Seeing Christs love through struggles

God uses our feebleness, frailties and limitations and the struggles they bring upon us to undermine our trust in ourselves and strengthen our trust in him...when we let him.

What God did for us and offers to us in Christ is the foundation on which our trust of him is built.

And expanded explanation:

God uses the struggles our feebleness, frailties and limitations bring upon us to undermine our trust in our ability to make life work without him. 

While at the same time strengthening/increasing our trust in him and his ability to guide us for our best...When we let him.

What God did for us and offers to us in Christ is the foundation on which our ultimate trust of him must be and is built. 

To say it another way, if you struggle with trusting God, look to Christ and all he did for you. What he put himself through and the pain he allowed himself to experience in order to restore you to his Father's love.

The greater your struggles, the deeper you must dig in to what Christ did for you to see this great love he demonstrated and has for you. 

This digging accomplishes two vital things. It exalts Christ and reveals the vastness of his love for you.

The more you struggle the deeper you must dig. The deeper you dig the more you see and the greater your appreciation, love and trust in Christ grows. He who is forgiven much loves much. 

"But he who is forgiven little, loves little...." Jesus to Simon the Pharisee. Lk 7:47

Conflicting dispositions within God?

There are two sentiments or dispositions within God that are in tension and appear to be in conflict. 

One is God's patience, compassion, and understanding of our shortcomings and frailties. 

The other is God's disapproval of the harm and destruction our shortcomings and frailties cause us and others. 

To say it another way, in Christ, God loves us with no strings attached, while He hates the rebellion (distrust) within us that causes us to stray from him and bring harm to others and ourselves.

The irony is, it is because God loves us so much that he hates whatever causes us and others harm.

The solution? 

These two seemingly conflicting and contrary dispositions meet and are resolved in Christ and his work on our behalf.

Psa 85:10  Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Rom 3:26  It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

The just shall live by grace/faith

As impossible as it is to ¹enter the kingdom of God by our efforts, it is equally impossible to ²live out the life God calls us to by our efforts/will power i.e. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor as our self is impossible unaided.

¹ "... who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." - John an apostle of Jesus Joh 1:13

² "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." -Jesus to his 12 disciples at the last supper. Joh 15:4-5

We cannot will ourselves to be different, we can only choose to believe or not believe; trust or not trust God. Belief versus unbelief is the work we are responsible for not right behavior over wrong behavior.

Joh 6:29  Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

God drives change in behavior we don't i.e. choosing to believe God results in right (changed) behavior.

"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Phil 2:12-13

"...so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy..." 

What is it we must believe? What is the nature of abiding? 

"As the Father has loved me, so (in the very same way) have I loved you. Abide (choose to continuously believe or stand in the assurance of) in my love." - Jesus to his 12 disciples at the last supper. Jesus Joh 15:9

To recognize/believe/fully accept that in Christ *we are loved in the same manner (constantly) and to the same degree (infinitely) the Father loves his Son as proven in Christ giving himself sacrificially for us.  

Can there be any greater love?! This is the very same love with which we are loved if you are Gods child no matter what we hear, experience or think. Let God be true and every man a liar -- which includes ourselves. 

When we truly believe we are loved in this way (and do not lose sight of this i.e. we abide/remain steadfast in believing this) it changes everything; our outlook on all of life, our view of ourselves, others and how we treat them i.e. our behavior/actions. 

For a further discussion on how the righteous live by faith, click here.

For a further discussion on the anatomy of motivation, click here. 

For a further discussion on how faith is hard work click here

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¹Some argue if God fully loves me right here and now, regardless of what we do, say, feel, or experience, why does how I live matter i.e. why should I live righteously? 

God loves us too much to let us live contrary to his perfect design i.e. living righteously matters, not to gain God's love since we fully have it in Christ, but so we might experience His love in all its fullness. 

Our experiencing all that God is and has for us is conditioned on obedience.

 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. John 14:21,23

The above passages show that the manifestation of Christ's love for us and experiencing His and the Father's presence is contingent on our faithful pursuit (obedience) of Him. 

