathers love for the Son accomplishing the Fathers purpose to redeem the world.

A person’s love for God (Rev. 2:4)

Love for one another (Rom 13:10) distinguishes those within the community of God from the world. The key ethical component is that we love those inside of the body and outside the community with the same sacrificial love of Christ.

How Can We Be Sure of God’s Love?

BIG IDEA: To know God is to be Loved by God

1 John 4:16 ESV

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Note: to be sure of the love of someones parents is almost always indispensable to the health and emotional development and well-being of the Child. Does the child feel loved, protected, and cared for by the parents?

To determine the true love of a spouse or friend is closely interconnected to the a similar genuine care and concern for the fulfillment of the other.

God’s love brings an even richer understanding of the word LOVE. His love is the major catalyst or component of our Hope, Peace, and Joy.

If someone performs an act of love for us there are basically three ways we measure the depth of that love?

1. The Costliness of His Love

Romans 5:5–8 ESV

5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

WE KNOW THE DEPTH OF LOVE FOR US BY WHAT IT COST

If he sacrifices his life for us, it assures us of deeper love than if he only sacrifices a few bruises.

Note: The Greater the sacrifice the deeper the love. If it costs and afternoon of time and seat, it is one degree of love. If it cost his life, it is another degree of love.

Cultural Context: The world we live in measures love in their level of commitment. Where does Christ rate on that scale in your life today? If you took a deep heart inventory how easy is it for you to commit to other things in your life and ignore your Savior and Lord?

Why do so many people fail to fully Experience the Love of God in their lives? Is it because they don’t know how much God Loves them? Do they fail to believe in God’s love? I do not believe any of these are the case with most people. I believe that we fail to daily experience the objective reality of Christ’s sacrifice for us.

* You do not get the costliness of His love by emptying your head.

Note: Some of us get stuck in the intellectual process of the sacrifice Christ made for us when he came down that first Christmas over 2,000 years ago.

Look at verse 8, do you notice anything unusual about the time of the verbs he used. “Christ died for us.” That is a past historical reality. That is history, and it is fixed. Now look at the beginning of verse 8 “but God shows or demonstrated his own love for us.” He wrote that God shows his own love for us in the present tense. This is an ongoing reality for you and me.

Yes, the sacrifice that Jesus made for us has factual, objective, content to show us, however, it does not end at the manger and the cross. The experience that He demonstrated for us is a continuing reality of the glory and love of God past, present and future.

You do not get the costliness of His love for you by merely emptying your head of all the facts you have come to believe. You experience the costliness of His love for you when you experience it on a daily basis in the way you order your life.

Ephesians 5:1–2 ESV

1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Costliness of Love

Chuck Colson told the story of a group of American prisoners of war during the Second World War, who were made to do hard labor in a prison camp. Each had a shovel and would dig all day, then come in and give an account of his tool in the evening. One evening 20 prisoners were lined up by the guard and the shovels were counted. The guard counted nineteen shovels and turned in rage on the 20 prisoners demanding to know which one did not bring his shovel back. No one responded. The guard took out his gun and said that he would shoot five men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward. After a moment of tense silence, a 19-year-old soldier—the age of my Ben—stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him, took him to the side and shot him in the head, and turned to warn the others that they better be more careful than he was. When he left, the men counted the shovels and there were 20. The guard had miscounted. And the boy had given his life for his friends.

Can you imagine the emotions that must have filled their hearts as they knelt down over his body? In the five or ten seconds of silence, the boy had weighed his whole future in the balance—a future wife, an education, a new truck, children, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death so that others might live.

Jesus said in John 15:13, ""Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." To love is to choose suffering for the sake of another.

An Infinitely More Costly Love

Why do we consider the following sacrifice so great? It is because the boy was 19 years old. If it had been someone say 89 years old, while tragic we would say it is a beautiful act of love, but with a full life behind him it would not feel like the same kind of sacrifice. Consider Jesus sacrifice for you and me.

Jesus was Young: He was only 33 years old and had only 3 years of ministry.

He was the Oldest Son of a widowed mother: one of the last acts Jesus did from the cross was to insure that his mother was cared for. The life he gave up was young and from a human standpoint left a mother in need of her son.

He was sinless and perfect, the most worthy of Living: He committed not sin, there was not deceit in his mouth, even his enemies could find no fault with Jesus. Of all the lives that have ever been lived his was the most worthy of being lived.

He was the son of God: his life was not just relatively more valuable, it was infinitely more valuable because it was the precious son of God. The price Jesus paid was paid joyfully and willingly for you and me.

