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117 one 1/7.
We know that we, oh God, are 999 Father's grace in love blessed mercy gave.
117.
To ourselves.
We all.
Prayer reward.
Included the thought of appreciating more the life that we have.
That life and what it is is emphasized to us and the verses that follow where we left off in the reading meeting yesterday. Perhaps we could continue with First John chapter 4.
First John chapter 4 and beginning with verse 7.
First John chapter 4, verse 7.
Love it, Let us love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
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Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in US and His love is perfected in US.
Hereby know we that we dwell in his.
And He and us, because he has given unto us his Spirit, and we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and He in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love.
Dwelleth in God.
And God in Him herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world.
There is No Fear in love, but perfect love casts us out here, because fear hath torment he. The Spirit is not made perfect in love. We love him because He first loves us. If a man say, I love God and hated his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God, love his brother also.
A dog.
Or any other animal.
Cannot understand.
Us human beings.
It has a very limited capacity and yes, man can have some very, very limited fellowship with an animal, but an animal can enter into our true extent of our feelings or our thoughts.
It's not. It doesn't have our nature.
And when we were born into this world.
As creatures of God, we had very limited capacity to know God.
More capacity than an animal because we have a spirit which makes us God conscious. An animal that doesn't even know God exists because it has no spirit. But we are conscious of God even as born into this world. But the way we were born, in the condition in which we were born, we really didn't have a capacity to enter into the heart and thoughts and feelings and purposes of God.
But what's brought before us in the verse where we started is everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
It's the life, we call it eternal life in other places in Scripture, when I put my trust and you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God at that moment in time gave us a gift.
The gift of eternal life. And at that moment in time we got a capacity to know God that we never had before.
Because we received a very divine nature. God is love, and from that moment on within us dwells that same capacity, that divine life. That is love in its very nature. And so as it says in the verse, everyone that loveth is born of God. That is, everyone that has this kind of love, not natural love that we're born with.
But the love of God in us, that divine love, the only way you can have it is if you are born of God. Without it, you don't have it. And so it says in the end of the verse, Know it not God. You don't know God if you're sitting in this room and you don't have the gift of eternal life. You don't have a nature capable in you of knowing God as He wants you to know Him.
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That is to be able to enter in to his own heart, his own thoughts, his own way of looking at things, feeling things, where God is love. And so it's a wonderful thing for us to have that blessed life.
That was spoken about in the to the Lord in the first prayer.
He that hath the Son, it says in the next chapter.
He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath not life. It's just that straightforward. If you have the sun that we have had before us today, you have life. But if you don't have the sun for yourself, if you cannot confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
Then you don't have life and you don't know God.
Divine love is that.
Lovely concept.
Naturally, we look for something in the object.
To generate and draw health and love from our hearts. But there was nothing in us naturally to.
Bring forth the love of God toward us in our deep need.
And our lost condition, it was the source of that love that was in the heart of God.
And so that love didn't have anything in the object to stimulate it, and that's the love that we have now.
In our hearts.
And so we can love that person that naturally may be unlovable.
Even obnoxious sometimes.
Maybe that way ourselves.
But divine love doesn't look for something deserving or worthy in the object. Its source is the heart of God, and so the brother mentioned it's the activity of the new nature.
In the belief.
Divine nature that we have, which partakes of the characteristic of God's nature, which is divine love, to have these things developed in the abyssal love and righteousness light.
Is the nature of God in fact in the book from the writings of John?
It is the family that is in question from the body of Christ, and the thought is.
Eternal life, the very life of the Lord Jesus it was.
Fully manifest in his marvelous pathway down here in the Gospel of John especially.
In every act in Word that we have been reminded, but in first John we have that same divine life active in the believer. We having that life, it should be manifest. Now these are the characteristics of that life, love, life, righteousness, obedience, obedience. Those are all the characteristics of the divine life and.
The lawful here exhorts us to manifesto.
The expectations are on the ground of what we already possess. It's not trying to secure the thing by our own efforts. It's what we now have a holy nature and a divine nature that loves even those that have may naturally not to draw health our affection. Our divine love loves those that are undeserving. That was the character of God's love to us, wasn't what it not nothing in us that said merited.
Or deserve that marvelous love that was going to us.
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If a person is alive.
