Behold, What Manner of Love

Jesus wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. The Jewish people who saw Him responded to one another, “Behold, how He loved him” (John 11:35-36).

C. H. Spurgeon said to his congregation in London, “Most of us here, I trust, are not mere onlookers, but we have a share in the special love of Jesus. We see evidences of that love, not in the tears, but in the precious blood that He so freely shed for us. . . . Behold how He loves us!”

Have you ever asked yourself where or when He first loved you? With fullness of heart we can say, “See, how He loves me!” Is the beginning of that great love when we first believed? Could it have begun when He died for us? As we reflect back on our lives and His love for us there is no time when He did not love us.

When we ponder the beginning of His love for us, it takes us beyond our creation into past eternity.

In eternity past Jesus so identified Himself with us and covenanted to redeem us.

From past eternity Jesus looked down the distant future in His divine perspective and saw the disastrous ruin of sin in our lives and chose to do something about it. In past eternity Jesus Christ took up our cause and pledged to be the guarantee of God’s eternal covenant. Jesus knew that sinful man could never fulfill the demands of the covenant with the LORD God. Therefore, Jesus pledged to fulfill man’s part of the covenant. He did so on our behalf long before we were able to have any part of it.

Jesus pledged to die for us by giving His life as a ransom for our sins. It was a unilateral covenant through His own blood for it is sealed “through the blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13:20).

It was not bilateral because He did it in past eternity by Himself without our asking. It is eternal, and because it is by His grace it is undeserved. Jesus knew that we could never remedy our sin problem so He stepped in, and out of His love and mercy did it for us.

In that great act of love He united Himself with us so that His life became our life, His death became our death, His burial became our burial and His resurrection became our resurrection. What love!

Where did Jesus do that? When He first loved us. Behold, what manner of love He has for you and me! Even before we were born, even before creation, even before the Fall, even before we sinned, His great love was settled for us. Behold, how He loves us!

“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father'” (Gal. 4:4-6).

Again, we can only exclaim, “See what manner of love He has for us!” We can never lose that adoption. It is guaranteed in eternity, purchased by the blood of the Son of God at Calvary, and sealed by the Holy Spirit the moment we believed on Christ as our Redeemer.

What our Redeemer planned in eternity past before the foundation of the world, He accomplished in time, and it is guaranteed by His resurrection for all eternity. Cf. Romans 8:37-39; John 15:13; 3:16; Galatians 4:4-6.

Although our salvation was planned in eternity, and Christ fulfilled that eternal covenant in His own blood at Calvary, it is not automatic.

Jesus calls us personally and persistently until we respond to “the sweet compulsion of His grace.”

Have you responded in sweet surrender to His abounding love and grace? Do you have eyes only for Jesus? Or is the Holy Spirit still pursuing you and pleading with you to put your faith in Jesus Christ?

“Behold how He loves us,” but as Spurgeon asked, has anyone ever said to you, “Behold how he or she loves Jesus”? Can your friends say of you and me, “See what manner of love he or she has for Jesus”? “Behold how they love Jesus.” Has anyone ever said to you, “Why do you love Him so?” Why do you love and serve Jesus Christ?

And when they do ask you, what will you say to them?

“Behold, what manner of love . . . .”

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006 Anyone is free to use this material and distribute it, but it may not be sold under any circumstances whatsoever without the author’s written consent.

You Never so Touch The

You never so touch the ocean of God’s love as when you forgive and love your enemies. Corrie ten Boom

Baptized into Christ

The word “baptized” is not the translation of the Greek work in Romans 6:3-4, but a transliteration spelling it out in English letters. The word in the original language means to dip. The figurative use of the word means to take on a new identification. After I dip a white shirt into red dye I no longer refer to it as the “white shirt,” but the red shirt. It has a new identification.

The apostle Paul wrote, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” (v. 3).

The word Baptizo in Romans six means “the introduction or placing of a person or thing into a new environment or into union with something else so as to alter its condition or its relationship to its previous environment or condition.”

Paul is referring to the act of God when He introduces a believing sinner into a vital union with Jesus Christ. In this vital relationship the power of his sinful nature is broken and the divine nature implanted through his identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. The believer’s relation to his previous state and environment is changed and he now has a new environment which is defined as being “in Christ.”

God placed us in Christ when He died so that we might share His death and thus come into the benefits of that identification with Him. We were placed in a new environment, Christ. We have a vital union with Christ. Paul declares we are “in Christ.” In our new environment in Christ we have righteousness and life. Our condition is changed from that of a sinner to that of a saint.

The Holy Spirit baptized us into Christ. He placed us in Christ in order that we might share His death and be separated from the evil nature. He also placed us in Christ in order that we might share His resurrection and have His divine life imparted to us. The Spirit of the resurrected Christ imparts to us a new quality of life. It is a new source of life that God imparts to us. It is only through this new source of life that we have the ethical and spiritual energy to live the Christian life.

Why did God do this for us? We share Christ’s resurrection in order that we may order our behavior in the power of this new life. With the power of this new power we can consistently say no to sin and yes to the indwelling Christ. We do not have to sustain the same relationship to sin that we were in the habit of before we became Christians.

