Metaphysical Blog; February, 2009 Archive, Page 1; Metaphysical Blog

Throughout this journey in the study of love, we have learned much about it. From the source of love to the description of how the manifested elements (fruit) of love should look, our understanding has grown way beyond what we first thought. We know now how important it is to God for us to Love and how important it is for us to understand what love is. We also know that the Holy Spirit has to produce this love and that we will never be able to want what He has more than he wants to give.

One of the most important things about love that we have not talked about is that all that we know now about love is really the very nature of God. You may feel like He contradicts Himself sometimes when we see Him angry or read about His wrath. I understand why there are problems with believing that God is only loving, but there is only one truth about Gods nature and I pray we can learn it in this study.

We think, If I am not good, God is going to be mad. This is such a disappointing lie about God, that is shared by most everyone on earth today. God is a love! He isn't mad at us. He not only loves us, He likes us! Our sin does not change His opinion of us nor make Him to withhold His blessing! He will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter how badly we miss it. His mercies are new every morning! Great is His faithfulness!

Usually, however, God is represented as angry, and ready to smack our hand with His stick at every mistake. Or at least He certainly won't answer our prayers if we sin. That's so wrong, and it leads to wrong conclusions and attitudes toward God that hinder an intimate relationship with Him.

Why is the Lord represented so harshly? The answer can be found in the lack of understanding of the harmony between the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Lord vented His anger and judgment often, and in devastating ways. There was Noah's flood; the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; a death angel killed all the firstborn of Egypt in one night; another angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night; and on and on the list goes.

There is no doubt our God is a holy God who hates sin and demands justice. However, there is also the portrait of God that Jesus painted through His teachings and actions. He showed mercy to the worst of sinners, associated with publicans and harlots, loved the unlovely, and His ultimate action of dying for our sins proved beyond any doubt that He came to save the world, not condemn it.

How does this fit with the Old Testament view of the harshness and severity of God? Is God schizophrenic? Does He sometimes love us and other times hate us? How can we have a loving relationship with someone who changes His moods frequently? This kind of mindset is what keeps so many people at arm's length from the Lord.

The vast majority of people KNOW there is a God; they just don't know how to relate to Him. They are confused because mixed signals have been sent to them, often by the church. A Pastor or Sunday-school teacher will say that it was God, in His sovereignty, who destroyed the people in the twin towers to awaken the nation (or something like that); and in the next breath, they will ask if anyone wants to serve this GOOD GOD. We are told that God won't answer the prayer of anyone in sin, and yet we are told that we all sin. Where does that leave us? Without a prayer!

There is a simple answer to these questions, and a harmony between the wrath and mercy of God. God is not schizophrenic. There is one, true nature of God clearly represented in the Word, and that is LOVE! I John 4:8 says, "God is love." All the things we learned are all that you will ever find in the nature of God. He doesn't just love at times. Love is the nature of God!

Jesus gave us the greatest representation of the true nature of God ever presented. God placed our sins on Jesus and punished Him in our place. God satisfied His own demands for justice, not by punishing us, but by punishing His Son in our place. This wasn't a partial payment which required adding our holiness; it was a total payment that leaves us with nothing to do except believe and receive, or doubt and do without. Jesus' payment for our sins forever restored our relationship with God. A relationship, by the way, that "we" had broken.

If Jesus had made His sacrifice for sins in the Old Testament, then we wouldn't have seen the wrath of God vented as recorded in the Old Testament scriptures. Here's an example. In 2 Kings 1, Elijah called fire down from heaven and killed 102 soldiers who had come to arrest him. Jesus' disciples asked to do the same thing and cited Elijah as their example. Jesus rebuked them for even thinking about such an act and said,

"Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:55-56).

Jesus rebuked His disciples for trying to follow Elijah's example. This shows that if Jesus had been present on the earth in His role as Messiah, this act of judgment wouldn't have happened.

