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“SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH" (Part Eight) Bob Myhan
inally, if we would continue being “partakers of the divine nature” we must “make every effort to supplement…brotherly affection with love" (2 Peter 1:4-6, ESV). The Greek word for “love” is used “to describe the attitude of God toward His Son, the human race, generally, and to such as believe on the Lord Jesus, particularly." It is also used "to express the essential nature of God." It “is not an impulse from the feelings, it does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor...spend itself only upon those for whom some affinity is discovered." Rather, it "seeks the welfare of all" (Vine’s, pp. 702,03).
aul explains the essentiality of love in his first epistle to the Corinthian church, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Cor. 13:1-3). Thus, life without love is futile.
aul, in this same chapter, describes love. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7). Thus, love has a character all its own. And it necessarily imparts this character to all who possess it. Thus, those who are characterized by love will never seek anything but the highest good of their fellow men, no matter what and who their fellow men are, what attitude their fellow men have toward them or how they are treated by their fellow men. This is the very essence of God’s love toward us (Rom. 5:8).
aul also points out that, unlike the miraculous, spiritual gifts that have long since passed away, love will never fail (1 Cor. 13:8-12).
he apostle then points out that love will outlive faith and hope (1 Cor. 13:13). Faith will eventually become sight (2 Cor. 5:5-10); hope will eventually become possession (1 Peter 1:3-5); love will never be replaced. But whom or what are we to love?
ne is to love God (Mark 12:29,30), his neighbor (Mark 12:31), his brethren (1 Peter 1:22) and his enemy (Matt. 5:43,44). Husbands are also to love their wives (Eph. 5:25,33). Notice that the proper objects of love are persons.
he love commanded in the above passages is not an emotional but a volitional love—a love of the will—to be seen, not merely felt. Love God by keeping His commandments (1 John 5:3); love your neighbor by striving to meet whatever need he might happen to have (Luke 10:25-37); love the brethren by laying down your life for them (1 John 3:16-18); love your enemy by seeing to his physical needs (Rom. 12:19-21); and love your wife by nourishing and cherishing her (Eph. 5:28,29). Love is the utmost proof [the “acid test”] of knowing God (1 John 4:8). Do you know God? & WHY SOME DON'T BELIEVE #4 Guest Writer: Bill Walton
ome people do believe in God and Christ, and the Bible because of their close-minded presupposition with regard to miracles.
bviously, if there is a God there is the possibility of miraculous intervention in our world. And, obviously, if God created the universe and if God inspired men to write the Bible, and if God raised Jesus from the dead, then there has been miraculous intervention in our world.
believe there is convincing evidence that such miracles have occurred. But some people exclude the possibility of miracles even before they have considered the evidence. In many cases the unbeliever is unwilling to consider the evidence.
heir rejection of anything and everything supernatural is not a conclusion based upon a consideration of the evidence, but a philosophical presupposition. They start with the presupposition that it is not possible that anything miraculous or supernatural has ever occurred or can ever occur.
udolph Bultmann in his book, Existence and Faith, says: We must “understand the whole historical process as a closed unity. This closedness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot to rent by the interference of supernatural powers and that therefore there is no 'miracle' in this sense of the word.” And, in his book Kerygma and Myth, Bultmann says: "A historical fact that involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable.”
ecause of this closed-minded, pseudo-intellectual blindness, “if there is a living God who is the Lord of history, who has chosen to act in historical events as the Bible witnesses," these so-called Scholars have "no way of recognizing that fact” (George Eldon Ladd: I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, pg 13).
t’s interesting that while unbelievers consider anything miraculous or supernatural to be “utterly inconceivable” they have no trouble swallowing the idea of spontaneous generation--non-life springing to life spontaneously. They cannot conceive of life coming from God by an act of creation. That would be a miracle. But they can conceive of life coming from lifeless dead matter by magic. Oh, they make it sound scientific by calling it "spontaneous generation" but they're really talking about magic. And they know it. Robert Jastrow, the well-known physicist and agnostic, says: “The record of the first billion years of the earth’s existence has been erased - the magic period when life evolved here" (Robert Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies).
ut their willingness to dabble in magic goes far beyond spontaneous generation. Three highly respected British astronomers (Thomas Gold, Hermann Bondi, and Fred Hoyle), in an effort to defend the idea of a universe that is expanding and eternal, have suggested “new material might be created continuously out of nothing in the empty spaces of the universe" (Robert Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies, pg 31). I suppose they could call that "spontaneous materialization.” Yes, that has a scientific ring to it.
rofessing to be wise, the have become fools” (Romans 1:26). They have rejected miracles and embraced magic. & THE WAY OF SIN Author Unknown
in will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay. & HE WHO WILL BE BLESSED
lessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away" (Psalm 1:1-4). & |