Why is their freedom in the Spirit's presence? Because God ¹is not only Spirit but He is also love. Therefore, where the Spirit is present, love is also.
Are these connected? As bearers of God's image we are created for love - because God is love. In order to experience His love, God knew we must be like Him to freely and fully function as God designed us to.
When we are God's presence His love fills us up and frees us. Being fully loved by God frees us from always trying to gain or win love from others - especially from God - through our actions.
Not only does God not demand from us certain actions in order to win His love, He also knew we could never do enough to win it. So He made a way to remove the barrier we created between us by our rebellious distrust so He could pour out His love on us freely again. This was done through the efforts of Christ, efforts driven by Christ's ³trust in the Father of love.
Whenever we are in the presence of God, we are also in the presence of infinite ²love. This love energizes us to do (obey) and be who we are designed to be. His love results in our wanting to live for Him vs our feeling pressured to, to avoid rejection. There is no risk of rejection when love is completely secured for us by the perfect actions of another - i.e. Christ's.
Obedience that springs forth from love is not an action we have to take, as a legal requirement, but an action we want to take. Obedience occurs supernaturally, freely and organically. Our "wanter" (will) is awakened toward our Creator in response to His love for us. A love fully secured for us by Christ's efforts alone, not ours.
His love stirs us to our true potential—to become again what we were created to be through God's Spirit of infinite love.
This happens when we are in the presence of God in all His love. To be all we were created to be is not only what we desire, but His love also gives us the power to do it - i.e., where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Nothing good happens in us or through us apart from the Spirit (love) of God.
And we have God's Spirit only because we are in Christ but also because we are in Christ do we have His Spirit. This is true for every one of His children with no exceptions.
For a further discussion about glory, I offer the following:
_______________________________
¹In fact, some argue (and I agree) that the Spirit issues forth from the perfect love between the Father and Son. For more on this click here and here.
²We are energized in the presence of any love but most fully when in the presence of the infinite love of God, who is the source of love.
³the opposite of our distrust.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for dropping by. Feel free to leave any comments, questions or thoughts and I will try to reply within 48 hours.
If you like our posts please feel free to subscribe to our blog and recommend others to the same. Just click on the home page at the far left of the navigation bar up top for instructions.
Grace to you
Jim Deal