“Therefore we have been buried with Him, through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (v. 4).

Water baptism symbolizes the power of the sinful nature being broken, because we are dead in Christ, and the divine power that we have in our identification with His resurrection. We have now been permanently delivered from the power of sin. God has imparted to us a divine nature, new life, spiritual birth and we can now respond to it rather than sin.

The apostle Paul commands us to live “as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom. 6:13). We do not do this in our strength, but in His power of the resurrection.

It is a resurrection that restores the lost image of God, in which we were created by making us to awake in the likeness of Christ. We are new creatures in Christ Jesus.

One day when Christ returns we will stand with Him with resurrected bodies in glory. Our whole nature, body, soul and spirit” will be “made alive in Christ.” And if we are in our Lord, our physical restitution is assumed to us with equal certainty with our spiritual.

We enjoy the righteousness of Christ now and on the great day of the resurrection we will be clad in the incorruptible glory of redeemed bodies (Rom. 6:9; Rev. 20:6).

We share in the resurrection power today (Cot 3:1, 3). The believer cannot deliberately live in sin because we have this new relationship and identification with Christ. We have died to the old life, and have been raised up to enjoy a new life in Christ. Because we are alive in Christ we are admonished to “walk in newness of life by abiding in Christ.”

Dead in Christ—risen from the dead—alive in Christ and free to walk in the newness of His life.

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006 Anyone is free to use this material and distribute it, but it may not be sold under any circumstances whatsoever without the author’s written consent.

A Zeal for the Righteousness of God

The apostle Paul prayed to God for the salvation of those who “have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:1-3).

The apostle Paul was making his plea to his own people who in their religious zeal had rejected God’s provision of His own perfect righteousness for their own self-righteousness. They were intensely religious in their own eyes, but not with the true knowledge of God. They were running well but in the wrong direction. They labored to do good deeds, but for the wrong goal. They were religious, sincere, dedicated, but in their anxiety, they would miss their eternal reward.

“They have a zeal for God.” I meet people like that every day. In their religious zeal, they knock on your door, too. Like the apostle Paul, I am not against religious zeal or enthusiasm. However, they are zealous in their religious ceremonies, prayers, observances, holy days, fasts, visitation, teaching, etc., “but not in accordance with knowledge.” There is no use being zealous if you are zealous for the wrong reason. It will not help you if you are going in the wrong direction spiritually.

The apostle Paul was writing from his own personal experience. He had been very zealous for the Law, and in that enthusiasm, he killed men and women who had a different “knowledge” than his. He had a mistaken zeal for God. He believed sincerely, but he was sincerely wrong. He had been zealous, but his zeal was focused on the wrong object.

Then there came a day when he gained true knowledge of the righteousness of God, and he counted all his self-righteousness as dung and received salvation by free grace alone.

Paul’s zeal became refocused “with knowledge” when he met the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Knowledge of what? Before the encounter with Christ he did not know about God’s righteousness and sought to establish his own. In Philippians 3:4-6 he tells about that self-righteousness. He said, “I still count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. . . that I may gain Christ” (v. 8). He gave up his zeal for self-righteousness by good works “that I may know Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (v. 9).

That is Paul’s “knowledge.” “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4).

Spurgeon once said, “It is easier to get a sinner out of sin than a self-righteous man out of his self-righteousness.”

Have you tried to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with someone who thinks he can earn or merit a right relationship with God by his religious zeal?

What is the problem? In their zeal they “know nothing about God’s righteousness, and seek to establish their own, they do not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (v. 3).

Any form of self-righteousness will never save you. In contrast, the Lord God has provided His own perfect righteousness by which He justifies the ungodly. Jesus Christ was obedient to the Law at every point, even to the point of death. God in His righteousness imputes the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to the believing sinner. He imputes to the believer what Jesus did for you on the cross. God will accept the believing sinner because of what Jesus is and what He did. Jesus Christ shall be your righteousness.

If you say, “No, I will not have His righteousness; I will have a righteousness of my own,” you are ignorant of God’s righteousness, and you shall perish.

God would never have sent His Son to the cross if you could be saved by our religious zeal. The death of Jesus on the cross was needless if you could be saved otherwise (Acts 4:12). If you are trying to have a righteousness of your own by being zealous for God, your church or denomination, baptism, church membership, emotional experiences, etc. then you are in competition with Jesus Christ.

Your eternal salvation lies absolutely outside of yourself, in the person and atoning work of Jesus Christ. Salvation is not in what you do in your religious zeal, but in what Christ Jesus has done on your behalf.

If you try to add anything to that finished work by your own thought, feeling, good works, baptism, church membership, etc., you have spoiled the work of Christ on your behalf. It shall never be Christ plus your _________, regardless of what you may fill in the blank. If you are to be saved, you must get out of the way and let God alone do it. The spiritual birth is all God’s doing, not yours or mine. Sinners saved by grace through faith will glorify Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is all by free grace of God in Jesus Christ.

“Going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” The righteousness of God is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Sinners are saved by God’s grace. Salvation is through faith in Christ. It is based on grace, and free grace alone through faith alone which is in Jesus Christ alone! It is a gift from God freely received by the sinner.

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006