It also matters because living in obedience to God honors him. When we truly understand how God has honored us and values us by what He did for us in and through Christ, we will want to live for God and bring Him glory. If we do not desire to live for Him we do not yet understand what He did for us. So focus on Christ, double redouble your efforts to accomplish a list of deeds. 

Experiencing God's love… By faith or action?

We can only bring God's infinite love to others to the extent we have received it ourselves.

Why do we need to receive it before we can give it? Because in and of ourselves we do not have the ¹love others need. We are all designed for perfect love but cut ourselves off from the Father in all his infinite love by our rebellious distrust (our turning away from trust in God to trust in our self) and our attempts at living independent of this love and life i.e. God himself. We are now void of his love and can only offer it by being reconnected to God through Christ.

Receiving God's love

Receiving his love is not necessarily a feeling or emotional experience but a faith experience; the engaging of our trust. It is believing in the objective reality of God's fixed love for us in Christ. This is what we are called to do; to trust/believe. This is our "work." 

Joh 6:29  Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

Receiving Gods love is believing, receiving and knowing we are already fully loved in Christ, not waiting for some subjective feeling of his love to overwhelm us and drive us to action. And how do we know this? We trust what he's said and did in and through Christ. 

Love (a subjective sense of it) however is also usually experienced and released in and through our loving others. Loving others as God calls us to is itself an act of faith which results in experiencing God's love.

This is why were are told we not only come into the kingdom by faith but we also live it and walk in it by faith. Our experiencing Gods' love starts with faith which in turn leads to even greater faith.

Gal 3:11  Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The righteous shall live by faith." See also Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Heb 10:38

It is in our treating others with kindness and compassion (because we have been treated this way by God) that we experience His love in living it out and letting it flow through us to others.

What moves us to action?

Faith is our motivation. Or to be more precise, God himself and his infinite love is. As we believe and receive his love is fully ours (he is for us, not against us) it is released in and through us. This is the primary means -- our faithful obedience to love others as he loves us -- by which we receive/experience his vast unlimited, never-ending love. It is in our  believing his love is fully ours in Christ, we are moved to action/obedience.

This is also what it means to abide in Christ. To ²remain/stay/abide in a posture of faith that God loves us fully and infinitely in Christ regardless of what we do or don't do, feel or don't feel, experience or don't experience. It is only as and when we ²abide that we bear "much fruit." For without Christ (in his infinite all-embracing love) we can "do nothing" i.e. love others with God's kind of love i.e. bear much fruit.

This is the very same love that flows between the Father and Son. If we are in Christ's, this love is fully ours and already dwells in us by his Spirit; the very same Spirit of love that unites the Father and Son. Simply by virtue of God's Spirit living in us, we are living in and under the perfect covering and care of his love, regardless of our feelings i.e. this is the objective reality of our status, our state of being. 

The more we believe his love is totally ours (always fully present with us, in us and on us regardless of feelings or circumstances) the more we are empowered to live it out to others. The more we live out his love to others the more we engage, participate in and experience it. 

Joh 14:21  Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." (This was part of the answer of Christ to Phillip to "show us the Father" stated earlier in Joh 14:8  Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.")

The above passage indicates the (subjective) manifestation of God's (objective) love is clearly tied to our pursuit of God i.e. our keeping his commandments. 

Seeing the Father (and subjectively experiencing him fully) is directly tied to keeping God's commandment. The primary commandment being to "love one another" stated later in this same conversation. 

Joh 15:12  "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 

So which is first? Do we experience his love by faith or in our acting by faith?

Both

His love has already been fully poured out on us and demonstrated to us by God sending his Son to live and die for us. This is the objective reality of our status before God. There is nothing else needed to fully prove or secure God's love for us. The only thing preventing this love being fully ours (subjectively experiencing it) first hand is believing God and his Son did this for you and I personally and then acting accordingly. Once we recognize and accept Christ's work on our behalf, his Spirit of infinite love takes up his abode within us and his care for us, remains on us (objectively) without conditions.

