Tag: fellowship

Discipleship 1:5

God is love. 1 John 4:7

So we have received salvation through Jesus. We go to church. We attend small groups. We’re hungry to know the God we serve. We read the Bible. Then we hit a wall. The God of the New Testament does not line up with the God of the Old Testament. He loves us, or so the Bible tells us so; yet before Jesus (God incarnate) came, people were struck dead for the smallest of offenses. We still love God, still want to serve Him, but suddenly, He just doesn’t make sense. It happened here, in my home, and until this study I didn’t know how to reconcile the loving God of the New Testament with the seemingly wrath-filled God of the Old Testament.

As you recall, Adam and Eve were removed from the garden for their own good; God did not want them to live forever in a sinful state. That would have been torment. Amazingly, though He had every right, God did not break fellowship post-sin; He made His appearance. He still went to them after their relocation, and spoke audibly to Adam and Eve’s offspring. In fact, He was so intimate with them, that His voice caused no fear; and when God asked Cain where his brother Abel was, he lied with seemingly no compunction (Genesis 4:9). Even following the atrocity of that first murder, though God did not condone it, neither did He hold an account of it (Genesis 4:15).

For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Romans 5:13 KJV

This verse basically says that until the Ten Commandments came, sin was not being held against people; God held no accounts.

God did not want to introduce the Law. He would have rather we loved Him, and loved others for Love’s sake, but at the rate man was going we would have self-destructed. So the Law was delivered, and despite His appearing as a tyrant, God enforced it; He had to. God is just and God cannot lie. As His creation, and His want for relationship, we put Him in an impossible position. It had to be thus. Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to turn a kid over and spank him? Maybe even slap silly the parent who sits idly by and lets the child disrupt everyone around them with no repercussions? I have. This is what God was up against — a bunch of rebellious people who did not have a healthy respect and love for Him. Because of that, they were destroying themselves and each other.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. Romans 7:7 KJV

Romans 7:7 tells us the purpose of the Law:

The Law was given to magnify our sins to the extent that we would despair, realizing that we could never achieve God’s high standards of righteousness outside of Him. We could not save ourselves; we had to humble ourselves before God and ask Him to do it for us. Which, He did; He still does.

If only the truth of Romans 5:8 would take root inside of us.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 KJV

God loved us while we were yet sinners. But He also loved us too much to let us there. So the Law came to show us how bankrupt we are in all ways without Him. We need Him. God went to great lengths to prove that He’d rather we changed as a by-product of Love rather than Law.

I hope you have joined me in receiving the salvation that is freely offered and that we keep in our remembrance that God isn’t keeping accounts. No, He has dumped our sins in the ocean and posted a No Fishing sign.

Until we meet again, remember:

God is love. 1 John 4:7