There's generally evidence of it.
With their debt, there's evidence of that as well.
And so if we.
Are not dead toward God, but if we are alive toward God, there will be evidence seen of that life. And here in this 4th chapter.
The apostle John is writing to his brethren, and he's saying, brethren, beloved.
The real evidence of the life in you is loving each other.
And so if that life is really in us, it will be seen in our behavior and what's in our hearts toward each other.
I want to give a little more emphasis to what John just said too, about it doesn't require that the person be very lovable or lovable at all.
God demonstrated His love toward us when we were ungodly. That is, the love that is in the heart of God for us was toward us when we were not just unlovable, but absolutely.
Ungodlike against God in our very nature, in our very life. And so that's the law that He exhorts us to have toward each other. I.
I remember hearing, and I'm not going to try to quote it exactly, but I'll paraphrase it, but there was a, a meeting like this quite a few years ago and the brethren were talking about this subject of love. And it went on for quite a while. And it's an easy in some ways something to say something about. But everyone was sort of brought up short when finally one brother said, he said, brethren, the measure of divine love.
That's working in your soul is the love that you have toward the most well, he said. Cantankerous and cross brain, but the most unlovable person you know.
In other words, if you think about those who you call brethren, and we'll just confine it to that, not just to your next door neighbor or somebody at work, but just for the moment think about somebody that.
Well, they're not very lovable to you, but the measure of love working in your heart and your life is the amount of love you have and demonstrate toward that person. Don't take somebody that you might call easy to love and have virtues that are lovable. No, that's not. That might be just what the Bible calls brotherly love, natural love, and love towards somebody that's lovable or we have a relationship with.
That we a friendship, but if God's love is a love, that does not, as John said, depend on what's in the person being loved.
Want to just make this comment as well in Ephesians chapter this is a word I guess brothers but sisters will be happy for it I think. But in John in Ephesians chapter 5 it says husbands love your wives as Christ also loved the church.
To engage himself for it.
You, if you're a Christian husband, have a greater responsibility to love your wife.
Then your next door neighbor or somebody at work who's a husband and is not a believer. Because the standard for you and me is to love our wives as Christ loved the church. What kind of love was that? Was the church lovable and lovely? No, it wasn't.
When he gave himself for it. But it is to love your wife with a divine.
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Kind of love that does not depend in itself upon the response.
To draw it out.
But if that love is there, it will draw the response when the heart is of one that has that same love in them.
You see ultimately.
Through this divine luggage was sacrificial. Actually we are such self procedures. We think of our own comfort and yet our own reputation and so on. But with the Lord Jesus, it was a love that led him to lay down his life for us. Ephesians chapter 5.
Well known verse that says walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and have given himself for us, and offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. There was the love demonstrated to its highest degree in the gift of himself.
It was a sacrificial love.
That led the Lord Jesus to the cross of Calvary. Well, that's what we should demonstrate as well. You know, relationships, one with the other in the assembly. We are throwing together very close in our fellowship, which is a wonderful thing. But there is also the danger of differences coming in frictions and so on.
Like First Corinthians chapter 12 is the machinery.
First Corinthians chapter 14 is the machinery in action, the 12Th chapter, the gifts that the Spirit of God has imparted in the assembly to reach one, a place to fulfill. Then in chapter 14 you see those gifts in activity, the assembly. Every brother and sister has that response to that privilege and that responsibility is every man has received the gift. Even so, minister the same one to the other as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
Between.
Chapter 13 very important. It's the oil that lubricates that relationship that those gifts must be exercised in love. That's chapter first child Corinthians 13 very important that we we have that love in our hearts and our souls don't try to love the Lord any more than you do. We look into our own hearts and we have to acknowledge.
How often they are cold and unresponsive to the Lord's love.
Chinese and probably everyone could say that, but as we were often reminded as the young people sit down and concentrate the love of God toward you and it will warm your heart up. The love of the Lord and giving himself for us, His patience, His grace with us all along the pathway. Having loved his own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. But what kind of disciples were they?
Forsook them and fled, and they didn't get so much fidelity. And yet he acknowledges them as those that continued with him in this, in his temptations, the Lord's love never grew cold for those disciples or toward the nation of Israel. In fact, you find in Scripture the expressions of God's love to his people are at times when he would least expect it, like in Jeremiah.
