John Owen on God’s love

Owen writes this about the love of God for the redeemed:

“His love will not allow Him to complain about anything in His beloved.”

WOOOOOOOOW!

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Consider the Father’s love

Jerry Bridges spoke at the BASICS Conference this past week. He reminded us that we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day so that we remember the great love of God for us.  The love of God constrains and compels us to live His Word and to proclaim His truth to everyone we can. The gospel is what gets us up every morning!  Duty is OK, but it is inadequate as a motivation to live for Christ!

Every true believer longs for communion with Christ and John Owen teaches that communion with the Trinity flows from basking in the love of the Triune God.

Bridges encouraged us to remember that the love of God toward believers is a purposeful love!  “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”  And “God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  (John 3:16, Romans 5:8).

When you want to see the love of God, begin and linger long at the cross!

So, “behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us!” (1 John 3:1).

God is for you, beloved saint!  If God is for us, who can be against us?

An OT prophet reminds us, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV).

God, the Son, loves us as well!  He loves us with an everlasting love.  He loved us and gave Himself for us!  He loves us exceedingly!  His love is that of a bridegroom for his bride. “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” (Isaiah 62:5, ESV).

And the Spirit of God loves his own as well.  He ministers to us despite of our sins!

These were such encouraging reminders to me and serve to remind me of the gospel and that ” those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:15, ESV).

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Worldview and you

What is your worldview? A worldview is simply the way you look at the world.  It acts like “a mental map that tells us how to navigate the world effectively,” according to Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth (a book I would recommend all Christian young people and their parents read).

David Wells puts it this way:  “A world view is a framework for understanding the world. It is the perspective through which we see what is ultimate, what is real, what our experience means, and what our place is in the cosmos.” (Above All Earthly Powers).

Wells continues, “Everyone, however, has a world view, even if it is one which posits no meaning and even if it is one which is entirely private and true only for the person who holds it.”

The sad reality is that many (maybe even the vast majority) of Christians have adopted a secular worldview today and that, among other things, has lead to a very weak church and a huge lack of discernment among believers.  Some surveys indicate that nearly 90% of all teens who attend church and consider themselves to be “born again” have a Christian worldview.  That explains why nearly 70-80% of young people who attend church regularly with their parents drop out of church when they reach adulthood.  They have learned the lingo of the church and they can parrot the truth and conform to the church culture, but when they are on their own, they flee.  Why?  Because they have never learned to think Christianly–by which I mean “thinking by Christians about anything and everything in a consistent Christian way,” as Os Guinness puts it.

Much of the blame can be cast at the feet of Christian parents who are just happy if their children go to church and aren’t doing any drugs, drinking alcohol, or engaged in premarital sex.  Christian parents who have this as their criteria for their children’s spirituality are misinformed.  Certainly we want our children to put off such things but there is much more to life than that.  Behavior bereft of an understanding of, love for, and hearty application of biblical truth and the gospel is moralistic at best.

Also the current evangelical church mindset that is embracing  postmodern worldviews is contributing to this crisis. David Wells correctly states that this tactic is so wrongheaded:

We must go further, however. It is not just any world view that we encounter in the postmodern world, but one that increasingly resembles the old paganisms. It is one that is antithetical to that which biblical faith requires. It is this transformation of our world, this emerging world view, which has passed largely unnoticed. That, at least, is the most charitable conclusion that one can draw. For while the evangelical Church is aware of such things as the fight for gay and lesbian rights, hears about the eco-feminist, knows about pornography, has a sense that moral absolutes are evaporating like morning mist, knows that truth of an ultimate kind has been dislodged from life, it apparently does not perceive that in these and many other ways a new world view is becoming ensconced in the culture. If it did, it surely would not be embracing with enthusiasm as many aspects of this postmodern mindset as it is or be so willing to make concessions to postmodern habits of mind.

This causal embrace of what is postmodern has increasingly led to an embrace of its spiritual yearning without noticing that this embrace carries within it the seeds of destruction for evangelical faith. The contrast between biblical faith and this contemporary spirituality is that between two entirely different ways of looking at life and at God.  pp. 157-158.

Your worldview is important.  How you view truth is critica!  And how you communicate this to the next generation is crucial!

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Our only comfort!

Question 1. What is your only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

- The Heidelberg Catechism, Question # 1

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:7-8, ESV).

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