Knowing and Seeing Love
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Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit.
And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God.
And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world.
There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because He first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother.
Point: To be born of God and know God is to love. He/she that does not love, does not know God. The only one who knows love is the one who believes and trusts in the revelation of Jesus Christ. The only one who can truly love is the one who receives Jesus’ atonement for one’s sin and loves likewise. These are the only ones that have truly seen God, those who love because of God’s love for us provided in Jesus, the Loving Son. Do you believe in the Love of God? Only those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, given to pay for humanity’s sin, and love likewise, know God, remain in God, and God remains in them. We only know love because God first loved us in Jesus, through Jesus, because of Jesus. Perfect love has no fear of God, for perfect love drives out fear. The one who loves his brother (or sister) has seen God, remains in God, and knows God. Only by the Holy Spirit can we know of God’s love and His love in us.
Famous atheist Christopher Hitchens, interviewed by Portland Monthly (“The Hitchens Transcript”,January 2010), about his opposition to religion, and specifically Christianity, said this to the questioning minister, identifying herself as a “liberal Christian”, who did not take the accounts of Scripture literally and rejected the atonement of Christ,
“I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.” -Christopher Hitchens (The Hitchens Transcript, January 2010)
Pastor and Apologist, Dr. Norman Geisler, answering the question as to, What must one affirm in order to be saved? said this about the essentials of belief for salvation,
The Essentials of Belief for Salvation
1. Human Depravity (I am a sinner) - Romans 3:23
2. God’s Unity (There is one God) - 1 Timothy 2:5
3. The Necessity of Grace (I am saved by grace) - Ephesians 2:8-9
4. Christ’s Deity (Christ is God) - Romans 10:9
5. Christ’s Humanity (Christ is man) - 1 John 4:2
6. Christ’s Atoning Death (Christ died for my sins) - John 3:16
7. Christ’s Bodily Resurrection (Christ rose from the dead) - 1 Corinthians 15:12
8. The Necessity of Faith ( I must believe) - Acts 16:31; Hebrews 11:6
In other words, in order for one to know God and know love, one must acknowledge and believe the reality of sin and our standing as a sinner, whom God wishes to save, by His grace, through His Son, Jesus Christ, whose purpose it was to be born of woman, live as a man, die as a man, without sin, rose from the dead, paying off the debt of man’s sin, and rose to the Father in Heaven, having made reconciliation between God and man. Jesus was born to love and die for the life of humanity that would believe in and love Him, being made one with God the Father. This is the Gospel. This is the foundation of knowing and seeing love.
The Apostle Paul spoke this of the things of “first importance” in believing, loving, and following Christ:
For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
To be born of God, to know God, to love God is to believe in and accept the Atonement of Christ. Atonement in Hebrew is the word kaphar. Kaphar primarily means to cover, cleanse, and purify. Jesus was born, beaten, crucified, and rose, to cover, cleanse, and purify man. Why? Because all humanity has been born under the curse of sin, death, and the wrath of God; seperating us from the love of God and His eternal kingdom and presense (Romans 5:12-21). The Atonement is the central component of our Christian faith. Without Jesus coming to provide cover, cleansing, and purity of man, we have no salvation, we have no eternal future, we have no hope of a life of peace, love, and security. We have no communion with God. We have no overcoming of the world (John 16:33).
Can one remain, be in God’s love, who does not believe in the atonement?
Plainly, to be in God’s love, to remain in God’s love, to know and see God’s love, is to believe, recieve, and affirm the atonement of Jesus Christ. One would think that every follower and lover of Christ would believe this…but this is not the case. William Paul Young, author of The Shack and Lies We Believe About God, wrote this about the atonement of Christ,
Who originated the Cross? If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser, who in Divine Wisdom created a means to torture human beings in the most painful and abhorrent manner....The alternative is that the Cross originated with us human beings. This deviant device is the iconic manifestation of our blind commitment to darkness....And how did God respond to this profound brokenness? God submitted to it. God climbed willingly onto our torture device and met us at the deepest and darkest place of our diabolical imprisonment to our own lies, and by submitting once and for all, God destroyed its power....And how would we religious people interpret this sacrifice? We would declare that it was God who killed Jesus, slaughtering Him as a necessary appeasement for His bloodthirsty need for justice. -William Paul Young (Lies We Believe About God; p. 149-151; 2017)
What is Mr. Young’s issue? That God would possibly conceive of sacrificing Himself for the Creation He loves. That God being holy, righteous, and good, could somehow conceive of something so evil as crucifying God, Himself. Was the Cross evil? Or was it good? Whose perspective are we looking at it from? Progressive Christians, and Progressive Christianity, cannot accept the atonement of Christ because they cannot fathom the depth of God’s love for His creation.
