Your Bible & You - Little Book Open.org

YOUR BIBLE AND YOU
E t e r n a l L o v e r
their neighbors as themselves (Matthew 22:37-39).
“He that loveth me,” He said, “shall be loved of my Father, and I will love
him” (John 14:21).
“The Father himself loveth you,” He assured His followers, “because ye have
loved me” (John 16:27).
He taught men to call God “Father,” which was a new idea to most of them.
They had wandered so far away from God that they pictured Him as stern,
cruel, and inaccessible. God wasn’t like that at all, Jesus said. Instead He was
tender, kind, thoughtful, and understanding. “When you pray,” He told them,
“say, Our Father which art in heaven” (Luke 11:2).
Many people, He suggested, are like prodigal sons who leave home proudly
and self-confidently to enjoy the pleasures of sin. In consequence, they get
into much trouble and sorrow. But if they repent and return to God, they
will find a loving heavenly Father waiting with outstretched arms to welcome
them.
Completing His revelation of the love of God, Jesus went at last to the cross.
There, as the Son of God and at the same time as the one sinless representative
of the race, with His divine and human natures inseparably blended, He
offered up a complete, perfect, and all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of men.
Thus was the penalty paid. And “as by one man’s disobedience many
were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous”
(Romans 5:19).
This sacrifice was in no sense intended to appease an angry deity. Rather it
was God offering Himself. As we read above, “God so loved… that he gave”;
and the sharing in this sublime transaction of all three Persons of the blessed
Trinity is revealed in the beautiful words: “Christ… through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot to God” (Hebrews 9:14).
Moreover, Christ’s sacrifice was altogether voluntary. “The Son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many” (Matthew 20:28).
“No man taketh it from me,” He said concerning His life “but I lay it down
of myself” (John 10:18).
“Our Saviour Jesus Christ,” said Paul, “gave himself for us, that he might
redeem us from all iniquity” (Titus 2:13, 14).
“He offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27).
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