The costliness of the Sacrifice is seen in the Incarnation

CONSIDER WHAT THE SACRIFICE INVOLVED

“For Jesus to get to the point where he could die, Jesus had to plan it. He left the glory of heaven and took on human nature so that he could hunger and get tired and in the end suffer and die. The incarnation was the preparation of nerve ending for the nails of the cross. Jesus needed a broad human back for a place to be scourged and place the rugged cross beam of the cross. He needed a brow and skull as a place for the thorns to press into his flesh. He needed cheeks for Judas’ kiss and soldiers to spit and slap.

He needed hands and feet for the long spikes to be driven. He needed a side as a place for the sword to pierce. And he needed a brain and a spinal cord, with no vinegar and no gall, so that he could feel the entire excruciating death - for you and me.

The 19 year old is a wonderful picture of love, but, compared to Jesus he was only a picture. His death was quick and relatively painless. Jesus’ death was one of the worst kinds of torture devised for human pain. So when you read in Ephesians 5:2 “Christ loved you and gave himself up for you,” don’t fly through the words : “gave himself up.” He sacrifice was the greatest humankind has ever witnessed or ever will.

2. The Undeserving Object of His Love

WE KNOW THE DEPTH OF His LOVE FOR US BY HOW LITTLE WE DESERVE IT

Note: If we have treated him well all our life, and have done all that he expects of us, then when he loves us, it will not prove as much love as it would if he loved us when we had offended him, and shunned him, and disdained him. The more undeserving we are, the more amazing and deep is his love for us. So we will see the depth of Christ's love in relation to how undeserving are the objects of his love (Romans 5:5–8).

Romans 5:6–7 ESV

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—

Note: Human love rarely reaches to the heights of dying for someone who has been especially good to us. And almost never would human love sacrifice itself for someone who is just basically a principled person.

So, if you take the two best candidates of love - the just and upright citizen; and the kind a generous person who has been good to you - the likelihood that mere human love would give its life for them is very small.

v. 8 changes the paradigm of love: “But God, demonstrates His own love for us.......” The greatest but in scripture.

*The undeserving object of His love is reserved for the weak.

I love the picture of weakness in Captain America. They take the worlds poster child for weakness and create a super warrior beyond his wildest imagination. Why did they choose Steve Rogers? It definitely was not his athletic build, or ability on the battle field.

He had a humble heart that was willing to jump on a supposedly live grenade to save everyone else. The object of his love comes to the undeserving and weak.

NOTE: Do not miss this point, Christ died and gave himself up for the helpless, weak, sickly, undeserving in every way you can imagine.

“God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong…that no man should boast before God.”

When someone asks how are you doing consider this humble response? “Better than my sins deserve.”

In Living the Cross Centered Life, of first importance: “Christ died for our sins.” Indeed, and that is better than we deserve. And it points out the fact we are undeserving of so much more.

I’m undeserving. Of: 1. The love of God 2. The grace of Christ 3. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit 4. Forgiveness for my wickedness and sin 5. Adoption into the family of God 6. Justification before a just and holy God 7. Union with Christ the blameless and pure 8. Escape from the wrath of God that is coming 9. The grace of preaching the gospel of Christ 10. Having a people, Christ’s people, to care for in the Christian ministry 11. The privilege of looking each day into God’s Word, of either having this as a “job” or the sight and the mental ability to do it 12. Association with Christ by wearing the name “Christian” or participating in baptism and membership in His body, the church 13. Eternal life 14. Seeing Jesus by faith now and by sight when time gives way to eternity 15. The favor of the Lord in the form of my wife 16. The fruit of the womb, three children on loan to us for the glory of God 17. Friends who have loved me enough to teach me, correct me, bear with me, rejoice with me and pray for me

The love of God is given to the most unlikely, unimaginably, unworthy. I love the picture of incarnation. Jesus came into this world as a helpless baby, but, make no mistake he was never helpless or weak. What would cause a bunch of shepherds to leave their flocks in the field and run to bow down before a cooing baby in a feed trough.

There was nothing imaginably weak about Jesus. The strongest act of power that the world has ever known took place over 2,000 years ago when Jesus stepped down from his kingly thrown and assumed for a time the form of humanity. Jesus did not come for those who felt like they had things all together. Remember Jesus told his disciples that he came for the sick, weak, outcast of society. He came to save sinners not basically good people.

NOTE: Everyone who trusts in Christ, the love of God has now overcome the wrath of God, and saved you. So, you were guilty sinners, weak, helpless, unable to save yourselves. Undeserving in every way. However, he chose to die for you anyway.

*The undeserving object of His love is reserved for His enemies.

Romans 5:10 ESV

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Note: The undeserving objects of His love are his enemies, which, refers to you and me. Everyone who is not a child of God is his enemies, we are enemies of the cross.