However, once we are in Christ, we are now called to extend this same love to others who have yet to receive it. In our extending it, it flows to us and through us to others.

Joh 14:21  Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him."

Joh 14:23  Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home (dwell with, abide with, be present) with him.
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¹we all need Gods bottomless, never-ending, infinite love; mere human love, though meaningful, is insufficient.

²For a fuller discussion on abiding, click here. 

Self absorbed or God absorbed

Being self-absorbed is empty and void of true life -- it is temporary, erratic, and insufficient.

Being God ¹absorbed is life -- He is the all-sufficient, permanent, and never-failing source of love, life, and all things.

Since God is life, is it any wonder He is constantly calling us to be obsessed with Him; to love Him with all that we have and are and to always bring Him glory? He's calling us to nothing less than being obsessed with life itself because He is life and fullness of life is in Him alone and nothing else. He calls us to Himself because he loves us that much.  

"And this is eternal life (i.e. permanent life. Life without interruption), that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." - Jesus  Joh 17:3

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' " - Jesus' response to Phillip. John 14:6

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." - Jesus speaking to the 12 disciples.  Mat 10:39
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¹If this grates on us, it only indicates how bent we are towards being our own god. Who hasn't heard or even made the comment, "a little bit of God is OK but let's not go overboard!" 

However, when you see those fortunate enough to have great success in this life, still have prolonged periods of loneliness and depression; even ending their lives in the midst of such great "success," this should be a clue we were made for more, far more. We were made for infinite love. 

Some have argued we can be so heavenly minded we are no earthly good when it is the other way around. We can not be of any true earthy value until we are totally plugged into the heavenly bliss and glory shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Or as Jesus says, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." - Mar 12:30-31. We can only carry out the latter part of this commandment as we plug into the former.

His life is our life

When are we most alive? When we are participating in the life of God. The more we participate, the more alive we become.  

And what is the life of God? It is the joy God has always had and now experiences in the union and communion between the Father and the Son as they gaze upon the beauty (the infinite glory/worth/value) of the other in the Spirit of love and adoration.

We will experience that life to the degree that we turn away from trying to secure life by our own efforts and let him fill us with his life/Spirit.

Jesus said:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 

"I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. *Yours they were, and you *gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.

For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.

And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one." - Jesus - Joh 17:3-11 

*This language depicts the value of that which is theirs i.e. us. We are valuable to both the Father and Son. So much so that the Father sent to Son of his eternal affections and the Son agreed to come and restore us back to them. 

#EternalLife #ThotsAboutGod #ThoughtsAboutGod

Overview of Jonathan Edwards theology

The below excerpt is from Kyle Strobel's book Jonathan Edwards Theology: a reinterpretation. Pg 4-5

Underscored, embolden, or italicized words and (parenthetical comments) are my own:

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First, Edwards theology begins with God, and in his eternal life as Trinity, as the ontological principle (nature of being or existence) which grounds his systematic task. 

Second, Edwards begins 'from eternity' and then 'descends' to address God's work in time, i.e. God's economic movement to create (begin something) and sustain (continue) it.

Third, this work in time is the work of redemption, directing the revolutions in the world and guiding it toward resurrection, judgment, and consummation. 

Fourth and finally, Edwards's theology is a theology of redemptive history, grounded in and formed by the God who is redeeming, or more specifically, the God who redeems in, through, and as Christ.

Further elaboration of the above points:

First, Jonathan Edwards's theology is fundamentally Trinitarian. Edwards's account of the trinity is the anchor, or in his words, the fountain of all that is. Edwards's theology traces the contours of the trinity so that the ordering, emphasis, and teleology (final /designed/ planned aim) of his thought find its home in his Trinitarian analysis. 

Several key concepts come into focus as a result of this ordering. 

First, Edwards emphasizes personhood. This emphasis grounds his depiction of the Trinity and organizes his discussions concerning God's attributes and his work of redemption. The formal demarcations (what differentiates and distinguishes persons) of the processions (i.e.The Son and Spirit) are not addressed through origin (e.g. begotteness) but through *personhood (i.e. individual understanding and will. God as a person has his own understanding [his own comprehension of objective truth] and will). 

