(Text Only)
Title: The Greatest Question Ever Asked (Part One)
By now, most of you know me. Most of you know my preaching style, my likes, my passions, and my pet peeves. Any of you who have heard 20 or more of my sermons know that one thing I absolutely can’t stand about Christianity in America today is the amplification of one trait of God above the whole of his character.
Namely, I get really frustrated when Churches overemphasize the love of God at the expense of several other characteristics that are equally important, if we are to understand the God of Scripture. Namely, we tend to often to talk about God’s Love at a 100:1 ratio over God’s wrath, God’s jealousy, God’s holiness, God’s perfection, and God’s judgement.
I recoil against this type of teaching so violently, that I’ve had people ask me directly, “Ben, what do you think of God’s love?”
Well, I hope to answer that question for you today.
Let us look at I John, chapter 3, verse one. (Read)
Now, if you notice in all of your English translations, that sentence ends with either a period or an exclamation point. This means that everyone believes John is asking a rhetorical question, he understands the matter of love that God has bestowed on his children and is exclaiming it’s magnificence. What I want to do today, is to get you to share in that exclamation. But to do that, we need to start with a question mark on the end of John’s statement, treating it like a question. Once we can begin to answer that question, we can then exclaim it as John does.
What matter of love has the father bestowed on us that we should be called his children?
I believe, quite simply, that this is the single greatest question in the entire Bible. If John had simply said, “What matter of love has the father bestowed on us?” It would be great question, one worthy of endless dialog and discussion. But John ads a qualifier that turns this from a great question into THE great question.
He asks, “What manner of love has the father bestowed on us, that we should be called his children?”
Not, “That we could be called his children”, but that we SHOULD. That it is right that we are identified as children of God the Father.
To say it another way, “What ingredients have to be in the formula that makes up God’s love so that we can be called his children?” What powers, if you will, what magic, if you will, must exist within God’s love to somehow make us become his children?
To answer this question, I could effectively preach on this topic for six months. I will spare you that, and ask that you consider only five characteristics of God’s love, things you may or may not have thought about, all supported by scripture, all of which have to power to help you join John in this amazing exclamation.
Today, I will start by looking at the first and second characteristic. Next week we will look at characteristics three through five, at the end of next week, my hope is that you will:
1. Understand the manner of God’s love better than you’ve ever understood it before.
2. Join in changing that question mark to an exclamation point.
1. God’s Love is a restorative love.
Psalm 23:1-3
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in the paths or righteousness, for His name’s sake.
Point: When God turns us into His children, he is not turning us from a position of neutrality. We were not just people wandering in the wilderness. Paul tell us in Colossians 1:21 that we were “alienated and enemies” of God.
So God brought us from enemy status, right past neutrality (being forgiven) and all the way to favor. But not just any favor. I favor the Cavs over the Lakers. I favor Vanilla to Chocolate. But I love my daughter so much that if you told me that in order to be with my daughter I had to never watch a Cavs game and never have Vanilla ice cream again, I’d agree to that in a millisecond.
God did not bring us over in favor like ice cream. He chose us from amidst a pile of human enemies, to become His children.
2. God’s Love is a precise love.
“…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.”
Paul, in 1 Timothy 2:15-16
Paul says some incredibly interesting stuff here. He says that “Christ showed longsuffering” in dealing with Paul, meaning literally that Christ endured Paul, and all his sin, so that others may understand that God tolerates us, while in our rebellion, that he may show us his love.
As a father, I understand that really well. I have often tolerated my daughter’s tantrums, that I might show her my patience, endurance, that she might know my love.
In theology this concept usually falls under“Particular Atonement.” It not only deals with Christ blood being effective for the elect’s sin, but also it deals with the idea that Christ died for you, and all your sin, long before you were even born.
Furthermore, God knew:
1. How much you’d sin before being called to conversion
2. How much you’d sin between conversion and death. (Yikes!)
And He still provided the necessary means for your salvation. Another way to think about it is this: we can’t hide anything we’ve done from God. We can’t even hide the thought of sinning, even if we ultimately choose not to sin. Even that thought is known by God, and disgusts him.
Yet he knows all of this, and even that stuff we haven’t done yet, and his love still brings us to a place of being called his child.