GOD's love comes with GOD's disciplines
Hebrews 12:6 For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastises every son He receives.
The way GOD loves is not the same as a man loves. Those who misunderstand His love as a man's love will find GOD's love irrational. When a man loves, as seen when a man loves a woman, he loves her for what she represents, as if she is a product carrying a perceived promise. He loves for a reason or with a motive. No one loves for no reason except for the sake of loving. Unless he is like GOD, loving unconditionally. GOD proves His unconditional love: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That is, despite us being vile, detestable and hideous according to His standard, GOD still loves us by dying for us. His love compels Him to do whatever is needed to make us right with Him so that we can be the beneficiaries of His goodness.
Some might think that GOD is blinded by love. Yes, He is because love takes no records of wrong. Since GOD is love, His love is blinded to our sins, and for us, He can sacrifice 100% of Himself without consideration for Himself. For love, Jesus could, as in the Epistle of Philippians: Existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross. For love, Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
The main difference between GOD's love and a man's love is that one comes out of selflessness and the other out of selfishness. A man cannot sacrifice himself because, by nature, he is selfish. This nature is not a biased opinion but a biblical fact. The Bible has other terms to describe our selfishness: selfish ambition, vain, conceit, lovers of selves, self-seeking, pleasing ourselves, seeking our good, etc. His love is self-seeking for the enlargement of his ego, for his egoistic carnal ambitions. Hence, a man's love is not pure but tinted with motives, schemes and deceits. To elaborate, if a man loves a woman because she is an angel, talented or beautiful, his love is laced with motives. No matter how noble it might sound, it is filled with 'I love you because'. It is not a love of 'I love you regardless'. One day, a person might outlive their appealing attributes, and the reason for love will no longer exist. Then what happens? Love is liken to having wings, and it will fly away. Time will reveal the foundation of a man's love. Is it as solid as a rock, or is it as shifting as the sand?
GOD's love is unchanging with time and is unconditional in what may happen. Nothing can change His love. The Epistle of John writes, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life". The phrase 'GOD so loved the world' that John uses is unprecedented because GOD does not approve or accept the world. The people of the world, according to the Apostle Paul, are people of the flesh who are hostile to God. They do not submit to God's law, nor can they do so. Those of the flesh cannot please God. In the Epistle of 1 John writes, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him". The message is clear - despite His opinion of the world, He refrains from judgment and loves the world without prejudice and discrimination. Even if we are the vilest of sinners, His love will still cover us. No one will be ostracized from His love, and His arms are always open to everyone. That is how deep and how wide the love of GOD is.
GOD's love is indeed magnanimous. It is a haven for all sinners, where GOD's judgement has to stay outside and where sinners find solace. In His love, there is no condemnation and where sins can hold nothing against us. His love becomes our source of comfort, strength and hope. No doubt, in His love is where everyone wants to dwell. Therefore, it is a topic that is well-preached and sung about. However, unbeknown to many, no matter how great GOD's love is, His love is not above His law. And no matter how much GOD loves us, He cannot allow us eternal life without complying with His law. The law states that eternal life only comes through Jesus Christ, and only those who believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The Apostle John could have stated, 'For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that everyone shall not perish but have eternal life', and that would be so sweet. But he did not. That is to say, GOD's love is unconditional, but eternal life is conditional. Think about it: Metaphorically, could GOD allow the hand of His love to slap the face of His law? That will be foolish of Him.
No matter how much GOD loves us, He does not allow us to trespass against His law. In other words, He does not allow us to sin against Him. Therefore, His love is not above His law. However, many have misconstrued GOD's love to supersede His law, quoting from the Apostle Paul that we are no longer under law but under grace. That is picking words out of context. The Apostle Paul did not suggest that grace had replaced the law. He only meant that when we believe in Christ, our master is no longer sin but Christ. Therefore, we are no longer slaves to sin but to righteousness. When we no longer sin, we are no longer under the law, and the law has nothing against us. We can understand it in this way: if we do not contravene any legislation, the government will not come after us. We will not be under any sentence of imprisonment, a fine, or other sanctions and are free to do whatever we want. In biblical terms, when we are not under the law, we are under grace. We are only under grace if we do not sin. We must remember that nothing is above the law, not even GOD's love. Therefore, we should not go overboard when anyone tells us that GOD is madly in love with us. It does not mean anything, as it is not an open door to eternal life, and it does not give us a license to sin.