  *For a further discussion on "personhood" click here. 

Second, Edwards develops his formal analysis of the processions in terms of the beatific vision. The Father gazes upon the Son and the Son upon the Father, not in a detached fashion, but with delight (the Spirits spiration). In other words, the happiness of the Father and Son is the Spirit, and the vision of God shared by Father and Son, is, in Edwards' phrase, 'happifying'. (makes one happy)  

Last, as an account of mutual beholding in the Godhead leading to affections, Edwards' depiction of the Trinity serves as the archetype (he is the source and model; we are like him) for creaturely knowledge of God, i.e. knowing God requires apprehension that happifies.

Second, God descends to create the world and sustains it (GOD is the first cause and initiator who comes to us. We do not go up to him). Edwards refers to this as God's emanation. God is diffusive (outward flowing); he is communicative *(shares and passes along things about himself by words and actions) in both his imminent (within the Trinity) and economic (outward exchange/ interaction) existence. God is a God who reveals himself in the world for the purpose of affectionate knowledge (of others) which is an image of his own inner Trinitarian self-knowing. (God is happy in what he sees and knows about himself and seeks to bring others into this happiness),

*and we are like him in this way. As we receive love from him we desire to pass it along to others. He is the source of that love, for himself first and then to and for us and out to others through us. We are conduits.

This grounds the third point, that God sustains creation for the purpose of perfecting this affectionate knowledge as well as perfecting the union believers have with Christ. God is guiding creation to resurrection, judgment, and consummation, which, for the elect, entails the full beatific vision of God (we shall be like him when we see him as he is), or true participation in God's self-knowing and self-loving. The parallel of God's emanation is thus, in Edwards's terminology, *remanation, the glory of God received and communicated back to its divine source.

*This is at the heart of our value. We are valuable because we can experience and enjoy God who is most valuable, expressing our value of him back to him and out to others by pointing others to him.

The Trinity, as the fountain, gives shape to all theology so that the beautification thread formed in his doctrine of the Trinity is woven throughout the whole until it finds its perfection in consummation (i.e. eternal glory). Edward's theology, in this sense, it's cyclical. Everything moves from God, and everything returns to him in judgment. The elect continue on this trajectory (past judgment) to God, while the reprobate does not. 

Rom 11:36  For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Along with being cyclical, Edwards thought, is teleological. The elect do not disappear into God, but commune with God eternally, because this eternal union is *asymptotic – always (throughout eternity) growing closer without collapsing into a singular entity. 

* asymptotic - adjective Mathematics.

1. of or pertaining to an asymptote (a straight line approached by a given curve as one variable in the equation of the curve approaches infinity).
2. (of a function) approaching a given value as an expression containing a variable tends to infinity. 
3. (of two functions) so defined that their ratio approaches unity as the independent variable approaches a limit or infinity. 
4. (of a formula) becoming increasingly exact as a variable approaches a limit, usually infinity. 
5. coming into consideration as a variable approaches a limit, usually infinity: asymptotic property; asymptotic behavior.

Fourth, Christ as the image of God, is the locus (central focal point or location) of revelation to the creature and as God- man, is the point of mediation between God and man. Affectionate knowledge of God, as noted above, entails beholding God. Christ reveals God in his excellencies, calling the elect to behold and see his goodness and beauty. Redemption, through Christ work, is the central thread that shapes Edwards entire theological project. Redemption is what the world was created for and redemption entails God's revealing himself in Christ with affectionate creaturely response.

End of book excerpt
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If redemption is what the world was created for and the rebellion of man proceeds and necessitates redemption then the fall was part of God's plan from the beginning.

1Pet 1:18  knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20  He was foreknown before the foundation of the world (i.e. before anything was created, which of course includes mankind) but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you

In order for Christ to be foreknown as the redeemer, it also had to be known (by God) why or who he was redeeming i.e. that redemption was even necessary. There is no redemption if there is nothing that needs to be paid for i.e. bought back. 

Redeem defined.