God's Everlasting Love in Christ
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God’s Everlasting Love in Christ
God’s Everlasting Love in Christ
(Roy Gerald Bourton Funeral)
Few things are more affirming than to know that we are loved unconditionally. That is especially true when we or those near and dear to us are in pain. At that time those who love us pull together for the whole, not their part of the whole.
That being the case when we are hurting long for those whom we love to come near. Not to smother us, but to be near and strengthen.
John in his account of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, recorded that when Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha was ill they sent for Jesus. They sent for Him because they knew that He loved them.
So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
When Jesus saw Mary weeping after the death of her brother Lazarus. John recorded that Jesus wept. Seeing that those who mourned with Martha and Martha, commented, “See how He loved him (Lazarus)”
Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
True love is not only about what we say but what we do or don’t do. The Apostle Paul wrote.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Paul also reminded the church in Corinth and all of us that is important as faith and hope are love is greater.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
With the death of a loved one, each of us needs to know that we are loved, not only by those who are near and dear to us but loved by God. God’s love is the love for which our hearts should long. God’s love is the love that should and must embrace.
In his letter to the believers in Rome, Paul went to great lengths to assure that God loved them and His love was most clearly seen in Christ. So great and sure is God’s love that Paul reminded them that nothing could separate them from God’s love.
While there are wonderful ways to tell others that we love them, the clearest way of expressing/demonstrating our love for others is if called to dying that those whom we love might live.
Someone has wisely noted that there is no “I” in love.
Jesus reminded His disciples of that.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
The wonder of Jesus dying for us gripped the heart of the Apostle Paul.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God’s love for us never let’s go of those WHO HAVE EMBRACED IS BY FAITH.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We need to remember the God’s love in Christ, rescues those this truly believe.
This isn’t complicated. In the word of God, those who believed, didn’t only talk about God, read about God’s love, write about God’s love or sing about God’s love. They embraced it by faith by repenting, confessing their sin and placing all of their hope in Christ and His death in their place.
For Paul and the believers in Rome, God’s love, the Gospel and faith/believing were inseparably intertwined.
There is righteousness from God to all who believe and live by faith.
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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Righteousness from God
Righteousness is “the state of being perfectly conformed to God’s perfect law and character.” Only God inherently holy.
2. All of us who are unrighteous can through faith can have a righteousness from God.
as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
We become right before God not by doing our best, keeping the law but by faith in what Jesus did.
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
We are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption of Christ Jesus.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Abraham believed in a righteousness that comes by faith. This was long before a written code of right and wrong and the “10 Commandments”
For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
3. Those who are justified by faith have peace with God through Jesus Christ.
Peace is not a internal sense of calm and serenity, but an objective reality. Whereas God who is righteous had to hold all men accountable for their sinful rebellion, those who by faith receive what God provided in Christ are reconciled and at peace with God.
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. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
4. Nothing can separate believers from the love of God in Christ.
In a time when so many promises of love are short lived, God love is everlasting.
the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Everlasting love is what we would expect from our eternal God.
The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
And he thrust out the enemy before you
and said, ‘Destroy.’
God because of His everlasting love promised eternal life. This eternal life is not about time but quality.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The righteousness that Paul explained, come through faith and leads to eternal life.
so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This new life that we have, means that as believers, we are in Christ and the Holy Spirit is in us.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Our comfort and assurance in God’s everlasting love and promises. Those promises are to be found in the word. John also rejoiced in this assurance.
And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
For all of us, these promises are assuring. While we are sometimes weak and all too aware of our mortality. He is strong and has conquered death. TRUST IN HIS DEATH IN OUR PLACE AND HIS RESURRECTION AND PROMISE THAT OF OUR RESURRECTION.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
It is the word that should encourage and anchor our hearts.
As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
No, in all things we are more than conquerors, through Him who loved us and gave Himself for US.
Not only victors but more than victors.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.