Some people choose to live as enemies of Christ and rarely even acknowledge or know that they are doing so. We know that according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18 “the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but, to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

No one can come to Christ without first having a humble heart. Why? The Bible describes humility as meekness, lowliness, and absence of self. When we come to Christ as sinners, we must first come in humility admitting to God that we are weak and in desperate need of His help.

We recognize our lack of merit and complete inability to save ourselves. Then when He offers the gift of grace and mercy we humbly accept the gift with complete gratitude and commit our lives to Him and to others. We die to self so that we can live for Him. “The life that we now live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

Remember that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5). If we exalt ourselves and our own reputation and ability above God, then we are placing ourselves in opposition to God who will, in His grace and for our own good, humble us.

3. The Greatness of the Benefit of His Love

WE KNOW THE DEPTH OF LOVE FOR US BY THE GREATNESS OF THE BENEFITS

Note: If we are helped to pass an exam, we will feel loved in one way. If we are helped to get a job, we will feel loved another way. If we are helped to escape from an oppressive captivity and given freedom for the rest of our life, we will feel loved another way. And if we are rescued from eternal torment and given a place in the presence of God with fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, we will know a depth of love that surpasses all others (1 John 3:1–3). So we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved by him.

1 John 3:1 ESV

1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology (Chapter 6: The Abundant Blessings of Salvation: Our Union with the Incarnate Savior)

First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us. Therefore, to share in what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us … all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.

*The greatness of the benefit is in the UNION

1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV

30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

Note: the great miracle of the incarnation is the fact that we are ingrafted into His body. Christ came to make our flesh and blood His own. To be joined to the incarnate Christ is what it means to be saved. When we are joined to him, we receive all the benefits he secured for us in his birth, baptism, life, death, resurrection, and ascension: the gifts and the giver cannot be separated.

THE NATURE OF THE UNION WITH CHRIST

Note: We have a new nature in Christ, the union we have with Christ is not some abstract impersonal way or fact to rattle off in Christian circles.

The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology The Nature of Our Union with Jesus Christ

To be united to Christ means that we are truly joined to the incarnate person of Christ himself, who is present in his gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit and received through faith, and by this union we are brought to participate in the very life and love of the Trinity.

Consider Baptism: This is why baptism is so important for the believer, the visible picture of the internal change that has now taken place in a believers life. This is why when the people in Acts 2 were cut to the heart and asked Peter what they should do the first thing out of his mouth was, “repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Note: This is why there was no such thing as an unbaptized believer in the early Church. Why? Because the union we experience with the body is displayed in baptism and is part of the testimony we give to the new nature we have received in Christ.

Our Union with Christ is a Profound Mystery

The significance of the mystery needs to be recaptured by the Church today. We live in a day and time when the mystery of the incarnation has been demystified. The transcendent mystery of God coming in flesh to dwell inside of each one of us has somehow lost it’s luster for the modern day believer.

The great mystery of the ex nihilo the uncreated God of the universe is what leads each and everyone of us to confession, adoration, and awe. None of us can truly experience and behold the miracle of the Messiah apart from the mystery. For centuries Christians have been given over to unholy excess of rationalism; we must work to daily exalt and bring to light the incredible mystery of our redemption.

Divine gospel mysteries are objective realities we believe, confess, and adore rather than explain away or, worse, attempt to solve. Paul calls the mystery in Col. 1:27 Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Christian’s struggle with describing the depth of the mystery of our union with Christ as beyond comprehension.

Ephesians 5:29–32 ESV

29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

WE typically see this text only in the context of human marriage, however, the root lies int he profound mystery, namely, that we are members, limbs and organs, of Christ’s body, one flesh with him. The intimate mysterious joining of male and female that characterizes the human marriage is fulfilled in Christ and his Church. Husbands are called to love their wives as they love the Church, Women are called to submit and be obedient to their husbands as to Christ.

Our failure to understand the physical reality of this union with Christ is what drives Paul crazy. In 1 Cor. 6:15-16 Paul contends that bodily union with a prostitute is shamefully unholy because believers are already in a union with Jesus Christ that includes their bodies.

What if our union with Christ was something less than union with the incarnation of Christ? What would salvation consist of in such a case? Our Salvation would no longer be personal but become an abstract idea characterized by an impersonal mechanism or transaction in which salvation is understood primarily as a reception of this or that benefit rather than sharing in the One who includes within himself all of his benefits.

*The Greatness of the benefit is in the GOSPEL

Romans 1:16 ESV

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Note: Every believer should be able to verbalize what the gospel is and what it is not.

R.C. Sproul

“The gospel is the possession of Jesus, but, even more, Jesus is the heart of the content of the gospel”

We use the term gospel so lightly in the Church today. Preachers say they preach the gospel, but, if we listen close to what they are preaching we might find it difficult to find the gospel.

