Charmed into Righteousness

“Charmed into Righteousness: The Most Loving God”

www.newperceptions.tv

• John 13:1—“Having loved his own, he   them to the end.”
  • John Peckham: “Profound love is connoted by the expression ‘to the end,’ likely connoting both and .  Herman N. Ridderbos renders it ‘love to the last breath’ and ‘love in the highest intensity.’. . . Further, Christ’s love is here described as ‘for his own,’ a term of to near relations’ in some ancient Near Eastern literature.” (The Love of God: A Canonical Model 149-150)
• Jeremiah 31:3—“‘I have [aheb] you, my people, with an everlasting [ahabah]. With unfailing [chesed] I have drawn you to myself.’”
  • Genesis 29:18—“Jacob was in [aheb] with Rachel and said, ‘I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel. . . . So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his [ahabah] for her.”
  • God seizes the language of two and declares—that is how much I love you—with the passion of a Lover.
  • John Peckham: “Scripture consistently displays God’s intensely and profoundly emotional love for his people.” (147-148)
  • 2 Samuel 1:26—“‘I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your [ahabah] for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.’”
  • God seizes the language of two and declares—that is how much I love you—with the deep love of a friend.
  • Exodus 34:6, 7—“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in [chesed] and faithfulness, maintaining [chesed] to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.’”
• Jeremiah 31:20—“‘Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great [racham] for him,’ declares the LORD.”
  • John Peckham: “This language depicts profoundly passible [capable of feeling] and intense emotionality, evidenced by the Hebrew idiom . . . which literally refers to turbulent or roaring internal organs and here ‘depicts God’s being churned up with longing for his son.’” (153)
  • We have but a faint and dim concept of how the love of God is for us.
    • “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem—how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)
    • “Turn! Turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)
    • “Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone!” (Hosea 4:17)
• 1 John 4:8, 16—“God is .”
  • Romans 5:8—“But God demonstrates His own for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
  • 1 John 3:1—“See what great the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!”
  • 1 John 4:10—“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
  • John 3:16—“For God so the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
  • Romans 8:35, 38-39—“Who shall separate us from the of Christ? . . . For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
  • John 15:13—“Greater has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
• Ellen White: “The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of [God’s] character of .” (Christ’s Object Lessons 415)

“The Maker of all things loves and wants me.”

—Reynolds Price

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