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Commentary on "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow"

COLLEEN TINKER

 

Day 4: Tuesday, March 30, 2010

 

Overview

Tuesday’s lesson addresses loving God. It opens with a quote of Matthew 22:37, 38: “Thou shalt love the Lord the God with all they heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” The lesson further states, “According to Jesus, the most important of all commandments isn’t to keep the Sabbath, nor is it any of the prohibitions against killing, stealing, and adultery.  On the contrary, the most important of all the commandments deals with what is in our hearts, in our souls; it deals with what is inside of us and not with our outward actions.”

It then asks why love for God would be the most important of all relationships? Why is that “so fundamental”? “What spiritual dangers arise if we love something anything, more than God?”

The lesson proceeds to make the point that the ability to have a love relationship with God is part of what sets us apart from the apes. “We are special, and part of that specialness is revealed in the love relationship that we are called to have with God” which “animals and plants are not capable of experiencing.”

The lesson closes with these questions: “What is your own experience in loving God? How do you know that you love God?

 

Teachers Comments

On page 11 in the Teachers Comments are these statements: Instead of our extermination, “God sacrificed His Son for our Redemption. Satan obscures that truth, for he knows that appreciation for God’s mercy is the root of a transformed life…Satan knows that if our God-relationship is fear-filled, we never will enjoy His love. So, Satan plants fear factors in our faith! The heavenly reunion at Christ’s return is overshadowed by a time of trouble, economic crashes and doomsday scenarios. The joy of Redemption is cheapened to become ‘fire insurance.’”

Then is asks the reader to consider how a God-relationship built on fear influences our view of health. What might result from a loving relationship? How does loving God affect our outlook physically? Mentally? Spiritually?

 

Observations

Again, the approach to loving God is backwards. The lesson assumes that one can focus on learning to love God, and he can decide to make love for God the primary focus of his life. In fact, this sort of decision is not possible to be realized.

In order to love God, we must be born again. John even says, that love begins with God loving us and sending His Son (1 John 4:10). We do not love God first.

Within the Adventist paradigm of the "Great Controversy", the coming of Jesus was the “proof” that God loved us. We, therefore, are the recipients of God’s love in the fact of Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection. We, consequently, must appropriate that “love” and love one another. Thus we move into loving God and showing that love by loving others.

In fact, however, we cannot experience God’s love personally unless we repent and accept Jesus’ propitiation for our sin (1 John 4:10). Jesus was clear that the ONLY way to see the kingdom of heaven is by being born again (John 3:3-5). This happens when we hear the word of Christ, the gospel, and believe in Him (Eph. 1:13-14). His Spirit puts God’s love into us (Gal. 5:22-23) and it is manifested as part of the fruit of the Spirit.

We can try to love God and put Him over all other things in our lives, but as long as we remain in the domain of darkness and have not been transferred into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13), we are merely struggling to love God.

We can only love God when His love convicts us of our sin and brings us to repentance, acknowledging Jesus’ blood as the only way to heaven and the only way to experience God’s love for us.

 

Knowing we love God

Romans 8 explains how we know we have passed from death to life and how we know God’s love. The Holy Spirit testifies with our spirits that we are children and heirs of God (Rom. 8:14-15). We don’t have to guess, and we don’t have to mentally juggle priorities in order to figure out how to “love God”. We love Him when He makes us new by indwelling us. Then He Himself testifies with our spirits that we are His.

Appreciation for God mercy is not the root of a transformed life. We can have no appreciate for God’s mercy apart from repenting and receiving His blood as our cleansing and Him as our Savior. The only root of a transformed life is the new birth. God in His great mercy makes us alive with Christ while we are dead in our sin (Ephesians 4:4-6), and we do not contribute to this miracle.

We are transformed by the Holy Spirit living in us, not by focusing on God’s mercy and appreciating it. Moreover, Satan cannot “plant fear factors in our faith”! Our faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9). If our faith is the consequence of actually being born again, NOTHING can affect that because even our faith is not self-generated; it is from God. God Himself sustains us. When we accept Jesus, we pass from death to life (John 5:24). Our future with Him is absolutely secure, and our intimacy and the experience of knowing and loving Him is not interrupted or overshadowed by times of trouble.

Instead, when people actually come to know Jesus and are born of the Spirit, those things cease to be fearful. When John said perfect love casts out fear, he was not talking about some mental discipline. He was talking about God Himself indwelling us, holding us, growing us no matter what happens around us. Nothing can touch us without His permission.

We cannot build a real “God-relationship” on fear. A real God-relationship is one in which we repent and receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior and Substitute because of His blood shed on the cross and His seal on us of His Holy Spirit bringing us to life. This relationship cannot be built on fear, because God Himself builds it.

When we submit to the real Jesus and receive Him into our lives, our health improves because our stress begins to dissipate. We have real means by which to live without fear in trust and faith.

Satan is not a factor in our relationship with God. If we are relating to God out of fear, we have not come to know Him. Whatever we do regarding good works, Bible study, and church attendance has nothing to do with establishing a relationship with God. That is established entirely by repenting and receiving Jesus.

Only after we receive Jesus does our study and prayer improve our relationship, because only then are we alive with the life of Jesus. Only then do our dead spirits come to life, and we know God. He protects our spirits and keeps us safe in Him.

 

Summary

 

GO TO DAY 5

 

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