British minister Steve Chalke says in Christianity magazine, September 2004; pp. 44-48,
Penal substitution is tantamount to “child abuse-a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.” Though the sheer bluntness of this imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark “unmasking” of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology. -Steve Chalke, Christianity, Sept. 2004, pp. 44-48
Pastor Rob Bell writes in his book, What is the Bible?,
God didn’t set up the sacrificial system. People did. The sacrificial system evolved as humans developed rituals and rites to help them deal with their guilt and fear....to interpret Jesus’ death through the lens of the sacrificial system, trusting that the peace humans had been longing for with God for thousands of years was in fact a reality. -Rob Bell, “What is the Bible?”, p.245
Brian Zahnd, author of Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, writes that,
“Calvary is not where we see how violent God is; Calvary is where we see how violent our civilization is.....the only thing God will call justice is setting the world right, not punishing an innocent substitute for the petty sake of appeasement.” -Brian Zahnd, “Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God”, p.86
Rob Bell continues on,
“God didn’t need the blood of sacrifices. People did. God didn’t need to kill someone to be ‘happy’ with humanity. What kind of God would that be? Awful. Horrific.” -Rob Bell, “What is the Bible?”, p. 245)
Minister Steve Chalke adds,
“The simple truth is that if God does not relate to his only Son as a perfect Father, neither can we relate to him as such.” -Albert Mohler, “Has the Message of Jesus Been Lost?”, April 27, 2005
The Atonement is just violent, pre-enlightened Christian thinking. It is not the “true knowledge”. Penal atonement, death covering, is child abuse of a vengeful Father of which God is not. He would be incapable, but if so, why would we want to follow a unloving Father who is not perfect, holy, good, and just. The assumption is we know better. God would not operate outside of our box of understanding and love. We know all His ways. Do we?
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
But the unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.
Who created the sacrificial system so that the Israelites could come clean of their sin? God did. Leviticus 4 and 5 show us the sacrifices that OT Jews were to offer before the Lord to make atonement for sins. Adam and Eve were given animal skin to cover their nakedness, atonement for eating the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil (Genesis 3). The Apostle Paul calls Jesus “our Passover Lamb” who “has been sacrificed” for what purpose (1 Cor. 5:7). Atonement for sins, a sin offering, following in the requirements of God in Leviticus 4 and 5. Hebrews 9:22 tells us plainly that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of man’s sin (a fulfillment of God’s atonement requirements from the Old Testament).
According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the lifeblood that makes atonement.
Why was Jesus’ crucifixion needed? Because only through His shed blood is their life for the sinner because God is our very life. Acts 4:12 says, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it.” In whom is salvation only found? In Jesus. Did Jesus have His life taken from Him? No, He laid it down, willingly, because it was His purpose and work, ordained by the Father.
No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from My Father.”
Jesus death on the cross was to fulfill all righteousness. He not only took on His creations bodily form, He carried our sins to the cross and shed His blood to fulfill His Father’s work and will…redeeming men to God…fulfilling all righteousness. How does man accomplish this without a perfect spotless lamb? Jesus was and is the only way.
Jesus Christ—He is the One who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. “If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”
Those who do not believe and accept Jesus sacrifice on the cross, do not know God, have not seen Him, and do not truly love Him. Progressive Christians and Christianity has missed the boat and not followed the teachings of Jesus, the Apostles, nor the Scriptures. Progressive Christianity preaches a “gnostic gospel” that has no power, no Savior, and no requirement to satisfy the wrath of God. Who is capable of paying for our sins? 1 Peter 1:18-19
For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.
Who redeems me from an empty way of life except for Jesus! Nobody. He who remains in God, and God remains in Him believes, trusts, and has faith in the atonement of Christ. This is how we know and see love…the atonement of Jesus Christ, a loving provision and act of the Father for His creation, whom Jesus lovingly and willingly gave His life.
To be born of God, to know God, to love God, and live in God is to accept and believe in the atonement of Jesus. Amen.