31 I think it is. I have loved me with an everlasting love. That was just at the time when God had to take the nation of Israel into captivity because of their unfaithfulness and idolatry. At that very time the Lord said, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, even at the end of the wilderness journey.
The verse in Deuteronomy, I'm not quoting it exactly correct. But yeah, He loved the people. All his Saints are in thy hand. At that time when they had been so unfaithful throughout that that 40 year period, the Lord's love toward them had never changed. It was still the same at the end of Malachi, just before the Canon, the Old Testament Canon was closed.
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Before the 400 years of silence and.
We read the 1St chapter of Malachiah and we see the sad condition in which the nation was They were questioning the Lord's love to them. They wouldn't open the temple doors unless they were paid. They were offering to the Lord, the lame and the blind and the halt the second back, which they wouldn't offer to the governor. They were offering to the Lord.
But at that time you notice how the Prophet begins. I have loved thee, saith the Lord. His love had never changed toward his people. And.
Martha and Mary, we would think. Well, the Lord must have loved Mary more than He loved Martha because she was so devoted to Him and Martha was cumbered with much serving. But when He speaks of the Lord's love to that family, it mentions first.
First, the name of Martha. The Lord loved Martha and Mary and.
Lazarus So the Lord's love did not change in spite of the.
The departure and the coldness of his people, and it's the same with us.
Says God's sin is only begotten Son into the world.
Why? Why?
That we might have life.
Through him, sometimes we limit the message of the gospel to the thought that I'm a Sinner. I am that if I don't accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, I will go to hell. And I will. And if I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, I'll go to heaven someday.
Instead of hell, and that all my sins will be removed from the sight of God. All of that is true and wonderful in its place. But God wants us to go on into the enjoyment of all that he he purposes. And he says here I sent my son John 316 is the same message with really the same emphasis. I sent my son into the world in love. Why?
So that you could have life.
But you could have like everlasting life in John 316. Here it just says in verse nine that we might have life through Him.
God wants us to be part of His family and we wants us to have the life of the family so that we can enter into and enjoy fellowship with Him.
God wants us to have a more near and personal relationship with Himself than Adam and Eve ever did or could enjoy, even before they sinned in the Garden of Eden.
And while sin brought a separation between man and God, God isn't defeated in his purposes of love, and so he sends his Son into the world to give a life.
Two men that will bring him into a relationship with God that can never be separated from God again. Never have a break in that relationship.
In Adam all die, and Adam had a life and a nature which of responsibility to God, but.
He exercised his will in unbelief, and he sinned, and he separated him, and he became dead toward God.
But here God says no, I'm going to send my own son into the world so that he could be a life giver.
The matter of the cross had to be taken up, and it was so that God could give light. There was life in the that tree in the midst of the garden, and as soon as man had sinned lest he partake of that tree in the condition in which he was, which would have been a horrible thing really.
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Imagine living as you are, even as a believer in the state in which you are.
That is, with sin still in you.
It's a horrible thing really, to think about if God would let a person live on this earth without dying in the condition in which they are. Although it's a more horrible thing still to die and be forever separated from God in the second death. But it's a wonderful thing for us to enjoy that God in love sent his Son, that we might have life.
More excellent way that the apostle speaks up. Covered earnestly the best gift.
1St Corinthians 12 The last verse, and yet show I unto you.
A more excellent way.
Now abide his faith, hope, charity, these three. But the greatest of these is charity or love, so every one of us can display that character of the divine nature.
It says there in the book of Jude that we are to keep ourselves in the love of God. That is a walk in the sunshine of his love, in communion with God, enjoying that love. If sin has come into my life.
Which I am not willing to judge, of course. There's a cloud then between my soul and God and I can no longer enjoy communion. I can't revel in the the love of God there. There is a hindrance there. So it's my responsibility to keep myself in the love of God. That is to to be, to walk in self judgment.
And to be unsparing about that old nature which certainly is the very opposite of love, that old nature which we have, that displays hatred and enmity toward God, toward man.
But now God has put into everyone of you young people, everyone of us.
Now God has imparted that divine nature, all the good that comes out of my life, everything that is for the glory of God in my life and your life, it comes from the new nature. And we're called upon to keep the old nature in the place of death. Remember when the children of Israel went into the land of Canaan, before they used sharp swords on their enemies, which they were commanded to do?
