God's Love

Men that feel entitled to God’s love fail to understand why God loves us.  There is no merit God looks for on our part . . . He loves us because it is His nature to love, and we cannot earn His Love either by what we do or by who we are.  God has set a gate whereby we may enter into His family, and that Gate’s name is Jesus.

Because men are born into sin, God consigned all men over to sin in order that He might save them all (Rom 12:32).  There isn’t a special “good group” that will win his love, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.  All have sinned and fallen short of God’s intentions for our lives (Rm 3:23-25). This opens the door wide for all men to receive the sacrifice of God’s Son as an atonement for their past.

Those who see themselves as a good person do not see their need for atonement.  They reject the saving grace Jesus offers all men, the means by which all who sin are brought into fellowship with God. Yet, to those who receive Jesus, He gives each the inheritance to become a child of God, by His Spirit.  And all who receive His discipline are His (Heb 12:8).  But those who reject God’s discipline, believing they have no need of purification by this life’s hardships, reject the Father. They are illegitimate children and are not entitled to God’s inheritance.

Illegitimate children, therefore, are those who neither receive the atoning blood of Christ, nor acknowledge the need for His sacrifice: their sin.  In deeming themselves to be good or perfect, they make themselves a god unto themselves, approving all that they desire to do and rejecting the discipline that would mold them into God’s true image.

If men will enter the Christ- gate of receiving His sacrifice, acknowledging their sins, their relationship with God will grow.  If men deny that they sin, their relationship with God cannot grow, because they are their own god . . . one who believes falsehood (1 Jn 1:10).  “A man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a robber.” (Jn 10:1)  Though God loves us all, let us enter through Jesus into His family, not as a liar who says he has no sin, but as a true son of God who values the blood shed for his sins.  Amen.