If GOD's love is not a ticket to eternal life, then what is its purpose in the architecture of humanity? Though GOD's love cannot directly give us what we want, it can pave the way there. As an analogy, GOD's love is like a mother's love, nurturing a child for greatness. Though a mother cannot bestow greatness on her child, she can nurture the greatest within him so that he can be great by his own merits. GOD's love will nurture us from sinners to saints, so by our merits, we will enter heaven. We will be able to stand tall among angels because we do not enter, figuratively, by the back door. In this journey to sinning no more, GOD promises that He will not leave us nor forsake us. He will be our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. No matter how many times we fall because of our weakness, like the Apostle Peter, GOD will be there to pick us up because His love will never fail. Like in the Apostle Paul, GOD's strength is made perfect in his weakness. He will be ours, too.
GOD's love is not based on merits. Anyone is qualified for it. Therefore, no matter where we are in our relationship with Him, He will accept us as who we are. Even if we are the vilest sinners or non-Christians, GOD has no issue with that. He wants to give to us and not take from us for His purpose. Therefore, there are no criteria, conditions, or baselines except that we wish for His love. For the fallen world, He is willing to sacrifice the most precious of heaven, Jesus Christ, in suffering for its redemption so that heaven's gate is open for all who wish to enter. However, eternal life is not as simple as Apostle John put it simplistically - everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. What should we believe in Him, then? That He is the Son of GOD? Even the demons, Legion, knew that. Yet, it got them nowhere except to be cast into the pigs. We need to believe more than that. We need to believe every word of Jesus. If we say we believe, then we must do accordingly. If not, we are as good as non-believers. In GOD's context, knowing His Word is not enough, as we must be doers of His Word.
When we believe in Jesus, we must be doers of His Word. Only when we do that will we not perish but have eternal life. Well, this is easier said than done. Many might be unaware that to be a doer of His Word is to sin no more. However, expecting a sinner to 'sin no more' is more challenging than for a drug addict to be drug-free. David wrote, "Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me." That means we are born in a state of sin, and we have been doing wrong since birth. Hence, to 'sin no more', we need to do more than change the habit of sinning; we need to eradicate the DNA of our sinful nature. If not, we are clean on the outside, while on the inside, we are still unclean.
We need a spiritual transformation of our inmost being. Without this, we will never be free from our sinful nature. That is when GOD's love comes with care, support and guidance, seeing us through our transformation of dying to our sinful selves and being empowered by Him in obedience. His love will surround us like a tiger mother, coaching us to stand against our enemy, the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion waiting to devour us. GOD will discipline us to be fierce warriors against the devil's schemes and chastise us in our areas of weakness so that the devil will not have a foothold in us. We should not underestimate the devil as he can cause the downfall of any man and create havoc in anyone's life. Looking at the destruction he did to Job, we should be wary of him. As described in the Book of Ezekiel, the devil is the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. We are no match for him. If GOD is not with us, disciplining and chastening us to obedience, many would not be able to elude the devil's perfect temptation, causing us to sin. We will fall like Adam and Eve without any resistance.
The Epistle of Hebrews writes, "No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." GOD loves us, and He has our best interests at heart. Through discipline, our limp hands and weak knees will be strengthened so we will not fall into sin away from GOD. Consequently, we will overcome sin and not perish but have eternal life.
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Ecclesiastes 5:15 As a man came from his mother's womb, so he will depart again, naked as he arrived. He takes nothing for his labour to carry in his hands.
The Transient of Life
Ecclesiastes 1:17 So I set my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly; I learned that this, too, is a pursuit of the wind.