They were exhorted and commanded to use sharp knives on themselves. That was circumcision. You can read that it's very interesting in Joshua chapter 5. Gilgal there speaks of self judgment in my life, those things which are.
The fruit of the old nature which we all have.
We need to judge and put away.
Reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Christ. But sometimes we hear people saying, it's a poor thought, but I suppose we might have said it ourselves. Well, there's no love in this assembly where I am, there's no love. Oh, I've heard that different ones who were once at the Lord's table make this excuse.
But if that's the case, then I have the responsibility to bring love into that assembly.
Provoke, the apostle says in Hebrews 10.
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Look at that verse in Hebrews 10.
That exhortation that the apostle gives us. 24 Let us consider one another to provoke unto love, and to good works.
Used to be a brother in the Ottawa meeting and he said to.
A sister, he said. Sister, do you provoke the Saints? Oh, she says, brother, I hope I don't. Well, he said, you should.
The word provoke here is used in the sense of that stimulate.
Encourage.
It says here, provoke unto love and to good works. If there's no love in the assembly, then you bring some love into it by the way you act, and you'll be surprised at the return that you will get. And good works too, don't need to complain about lack of gospel work in the assembly. We have the privilege of going out and doing it ourselves, and perhaps that would encourage.
Others to follow, But the point that I'm trying to make is what do we contribute in the assembly? What do we bring? We're always occupied, often with what we get. And that's all right. We we certainly have had a feast this weekend here, an Oasis in the desert. But what do we bring in our local assemblies? That is what God is looking for.
Are we bringing love? Are we bringing understanding and.
And showing that divine life in the way we react one toward the other.
Verse 10 says fear in his love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.
And sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Earlier in this same epistle, before bringing out a matter of love.
We have God as light, and it's important for us to recognize that.
To disobey God is to disobey that sin is a terrible offense against God's own nature.
It's a dishonor to God not to obey Him as a creature.
And so God is in a holy way offended by sin. In fact, God says in a in a eternal way, every such matter will have to be forever removed from his sight. He cannot allow by his own nature that which is not consistent with His own being to last to exist.
Absolutely. This whole world, this building, this whole world is going to cease to exist. Why as it in its present form, because it's it bears the marks of sin. It bears the marks of a terrible offense against God and and he won't allow it to remain in that condition before his eyes for eternity. And so he he will remove it.
Everything that our eye can put our eye on is going to be removed from his sight because all of it bears the marks of of sin and the offense it is to God. And so God must be propitiated. That is God's holy nature must be satisfied.
In the matter of what is offensive to him, and it's a wonderful thing to see this verse connected, this verse of God's nature needing to be satisfied as to something that's offensive to him to be connected with his love.
When God decided to work with us, nobody had any interest.
Man just went his own way and his own trespasses and sins without any care or interest in God at all. Cain is a figure of man in the flesh. He goes out from the presence of God and man. It says in Romans chapter one doesn't want to retain God in his knowledge and so there are many people say no God. I don't want God. I don't even want to believe there's a God.
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And yet what does it say here? It says God in love sent the Lord Jesus, even when we could care less, if you will, about Him, to take up the matter, to propitiate his own nature in the matter of sins.
So that, as it were, he could come out to us in Colossians, one that Bob had this afternoon. In that chapter he made peace through the blood of his cross.
That is, God acted so that he could.
Show us His love so that He could do something for us and be consistent with His own nature.
And yet he had to do it, and he did it before we cared about him and all. There was number love in our hearts toward him at that point.
And yet God in his own love and his own purpose of saying, well, I love them.
I want to give them life, but I can't give them that gift of life in the condition in which they are. And so God takes up the matter of sin and deals with it between.
Without us being involved in any sense in this case at all. But he sends the Son into this world to become a man and sends him to the cross. And then God, as God deals with Jesus the man over the matter of sins or sin, God is propitiated in that sacrifice. And now God says to us, oh, I love you and I want to give you the gift of eternal life.
Will you accept it?
Well, if you are sitting in this room this afternoon and you haven't accepted it, you don't know God and you don't know love. You're dark, your soul is in darkness and God would desire to speak to you. You know you might be dead in this room, but.