The word for gospel is the word euangelion which refers to something that sounds good. The prefix of the word is something good and pleasant. The word angelos or angelion is the word for “message.” Angels are messengers, and an angelos is one who delivers a message.

Therefore, the word gospel means “good message” or “good news.”

Note: The gospel is under attack in the church today. I cannot stress enough how important it is to get the gospel right and to understand the objective aspect of the person and work of Jesus and the subjective dimension of how we benefit from that by faith alone.

The Gospel of Love

The Origin of the Gospel is in the Father. John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only son.’ The gospel is not that Jesus makes a reluctant Father gracious to us.

God himself initiates His gospel plan to the world through Jesus Christ. In Romans 1:16 Paul say’s that the gospel is the power of God for salvation. The power of the Father. In the fullness of time and space God sent his one and only son to the earth.

Many people think that since God is good, He will just graciously accept anyone as long as we lead good lives, but this isn’t good news, because none of us are as good as God. If left to ourselves we will receive what our lives actually deserve: His judgment and wrath.

The doctrine of Justification is at the heart of the gospel and why Christ came. Justification is explained this way: justification is simply the acceptance with which God now receives us into his favor as righteous men and women. We are made right with God, not longer his enemies but his beloved children.

Picture it this way: seeing in in judicial, forensic terms in recognition of a divine courtroom scene in which God acts as the sovereign Judge, acquitting those guilty of transgressing his law (forgiveness) and granting them the representative righteousness of Christ’s law-fulfilling obedience (imputation) meaning His righteousness is now imputed to us. God now declares us righteous in Christ alone, therefore, stripping away any pretense that we could somehow merit God’s saving grace by way of our good works or disposition of our heart.

TWO ERRORS IN UNDERSTANDING THE GOSPEL

Error #1 Salvation Based on What you have Done

Many people tend to make the gospel more about what they have done and fail to talk about what has been done for them through justification. The greatness of the benefit of His love is what He has done for us, in while we were still sinners, weak, helpless. Romans 5:8

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Error #2 We can live a Carnal Christian Life

Many people leave out the process of sanctification being a necessary benefit of our justification. It is not a possible consequence but a certain consequence.

Today we have so many people who remain what is called a “carnal Christian” if there is such a thing. I think this stems from the problem we see of people making a profession of faith in Christ as a response to some kind of evangelistic outreach but then demonstrating no outward apparent change in their lives.

Some people want to be optimistic and trust the profession of faith, so they contemplate the idea that they are really Christians but have not yet begun their sanctification. But Historically, and biblically speaking Christianity says again and again that once a person is justified, he begins to be sanctified.

The Gospel of Regeneration

A person cannot be saved without possessing true saving faith. Some Christians disagree about when that faith happens in relation to rebirth or regeneration.

Regeneration refers to the work of the Holy Spirit by which a person is removed from a state of spiritual death and transformed into a state of spiritual life. Some people believe that person has faith first, and then, as an immediate consequence of that faith, he is not only justified but also regenerated.

Regeneration is a necessary element that must take place before a person can come to true saving faith in Christ. The only way that faith can be manifested in the live of a person is if God first works a work of grace in his soul through the operation of the Holy Spirit, by which he is quickened from spiritual death to spiritual life and is therefore reborn.

As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)

Sanctification involves ongoing repentance. Some Christians think that the only time a Christian is called upon to repent is at the initiation of the Christian life. However, scripture reminds us that repentance is the life long process for the Christian. We are called to live a life of repentance, and confession of our sins to Him daily, and as we grow in sanctification turn more and more away from sinful habits and actions.

How do we talk about the benefits of the Gospel without sounding like prosperity Gospel?

Sinclair Ferguson

“Instead of offering every blessing through Jesus, we are offering every blessing in Jesus.” What we are offering is Jesus Himself. Not just offering fire insurance of Health and Wealth.

UNION WITH CHRIST

Remember that the crowds are following Jesus looking for prosperity, for healing, for a miracle. The story of the 10 lepers, the 10 lepers come to Jesus looking for prosperity and healing, but only one comes back to know Jesus. The problem isn’t that people want to much from Jesus, they want too little.

Union with Jesus is what we are after. The end blessing of know Christ is eternal Hope, Joy, and Peace in the Kingdom of God. WE as Christians have short changed the gospel, believe in Jesus, get your sins forgiven and go to heaven. That is just he entry point you miss out on the Shalom and the adoption as a Child of God. The blessing is that God will be with you in your suffering and struggles.

LIFE WORKS BETTER WITH JESUS

Better marriage, better parenting, better love, better relationships, better life..........................

When we offer Christ we are not offering the fringe benefits of Christianity, we are offering them Christ himself.

Galatians 2:20 ESV

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

CLOSING

So, the Costliness of His love, The undeserving object of His love, and the Benefit of His Love are clear to see. Where do we go from here?