We brought nothing into the world, so we cannot carry anything out of it. That is the futility of all of our hard work at the end of our lives. Nothing matters. Regardless of riches, wealth, fame, power, achievements, status or credentials, they are meaningless at the end of our journey. It is like the currency of a country becomes worthless when we leave for another country. Only if we have a way of converting it to the currency of that country will it retain its value. If not, we will have to leave everything behind as if we never had it. That is futility or, to be specific, the meaninglessness of our lives, like robbing ourselves of our well-deserved medals. As Solomon expressed it: It is futile and a pursuit of the wind. All our efforts are a waste of time, transient, lacking eternal value. In other words, wasting our time. What if we are good? Soon, there is someone better to replace us. So, what if our invention is excellent? Very soon, it will be obsolete. Even if we leave behind a legacy, it will soon be superseded. Our dreams, visions, aspirations and even our lives are like sandcastles, soon will be washed away by the waves, leaving no trace behind. That is the reality we have to deal with; we are as good as we were last.
The Permanence of Our Existence
Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Our life on Earth is temporal, and we will one day leave for another place of permanence. Even though we leave Earth through the process called death, we, literally, will never die even when we stop breathing. Once born, all possess the breath of life, which GOD breathed into the first man, Adam. This breath, as eternal as God, cannot be destroyed and will keep us living forever, for better or for worse. Regardless of our religion or spiritual orientation, we will live on either in life in heaven with GOD or in our second death in hell away from GOD. Even when we breathe our last breath and are reduced to dust back to the Earth, we will not be reduced to nothing or vanish into thin air.
Death will not bring the end of us, and it will not end the repercussions of our actions, otherwise known as karma. Therefore, bygones will not be bygones when we are gone. Nothing ends except our trials in life when we are put to sleep for the Day of Judgment. When the Book of Life is opened on that day, we will face judgment and give an account of our deeds and for every careless word we have spoken. We will continue living after judgment according to the judgment. And if anyone whose name is not written in the Book of Life, he will be thrown into the lake of fire where there is no end. Those whose names are written in the Book of Life will be with GOD in the new heaven and new earth. Either in hell or in heaven, life continues after death.
Planning Forward
John 14:2 In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
Once created, we cannot be destroyed; we can only be converted from one form to another. As water changes from a liquid to a gaseous state, we change from physical to spiritual form. We are the same as Jesus Christ, unchanged through death. The unfortunate truth is that only we can undergo spiritual metamorphosis, not our material possessions. They are unable to morph with us. In a nutshell, once we die, it is eternal separation from our material possessions. Dying is like our emergency evacuation from an aircraft; we cannot take our luggage along. What we can bring is what we have on. With this in mind, we can rethink our strategy and plan forward with eternality in mind.
Planning with the End in Mind
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.
Only things can happen with a plan. Even GOD has plans for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, to give you a future and hope. When we fail to plan, we plan to fail. If we do not have eternity in mind, we will fail to plan for it and take what is necessary to achieve it. If that happens, that could be our regrettable oversight or foolishness. What is unseen or unknown might not be non-existent. What we cannot hear does not mean there is no sound. It might be an inaudible sound that our ears cannot detect. Many things exist beyond our imagination, like holding a phone and hearing someone who is far away speak. If we discard reality beyond our imagination, then we might be too arrogant to think we know everything. If GOD says so, it is better to take it seriously. Unless we think we know better than GOD.
Rethinking of our Eternality
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Therefore, we should not be myopic in thinking that we only last a lifetime, which, in fact, we are made for eternity. Comparing a lifetime to an eternity is like a drop in the ocean. If we have plans only for this lifetime and neglect our eternality, we will have much to regret. We can mess about our lifetimes, but never our eternality because eternity is too long to live if it encompasses pain, suffering, and regret. To prevent these, we must plan early in our lifetime for it. It is like getting a good education when you are young, so your future is secure. As much as we must sacrifice when young for our future, so we must sacrifice our lifetime for eternality. To do well in our studies, we cannot do as we wish, but we must learn well. Likewise, to prepare for eternality, we also cannot do as we want but must do well in what is required of us. Failing to do so, we will miss out on our excellent future in eternality.