It's a wonderful thing. If there was a dead body put here before us in this room, we would all feel immediately. And since there was nothing we could do to say to that person, or what had been a person, totally helpless to say anything to that person, they're dead. We can't communicate with a dead person.
But not God, not God. In John's Gospel it says he speaks to the dead. And what does it say? They that hear shall live. God isn't even limited by a person dead and spiritually dead. But God speaks even to the dead, and they that hear shall live. Wonderful, wonderful thing that God is able to meet us in the extreme condition in which we were.
And show his love and bring us into the enjoyment of that love.
And say you're my children and I love my son the Lord Jesus.
And so I'm giving you life so that you can share them with me and we can enjoy them together.
And I brought him, if I could speak for God in this sense this afternoon, God would say, I've been bringing my son before you this, after this conference so that we can enjoy him together now. And you can taste it and say, oh, I want more.
And look forward to whatever time is left here on earth, but even more so to anticipate when there will be no hindrances and we will spend an eternity enjoying the Father's love in the Son at.
Center and object of it all.
Many translations to the modern translations take the word proficient, found in first John 22 and 1St John 410, which we're considering now, and in place of the word propitiation use the word atoning sacrifice.
But to me it seems that propitiation is more than that I was.
Wondering if we have we have a little bit more light on that word propitiation?
We have perhaps.
Some example or illustration of Scripture.
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That's Michelle and you don't see it in English, but in Spanish and other languages if you go to Exodus chapter 37.
Exodus chapter 37.
Look at a couple of verses.
Verse one. And Bezalel made the ark of Shittimwood to Cuba, and 1/2 of the length of it, and then down to verse six. And he made the mercy seat of pure gold, 2 cubits, and 1/2 was the length thereof, and one cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And he made two cherubims of gold beaten out of one piece, maybe them on the two ends of the mercy seat, one cherub on the end on this side, and another cherub on the.
Other end on that side out of the mercy seat made he cherubims on the two ends thereof, and the chair of them spread out their wings on high and covered with their wings over the mercy seat.
With their faces one to another, even to the mercy seat, where were the faces of the cherubim's? The word that's translated from Hebrew to is mercy seed in English at least Spanish and Portuguese and some of the other languages is transliterated would be propitiatorium. It's the same word are connected with it. What would the high priest do once a year? He would go in and always with blood and and.
The blood from a sacrifice.
Onto the mercy seat and that the cherubims angels, which would be.
In charge of judgment would look down, and what would they see?
The figure of it if they were made of gold, but they would see the blood all year.
To go back to the verse that John referred to in first John chapter 2.
And He is the propitiation, verse 2 for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
We can.
Preach the gospel to everyone and say the price has been paid so that you could be saved.
We can't go to everyone and say.
That.
Christ died for your sins.
Why can't we say that?
Hebrews, Chapter 9.
Verse 28.
It said Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that looked for him shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation so.
Expressing it correctly, but in the sense of saying the payment was so great that everyone can be offered salvation.
But God isn't going to punish the same sins twice.
There was a man many years ago who was a quite wealthy man. He went to a village.
And he made an offer, he said anyone that will come and I don't know what the time of day was but let's say for the example it's a true story but I don't remember the details. But he offered to make a payment between 2 certain hours of the day, anyone who would come in to the room where he was and he said bring your debts.
People came in to the area, they stood around the door.
And people were afraid because they said, what if I go in and he doesn't do it? They're going to laugh at me when I come back out. Some people, a few started to go in. They were carrying papers of the bills that they were not able to pay. They went in.
And no one came out during the time period. Some others went in. And finally, at the end of the appointed hour for this time, he went. People started coming out and they said, well, what happened? I said, well, my debts are paid. You took all of them. Everything is going to be paid. And he's paid it all. And the others started knocking on the door and said, well, you know, we want it too. Said, no, too late. You had your opportunity. The man was wealthy enough to be able to cover the debts of the people in that town.
And when the priest walked in and the bells and pomegranates that could hear that he was still alive, they could detect the movement by that. When he put the blood on the altar, they were all in a sense.
Could have been protected by that, recognizing that it all waited for the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
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The gospels offered whosoever will because he's the propitiation for our sins and says for the whole world the deposit is so great that everyone can be saved. On the other side, he died for the sins of many.
