“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9-10
February 14, 2023
We need to inform our thoughts about love and Valentine’s Day by 1 John 4:9-10, of which it is said, “there is no greater theological statement in the whole Bible than these two wonderful verses” (Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones). We are to love one another because of the supremacy of God’s love for us. God gave us the incomparable gift of His only Son. The words, “His only begotten Son” carry particularly valuable freight. They tell us what God has done, how much He has loved us. This is the central message of the New Testament, and for that matter, the whole Bible. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, co-eternal, equal with God, one with God, the second person of the blessed Trinity. Into what kind of world did Jesus come? God sent His only Son into a God-hating, demon-infested, spiritually blind, and sin-loving world. What would it be like for any one of us if we were to live in a pig pen with its muck and mire. Pigs lying in the mud. Then there is the feeding trough, the stench of it all. Flies are all around. As the song says, “out of the ivory palaces…Jesus came into this world of woe.” In our sinfulness, all the initiative is God’s. Any display of Christian love is a response to His redemptive love. The symbolic heart with an arrow through it tells us that because of Christ we can be born again and be given a new heart, a new nature, power for new possibilities. We can change.
H
“Loving Father, thank you that I can love and live with you forever because you sent your Son.”