Letter for February 1992
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Dear Friends,

How do you feel and comprehend God's love to you as a Christian? The Bible paints the love of God for us in many different colours, for God's love is too great to describe in just one way. One way the love of God for us is described is by the apostle John, in his first general letter. He says a great many things about God's love, this is one, and I would like to share it with you this month.

John writes in 1 John 3:1 - "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! and this is what we are."

God's love for us must be very great indeed if he wants to be so intimate with us that he desires us in his family as sons or daughters. When John speaks of us as 'called' children of God; this does not mean that we are only sons or daughters in name; that is, given a title, but not really real family members. No! it means God owns us as his family forever, and will never renounce it. See how John asserts this truth - "And this is what we are." Our family membership is real and permanent.

Isn't it amazing that God wants us weak sinners as his children. It is what this means for us which reveals God's love. It does not only mean God will care for us and protect us; nor does it only mean we have a place in the mansions of heaven, God's home, for eternity; it means God wants our company and wants communion with us.

As loving families live together, laugh together, work together, play together, so God's love in making us his family means he wants to live with us and have us live with him in this way. Could there be any love more wonderful than this?

How do you perceive God's relationship with you in your life as a Christian? Do you feel him always looking severely at you, ready to notice every failure and frown upon you, and punish you? Do you feel God is setting you impossible standards and holding back his love unless you achieve them? Often Satan tempts us to think of God like this.

But God is not like this with us - he is a loving Father, whose great desire is to lavish love on us. He is grieved when we are wayward, but he is not always chiding, and in Christ has not only forgiven all our sins, but ceased to remember them.

Satan wants to keep us from the realisation of this love the Father has for us. When we see what the Bible says, this love of God is natural and not strange.

When Jesus was baptised in the river Jordan by John the Baptist, God spoke and said of Jesus, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." Luke 3:22. The apostle Paul tells us we, who trust in Jesus as Saviour, become members of Christ's body. Ephesians 4:15,16 - "We will in all things grow up in Him, who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love." So we are one with Christ. We are in a mystical way, but real way, part of Christ and joined to Him. So God loves us because we are in Christ. He says to us 'you are my children, whom I love'.

This is truly love lavished on us as John says in the text we are looking at. God could not love us more if he loves us as he loves Jesus.

There cannot be anything too great for God to do for us, and this is why he gave His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for us.

Let us not imagine that there is anything in us which attracts this love. In us is only sin by which we have 'uglified' the image of God created in us. We have defiled what God originally created perfect. In ourselves we should only attract God's aversion to us. Instead God loves us by a sovereign gracious merciful choice. In this choice God wills to love us with an everlasting love, and this love is the source of all our Christian blessing. This is how Paul puts it in Romans 8:28-30. "And we know that in all things God works for good of those who love him." Why? Because as Paul goes on to say "we are called according to his purpose, etc."

In this is the security of his love for us. It is sovereign love. We are his children by sovereign choice. He called us by name and made us his own, without any consideration of any supposed worthiness in us. God's sovereign electing love will never cease.

Let us live in the knowledge and comfort of this love.

Your servant for Christ's sake,