Hello Friends!
Welcome to a new 5-part series titled “We love Him because He first loved Us.” This
series will investigate the often misunderstood doctrine of the sovereignty of
God’s saving purpose based on the Word of God.
Please join us over the next five weeks as we learn more about this
very important truth.
Let’s begin our study
with the first lesson: THE
PERVERSENESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE…
We love
Him because He first loved Us (Part 1 of 5)
Old hymns are wonderful, aren’t they?. One
that may be familiar to you is, “Oh, How
I love Jesus!” The closing line of that song is intriguing: “Oh, how I love Jesus… because He first loved
me.” If you are indeed familiar with this beautiful hymn, you no doubt know
that this is also what the Apostle John says in the Bible:
We love Him, because He first loved us – 1 John 4:19
Look at it closely and you’ll see at least
five great doctrinal lessons this verse teaches us. Today, we’ll consider the
first one; then we’ll look at the other four in the coming weeks.
For
some reason, before becoming a
Christian, hearing the chorus of that song had always struck me as a
strange reason for loving Jesus. Of course, in my unregenerate state, I
had
almost no understanding whatsoever of the love of Jesus Christ for me.
He loved
me but was I supposed
to love Him too? Besides, loving Him just because He loved me first didn’t seem
like a particularly noble or admirable reason for loving Him. Love is supposed
to be unconditional, isn’t it? So “because
He first loved me” never sounded like quite an adequate motive for loving
Jesus.
Incidentally, there’s a minor textual issue
in this verse that I ought to mention. In the King James and New King James
Versions, this verse is translated just the way I have read it: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” That’s
because the Greek texts from which the King James Version was translated
include the object Him.
It doesn’t matter which reading
you prefer, because our capacity for loving God is
dependent on our ability to have
true love. If we couldn’t love at all, we certainly couldn’t love God. Therefore, the meaning of this verse includes
the truth that
“We love Him, because He
first loved us.”
Think with me for a moment about the
implications of that phrase at the end: “He first loved
us.” In other
words, there was a time when we didn’t
love Him. That is the very essence of sinful depravity, isn’t it? A failure to love
God as we ought. Nothing is more utterly and totally depraved than a heart
devoid of love for God. As the Apostle Paul also said:
The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God – Romans 8:7
That describes a hopeless state of utter
inability to love God, obey His commands or to please Him. That is the state of
all whose hearts have not been renewed by Jesus Christ.
This is a particularly poignant expression
coming from the apostle John, who in his gospel refers to himself repeatedly as
“that disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Notice that in John’s own mind, Jesus’ love for him completely defined who he
was.
Why was this such a prominent feature in
John’s thinking? I think he gives us a clue right here in our verse. The reason
he was so preoccupied with the love of Christ for him is that he knew that love
was utterly undeserved. He was keenly aware of his own sinfulness. As amazed as
John was with the love of Christ for him, he must have been equally amazed at
the thought that his own heart had once been devoid of any love for One who was
so lovely. How can the human heart be so cold to One who is so worthy of our
love? Anyone who truly appreciates the glory of Christ’s love, as John did,
will be appalled and horrified at the realization that our own hearts do not
love Him as we ought to. The knowledge of how perfectly He loves us produces
such a sense of utter unworthiness, doesn’t it?
You can see this vividly, even at the end
of John’s life, when he sees a vision of the risen Jesus Christ in the book of
Revelation where he writes:
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead – Revelation 1:17
He was literally frightened into a coma,
because this vision of the glorified Christ smote him with such an overpowering
sense of his own sinfulness. And in an almost involuntary response, he
collapsed on his face out of fear.
That same overpowering consciousness of sin
and shame is implied in the words of our verse, “We love Him,
because He first loved us.” We are so utterly and totally depraved that if God
Himself did not love us with a redeeming love, we would never have loved Him at
all. If that does not fill you with a consciousness of your own sin and if it
doesn’t shock you with a stark realization of the impenetrable hardness of the
fallen human heart – then you need to meditate on it a little longer.
It is my hope that you can see how this
verse clearly and forcefully underscores the very essence of human depravity.
There is nothing more desperately wicked than a heart that fails to love God.
There is nothing more blind and irrational and sinful than not loving Someone
so worthy of our love. We should need no motive to love Him other than the
sheer glory His perfect being. And yet, we would not love Him at all if He had
not first loved us!
Remember, this is the first and great
commandment:
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” – Matthew 22:37
The whole of God’s law is summarized and
epitomized in that one simple rule. To break that commandment is to fail in
every single point of the law. There is nothing more completely and totally
wicked. And yet, our verse reminds us that we are so hopelessly and thoroughly
wicked that not one of us could ever truly love God unless God Himself enabled
us to do so. It means
that we are totally unable to save ourselves. We have a debilitating moral
inability that makes our love for Him an utter impossibility until He
intervenes to give us the ability to love Him.
We cannot by sheer force of will set our
hearts to love Him, because as fallen creatures we are so in love with our own
sin and rebellion that our desires are twisted. Our affections are warped and
hopelessly corrupted. And we are powerless to change ourselves:
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil – Jeremiah 13:23
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint – Isaiah 1:5
The [unregenerate] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked—who can possibly understand it? – Jeremiah 17:9
Our
hearts are poisoned by sin, and that is
why we do not and cannot love God on our own. That is precisely what is
meant by total depravity. It’s not that we are as evil as we could
possibly be, but that evil has infected us totally—in every part of our soul—so
that we are incapable of righteous desires and holy motives and loving
affections toward God. I hope you can see how this truth is implied in this text…
Thank you for reading! Don’t miss next week’s edition as we investigate lesson #2…
May the
Lord Jesus Christ continue to bless you with His perfect love, mercy and grace!
We are not guaranteed tomorrow – tomorrow may be too late! If you haven't yet made that most important decision of your life, won't you make Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior today - before it's too late? Today is the day of Salvation!
If you have been blessed by this message or have a specific question, prayer request or testimony, please send me a note to: encouragingconcepts@live.com
I love hearing from you. Keep reading Encouraging Concepts!
Blessings!
Shane K. Morin <><
Encouraging Concepts
Truth for Today
"Living Life From a Biblical Worldview"Lighthouse Publications <><
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