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The God Who Is: Love & Truth
We know that our God is inexhaustible. We could do a series covering his character attributes alone without end.
However, over the next several weeks, we want to look at the Scripture to better understand a few of these characteristics of God that will help us to better relate to him and one another during this time.
Today’s character traits will better root us in the foundation of our relationship with God and others.
Focus: We will better understand the meaning of life when we realize that God is the love that humanity craves and the truth that it desperately needs.
Imagining a World Without Truth and Love
The Love that We Crave
The Truth Who We Need
Imagining a World Without Love and Truth
Without God, there would be no proper reference for unending love grounded in truth.
We intrinsically know that love is important.
It is the zest of life and the glue that holds it all together.
However, in our relativistic society, we often forget why truth is important.
Analytic philosopher and author, Dr. William Lane Craig reminds us:
“In a world without God, who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. Think of what that means!
It means it’s impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, and love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare, valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.”
- William Lane Craig, On Guard:
Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision
So what is the solution to this conundrum?
Thankfully, in the Scripture, there is a God who makes two distinct claims about himself.
He is love
He is truth
The Love That We Crave
We receive the true love that we crave when we embrace the person of God.
Why?
Love is not just a feeling, but it is a person.
That person is God.
1 John 4:8
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
When you walk in Biblical love, you are living like God.
According to John the apostle, walking in love is a prerequisite sign of knowing God.
The problem today is that people have agendas, yet forget love.
When you forget love, you forget God.
And no matter how justified you feel in your cause in the moment, when you forget God, people are not far behind.
We know love by knowing the person of God who teaches us how to love.
What love is.
The word used for love in the I John verse is the Greek word “agape”.
Agape is defined as affectionate regard, goodwill and benevolence.
Agape is having goodwill towards people even when they don’t wish it for you.
All of the characteristics that we see of love in I Corinthians 13 are not just charges to us, but they are explaining who God is.
The agape love of God is so important that he has the apostle Paul speak this way:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3; 4-8a
If I speak in 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 and 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 I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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. Love never ends.
No matter how spiritual or how righteous you think that you are, do not think that you are representing God or what’s right if you’re not walking in love.
Agape is what God expressed towards us when he sent Christ into the world.
Agape is life transforming because even we were enemies of God because of our evil behavior, we found that:
God’s agape is unconditional.
God’s agape is undeserved.
This is the love for which the world is longing.
What love is not:
God’s agape is not agreeing with everything that someone does or even condoning it.
God’s agape is not approving of something that is harmful or untrue in the hopes of not offending someone or their feeling of self-actualization.
Agape is making efforts to center people on the truth of God’s Word, character and purposes.
The Truth Who We Need
We will be grounded in love when we are rooted in the truth of Jesus Christ.
We need truth to anchor us when times are tumultuous and there is so much vitriolic disagreement.
Just as love is a person, so truth is not just a concept, but it is also a person.
And that truth is Jesus Christ.
John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Now why did Jesus make such an exclusive claim?
It is because of what his love would accomplish for us on the cross.
“The gospel is not simply good advice, nor is it good news about God’s power. The gospel is God’s power to those who believe. The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross.”
- D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: An Exposition of Passages from 1 Corinthians
This means that at the cross, we are covered in our shortcomings and failures.
Someone said a sad thing when they stated,:
“It’s ok if people don’t like you. Most people don’t even like themselves.”
Yet at the cross we are liberated from our propensity for self-loathing because we are made new creations covered in the righteousness of Jesus.
And even more than that, we know that:
“Jesus did not come into this world to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.”
-Ravi Zacharias
This is why truth is important.
It gives us the grounding to love God and others consistently well in the world, no matter the environment.
Truth is:
Truth is a Person - because it is found in Jesus Christ.
The sinless life, death and resurrection of Christ is an historic truth that enables us to interpret all others.
Truth is Revealed - the gospel is not merely discovered, because God proclaims to us who he is in the person of Christ.
Truth is Found in God’s Word
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
When Jesus was described as the Logos, the Word of God, he was not simply being declared as God.
He was also being hailed as the direct expression and embodiment of the thoughts, intelligence and message of God to the world.
This means that we will not only know how to properly relate with the world by following the commands of Jesus, but we will come to properly interpret all truth through Jesus Christ and his Word.
Truth is not:
Truth is not Subjective - because it is based on the nature, character and commands of God.
Numbers 23:19
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
The answer is no.
God will not lie or change his mind.
Truth is not Relative - because God’s nature does not change based on human emotion, desire or circumstance.
Malachi 3:6
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
Truth is not Temporary - God is not influenced by our times, popular trends or who may presently find themselves in a political office.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Thus the meaning in life that we seek is steady, secure and unchanging because it is found in the unchanging one.
It is attainable because of the love demonstrated to us and operating through us when we submit our lives to Jesus.
God loves you and has shown this by what Jesus has done for you on the cross.
Jesus had to go to the cross to pay the price for our sins against a holy and just God.
God wants to be at peace, not war with you.
So repent today of your sin.
Leave “your truth”, which is relative, and submit today to God’s objective love found in the person of Jesus Christ.
Study
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Second City Church - The God Who Is - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020