Rethinking our Priority
Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of GOD and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
Jesus said, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" In other words, Jesus is saying that things of temporal value cannot be compared to things of eternal value. Once we lose the things of eternal value, nothing of temporal value can replace it. Therefore, we cannot have misappropriated priority by placing temporal things over eternal, even if they might not be relevant now. We put the gain of the whole world as more value than our souls. If we lose our souls to the things of the world, Jesus said that there is nothing we can use to exchange it back. It is like losing a person to the evil of drug abuse. If the drug has taken control of the man, there is nothing much one can do to get him back.
Rethinking of our Alliances
James 4:4 You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
We need to survive in the world, but that does not mean we need to compromise by sacrificing our souls. In other words, we need not exchange our gold coin or a copper coin of the world. The evil one wants our gold coin, and we will be foolish if we ever exchange with him. Therefore, we should never sell our souls by betraying GOD, our characters and principles for the ill-gotten gains of the world. Getting them will bring no benefits to us except to increase the ills in our lives. However, if we do not walk the way and indulge in the practices as the world does, those in the world will hate us. Therefore, Jesus said, "Everyone will hate you because of My name, but the one who perseveres to the end will be saved." If we want to prove ourselves worthy of God's love and the right to eternal life, we need to make a difference, stand apart from the world and never give away our gold coin.
Rethinking of our Treasures
Matthew 6:19-21 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
What is of value to GOD might not be to the world. Natural man does not define treasures as GOD does and does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolish to him, and he cannot understand them because they are intangible, unquantifiable, unseen and unproven. In other words, nonsense. Therefore, natural man only stores treasure on earth and not in heaven because he values things differently from GOD. Since the time frame of man is temporal, his mind frame is on temporal things. If he wants to prepare for life after death by storing up treasures of eternal value in heaven, he must change his mind frame by changing his heart towards the things of temporal value. He must treat things of temporal value as worthless and things of eternal value as treasures and pursue them with all of that he has. To him, the kingdom of heaven must be like a treasure hidden in a field. Once he finds it, he hides it again and, in his joy, goes and sells all he has and buys that field. The kingdom of heaven is also like a merchant in search of fine pearls. When he finds one very precious pearl, he goes away and sells all he has and buys it.
Rethinking our Investment Portfolio
1 Corinthians 3:19-20 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness." And again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."
As the saying goes, 'No pain, no gain.' If we cannot give up our treasures on earth, we cannot build our treasures in heaven. If we cannot give up the wisdom of the world for the foolishness of GOD, we cannot gain the wisdom of GOD, which is the foolishness of the world. If we want to build our treasures in heaven, do things that matter, and give us a future, we must change our perspectives. We must value the foolishness of the world that produces eternal value. When we invest our resources in time, talent, and money, we must calculate the ROI (return on investment) of things, not only on earth but also in heaven. If it does not have eternal value, then our returns are short-term gains but long-term losses, which is not ideal. It is foolish for a man to start a business that materially enriches him but spiritually bankrupts him. Therefore, whatever we do, we must understand not only the short-term implications but the long-term effects. If not, we are only wise for a moment but foolish forever.
Conclusion: Where your treasure is where your heart will be
1 Corinthians 15:54-55 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?"
Many are afraid of the sting of death because they are not prepared for eternality. They are like students going for an examination without having enough preparation. Unless we have been faithfully building treasures in heaven, we will not fear. If we have not, then we have much to worry about when the time is nearing. And those with immense treasures on earth will be reluctant to leave as they are unwilling to part with their wealth. However, this appointment with death is imminent, and no one is exempted. Only when we are secure that our treasures are in heaven will we be willing to leave everything behind for heaven because we have emptied our lives on earth and have nothing to hold us back.
Prayer: God, please open my eyes to see the things of eternal value so that I will diligently work towards them. Let me not be fooled by the deception of the world and waste my life on things that do not value-add to my eternal life and rob me of it instead. I brought nothing into the world, and I would not carry anything out of it. Let me be generous in sharing Your goodness so that my treasures will be great in heaven. Amen.
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