Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Love's Embodiment
God is love...

God does not just give love, or show love, or bestow love, but God is love. You may as well throw away the earthly definitions that are embedded with the term love, for they do not apply here. The world’s view of love is either physical or romantic, they know nothing of the divine power called love which even though God needs nothing, He sacrifices everything. Man has a need for love, God is love, He needs nothing more than Himself. So exactly what kind of love is it that comes in the form of death?

Not the swashbuckling love that faces danger to rescue his damsel, that love results in an enhancement to the hero’s reputation, but God’s love comes with no reputation. Hollywood’s love responds to the beauty and innocence of a lady in distress, God’s love rescues the repulsive enemies of His own nature. Storybook love defeats the enemy with skill and daring while God’s love triumphs with the shame of death’s cross. Fairytale love paints the characters as deserving objects of affection, God’s love pulsates from Himself without the dilution of an attractive object, His love is purely Him and operates from the unconditional glory that defines Him.

And behold, what kind of love, even when given in the smallest particle, is still the whole? What kind of love gives the whole and yet the supply is never diminished? What kind of love gives out its own essence without consideration of its object's worthiness? And when you receive the love of God you receive Him, in all His fullness, and interconnected with the entirety of God’s love to mankind, Himself in Jesus. God did not just send His love, He came as His love and to everyone who believes He seals His love with Himself inside the spirit of every born again follower of Jesus, our Lord and Lover.

The love of God has no depth or width or length or height, it is immeasurable and like the cruse of oil given to the Shunammite woman by the Prophet Elisha, God’s love will never fail. The supply cannot suffer loss and it is embodied in the Lord God Himself and made manifest unto us by the Lord Jesus Christ. God has in times past spoken to us in many different ways and through many different people, but He has in these last days spoken to us through His Son the Lord Jesus.

Oh the love that drew salvation’s plan…

We did not deserve a tiny piece of the afterthought of God’s love, but we have been made recipients of it all. By His matchless grace we have been made worthy of His love by His love. Go ahead and run that one around in that serotonin cesspool we are so proud of, but without the Spirit we cannot even see. God loves us with an everlasting love and the same love wherewith He loved the Son He has loved us also, as has the Son. Now after we have discussed all the many different ways in which God exhibits His love, and after we talk about the love of a mother to her child, and after we submit to the truth that God loved us first, someone might ask, “Can we see God’s love?”. Now no one has seen God and lived, but if you want to see God’s love in all its fullness don’t look into the vast star filled universe; don’t go to Bethlehem’s stable; don’t go to the tomb of Lazarus; don’t go to the parade route into Jerusalem. In those you will see magnificent representations of the God who is love.

But if you want to see God’s love in all its glorious fullness, complete and wanting nothing, then you must remove your shoes, fall to your knees, and lift your head to an inconspicuous place just outside Jerusalem’s gates. You will see soldiers, but they are not your focus. You will see thieves, but they too are not your focus. Open your eyes and your heart and place your entire focus upon the figure in the very center of this bloody scene, hanging upon a horrific cross, bleeding from all parts of His body, mocked and despised, brutally beaten, almost naked before His mother, and abandoned by His Father, and if you get just a glimpse in a moment of understanding,

you will have seen the embodiment of God’s love in all its eternal fullness.
Jesus
Praise His Matchless Name Forevermore.

2 comments:

MikeeUSA said...

That's inspiring.

Let us swap links:

This is my Men's Rights website:
http://mikeeusa.blogger.com

Mike Ratliff said...

Rick,

Here is a quote from Spurgeon that pertains to this.

"Bleeding and dying that we might neither bleed nor die, descending that we might ascend, and wrapped in swaddling bands that we might be unwrapped of the grave clothes of corruption." -C.H. Spurgeon

Yes, and Amen! He loved us before we ever loved Him and He laid His life down for us that we might live.

In Christ

Mike Ratliff