Gospel. Good News. Sin. Salvation. Saviour. Righteousness. Trinity. So many jargon.
For the uninitiated, like I was many years ago, Christianity appeared to be a religion with many foreign terminology and concepts. We have chosen to title this sharing “God’s Love” because everybody has encountered love in one form or other, or the lack thereof, so there is some appreciation of “love” when we talk about it. And in the innermost being of every man or woman, there is a desire to be loved, a longing to be fulfilled, a God-shaped vacuum that can only be filled with God’s love.
We have come to realise that being a Christian (a follower of Christ) is not a religion we key into online forms to inform others of our religious association, it is not about going to church every Sunday, it is not about the practices we perform or whether or not you are raised in a family with parents who call themselves Christians. It is about knowing God, about having a personal relationship with a God who loves us.
The foundation of the love of God is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures – I Corinthians 15:3,4
By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
– 1 John 3:16
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
– Romans 5:8
God is Love (I John 4:8).
God’s love is demonstrated.
Demonstrated while we were still sinners, not when we are lovely or lovable. The Bible says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are sinners because of a sin nature in us, inherited from the fall of Adam and Eve. When God created Adam and Eve, they were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) to have dominion over the earth and God blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). When Adam and Eve sinned, when they chose independence from God, sin entered the world. We who are all born into Adam, born of the flesh (John 3:6-7), are born with a sin nature (Romans 5:12). Sin is what separates us from fellowship with God. The penalty for sin is death. (Romans 6:23) God desires that man be restored to their original value, be restored to who they were created to be. That is why we must be born again. The Bible says unless we are born again, we cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3, John 3:6-7).
For every one word that Jesus Christ spoke about heaven, He spoke three words about hell. He never avoided it. He never tried to sneak in under it. He never said “I don’t believe it exists.” He spoke more about hell more than He spoke about heaven. As many of you know, I am a cancer survivor.
Dr David jeremiah
Suppose that when I found out I had cancer, I went to see my physician who’s a very decorated lymphoma doctor and as he did, he begins to tell me about my sickness, where my disease is, what’s going to happen to me, what the prognosis is etc, etc. And when he gets all done and I’m so discouraged and suppose my doctor has in his possession the cure to my cancer and he lets me walk out and never tells me anything at all about the cure. He just tells me about the disease.
And suppose an even worse scenario that when I come to see him he doesn’t even tell me I’m sick. Suppose he says, “You’re just having a bad day, Dr Jeremiah, or you’re just having normal headaches, or those pains you feel are normal. Don’t worry about them. You’re fine.”
Suppose he looks at my x-ray and sees how sick I really am, but decides he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings, he won’t tell me. Suppose he lets me walk out with this life-threatening disease and never even tells me that I have it. You say such a person should never be allowed to practice medicine again.
And yet how easy it is for us to say that it’s wrong for a pastor to stand and from the book of God say to the people who listen to him, this is the sickness God says you have. You have a disease called sin. And that sickness will take you to hell if you don’t get it cured.
But here’s the good news. I have the cure. It’s called the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Consider God, the Creator of all (Romans 1:20), whose invisible attributes are clearly seen throughout creation, made Himself of no reputation, came in the likeness of men, humbled Himself and died for us on the cross (Philippians 2:6-8) that we might be saved (2 Peter 3:9). God so loved that He gave. He gave His Son, Jesus to die for our sins. (Romans 8:3-4) This is the grace of God.
The second part of John 3:16 says that “whoever believes in Him (Jesus)” shall not perish. That is where faith comes in. Faith appropriates and receives what grace has provided. The way to be saved is to believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus (Romans 10:9). For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Romans 10:10). For God made Jesus Christ who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 5:21).
We share in the following pages about receiving baptism of the Holy Spirit and water baptism which are important to a victorious Christian life.
An Analogy of the Holy Trinity
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
– II Corinthians 13:14
God is three Persons in One, or as we call the Holy Trinity. He is God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit. It took me many many years to truly appreciate the triune Godhead and who they are. The fullness of God was manifested visibly in Jesus Christ and is communicated by the Holy Spirit. I recall an analogy of God as the sun that has helped me very much in appreciating the omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of the Three Persons of the Trinity.
The sun is the source of all life as God is. The sun is so bright that we can’t look directly at it and so it is with the brightness of the glory of God. (John 1:18)
Light comes from the sun. Jesus Christ is the light of God that has come upon the world to deliver us from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13, 2 Corinthians 4:6). Jesus Christ is the express image of God (Hebrews 1:3, John 12:45, Colossians 1:15 ). When we see Jesus and all that He manifests, we see the nature and character of God (John 5:19).
Where the sun shines, there is warmth. We cannot see the Holy Spirit just as we cannot see “warmth” but we know the presence of the Holy Spirit just as we know the presence of the sun because of the warmth. The Holy Spirit’s role is crucial in the believer’s life (John 14:26, 1 Corinthians 12, Galatians 5:22, Acts 1:8) Light and warmth from the sun helps seeds grow and produce fruit. Likewise, the revelation of Jesus Christ taught to us by the Holy Spirit helps the believer bear fruit in his life.