A few years ago in Time magazine a feature article was written about phobias.
I first used this to illustrate a point while teaching a Pest Management Seminar and looking for a way to insert a biblical truth into the presentation. At a later date I included it in a sermon on the love of God for His elect. I was re-reading some older notes of mine and I remembered the article.
The Time article provided an in depth psychological discussion stating that large numbers of the US population are afflicted with arachnaphobia, clausterphobia, chemophobia, hydrophobia, homophobia and many more phobias. The most interesting thing to me was that Theophobia, fear of God, was not listed.
Where there is no reverence and awe for God, according to His standards, there is no true love for Him.
Here is love.
Christ came and shed His blood so our sins would be forgiven. And not only our former sins, but our present and future sins as well.
What He did for us in the past provides the grace for the blood to continue to forgive as we confess our sins during our life as believers.
Here is love.
These sins cannot undo what Christ has settled for us in eternity.
Because we were totally unable to come to Him of our own ability, He chose us, without condition and died for us and drew us unto Himself and preserves us forever as His own.
Here is love.
By the Word and the Spirit He enlightens us to what is His will and He enables us, encourages us, and equips us to live according to His will. even as expresses in his prayer of
Ephesians 3: ΒΆ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Here is love.
We sin, every day, and it cannot, if we are truly saved, do anything to change our standing with God because we are alive in Christ and Christ is in the presence of the Father and we are risen together with Christ and seated in the heavenly places because our citizenship is in heaven and
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, Eph. 1:3
Our disobedience in our life in Christ only affects our temporal living. Certain benefits are withdrawn and withheld, conditionally. Others are unconditional and we cannot keep them from blessing our lives.
Here is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us.
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Rom 5: 8-10 .
Paul in essence says the same throughout Eph. chapters 1&2
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
These words were nothing new to Paul, the great Old Testament scholar and the apostle born out of time who was taught by Christ.
The love of God is rooted objectively in God himself and the word of God that reveals Him to us and it is subjective experience based on our personal knowledge of Him and personal communion with Him in and through the Word by His Spirit.