There is a difference between the way God dealt with mankind under the Old Covenant and the way He deals with mankind under the New Covenant. Before the sacrifice of Jesus, there was judgment. But it wasn't because the Lord desired to punish us. His nature has always been love. However, a price had to be paid for sin, and until that sacrifice was made, there had to be consequences.

It's similar to training children. If you wait to begin disciplining your children until they are old enough to fully comprehend exactly what you say, you and the child will be in big trouble. A child has to be restrained from doing wrong from a very young age. At one or two years old, they may not understand that it's the devil tempting them to take their sibling's toys. However, they can understand, "If you do that again, you are going to get a spanking." They may not comprehend heaven and hell issues, but when the devil tempts them with covetousness, they will say NO, because they fear a spanking. Likewise, before the new birth, people were sinning and that sin was destroying their lives.

REMEMBER: Gods commands are there to protect us (out of His love for us) and not to see if we obey Him or not.

God didn't want to punish them. He was willing to show them mercy on credit, in a sense, looking forward to the sacrifice of His own Son for their sins. People began to take the lack of God's judgment as approval. This can be clearly seen with Cain and his descendants. Cain killed his brother Abel because of jealousy (Gen. 4). Instead of punishment, God extended mercy toward Cain, even putting a mark on his forehead to warn others that God was protecting him.

Cain's great-great-great-grandson, Lamech, interpreted this as approval of murder. He killed a man in self-defense and, therefore, felt more justified in his killing than Cain. He said that if God would avenge Cain sevenfold, then He would avenge Lamech seventy and sevenfold. God didn't say that, Lamech did. Lamech was presuming on God because of His grace toward Cain. Therefore, mankind began to move so far away from a proper standard of holiness that if God hadn't intervened, there wouldn't have been a virgin left to give birth to Jesus.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:12,

"But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."

This has always been the case. If one person gets by with sin, others will take that as an approval of sin. So before the Lord could produce the new birth, where He lives within us and guides us through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, He placed external restraints on sin that even lost people could understand. "You sin and you die." That's the way it was. That wasn't the way God really wanted it to be, but sin had to be restrained until Jesus' atoning sacrifice was made. God's withholding of punishment for sin had led to a total loss of a true standard of right and wrong. Mankind had compared themselves with others so often and for so long that no one knew what God originally intended. Something had to be done. Sin was destroying the human race and needed to be restrained.

Therefore, God gave the Law. But why didn't He give the Law to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 2,000 years earlier and prevent these problems? Because of love. The Law had serious side effects of condemnation and guilt. God didn't want us running from Him out of fear but to Him because of love and grace. Its got to be real love for Him or none at all. I explained in an earlier study that if He makes you love Him, He would know it isn't real love. Think about this for a moment.

The Law was never God's plan for salvation. It was God showing us that we could never measure up to His holy standard. It was given to drive us from self-righteousness and toward receiving the sacrifice of Jesus by faith. Amazingly, the church has interpreted it in the opposite way. Most Christians think the Law is wonderful, that God expects us to keep it, and that His response to us is based on our compliance. That's just not true!

The Law was given for two main purposes. First, the fear of God's punishment constrained sin in people's lives, thereby diminishing Satan's inroads. Second, it totally took away all hope of being saved by any virtue of themselves. The Law made everyone guilty before God with no hope of justice. We needed mercy. Those were the main purposes of the Law. It was not God's list of steps one through ten thousand of what you must do to be right with Him. It was God's list of all you have done wrong, proving that you can never be right with God unless He provides another form of payment. It was not to set you free. The Law was to bind and destroy you. It was a severe spanking for the whole human race to turn us from sin and self-salvation.

Love is the very nature of God.

I Love you.

Metaphysical Blog February Archive

Meditation Techniques

Schools on transcendental meditation considered by UK government

Love Is The Nature Of God

Audio Materials for your Spiritual Journey

Love Is Kind

Love Is Patient

This Thing Called Love

Aura Cleansing

Labyrinth Group opens new divisions