He's not going to punish the same sense twice. And so someone refuses the gospel. It's not a question of propitiation. It's a question of substitution. He's a substitute for all. Who will believe he's the propitiation for all. Well, there's an opportunity while we're still alive because of the price he paid was so great.
Clarify. It's better than that.
Sin is an offense against the holy nature of God.
And propitiation is that aspect of the work of the cross that removes that offense.
From before God's sight.
When we have, as Dean mentioned, our individual sins themselves were placed upon the Lord Jesus on His body on the cross, and He bore the judgment for those sins but.
There's more to the satisfaction of God than simply paying for the sin you might.
Throw a rock through your neighbor's window.
And then you might turn around and pay to have the window fixed. Maybe you put a new window in that's nicer than the old one.
But you may not have removed the offense of what you did, especially if you had been warned not to do it and you went ahead and you, you broke the window, you've offended.
Perhaps the upright sense of that person and God sent his own son.
The propitiation, and so the propitiation is intimately connected with the person of the Sun.
Very feeble sense of it, but if.
You were a neighbor boy and you threw the rock through your neighbors window and the neighbors son was your best friend. You might be saying will you tell your dad?
Will you tell your dad for me? Tell him I'm sorry or something like that? That is, you have a sense that the father might accept that son intervening for you, and God made his own son.
To be that propitiation before him, he offered himself up to God, and in doing so the offense against the holiness of God was removed, was taken care of, so that all men.
Could have the gospel presented to them and the.
Blood of the Lord Jesus is sufficient to atone. That is the work of the Lord Jesus and the shedding of his blood. The blood applied to the sins of a person's life totally removes them from God's sight so that there's no memory of offense or anything left. God says I won't remember it anymore, it'll never be brought back. And so God is totally satisfied. And I don't know what translation John's referring to, but the aspect of.
It is part of the atonement because atonement is that which covers. The word means covering, and God through the blood totally covers the offense and the blood in what it is the death of Christ and His suffering totally removes or makes the payment, so that when God looks at that person, He looks at them in all the perfection and satisfaction of the person and the work of His Son, the Lord Jesus.
And God says please, please enjoy it as an expression of how much I love you.
Someone gave me a thought which I kind of expanded into a story. It's been helpful to me.
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Let's say there's a king with a Kingdom and his people rebel against them and throw them out and throw them out. In this case, he retreated to an island that really wasn't too far off the shore.
And he was a very good king. And we know in this world we live in that the opposing of some kings seems to be a good thing. But in the case of this story, it's not.
And he had a cure for his people and he saw how things were going very badly for them.
And so he built a bridge.
From the mainland to his island.
And those who wish could make use of that bridge.
And that way Christ is the propitiation.
It's it's a it's a thing he did things course, but he became something also a propitiation. And on that bridge was an appropriate standing place for both the king and his subject. And they could meet there on that bridge. And really appreciation has done that for us. God is satisfied with Jesus, he said, but also.
Because of the work of Christ and that bridge has been made, we have a place to stand as well. So not only God has a place to stand, but we have a place to stand and it's together. So just in a little picture form of propitiation, or one aspect of it, at least, it's an appropriate place to stand for both God and believers. We can meet there.
They restored that which I took not away. The honor of God was violated by man's lawlessness and.
And the Lord as a man returned honor to God like then I restored that they took that away because He is so satisfied with His Son. He offers to all men give the play.
A diverse thing that we can sort of Romans chapter chapter 3 verse 25, whom God has set forth to be a profitiation.
Faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.
Through the forbearance of God.
Sometimes misunderstood. Now God is set. Christ is the propitiation, the one who has met all the holy claims of God against sin. I think that's the basic thought in propitiation, is it not?
In the Old Testament, Christ had not yet been manifest. He had not offered his life in sacrifice for those sins. So he but God was righteous in forgiving the sins of the Old Testament Saints even before Christ had appeared on the scene, because He knew in His foreknowledge that the Lord Jesus would.
Offer a sacrifice for the remission of those sins of the Old Testament Saints. That's the meaning here.
God looked forward to the the the sacrifice of his Son, and on credit, so to speak, He said. I will forgive the sins of those people in the Old Testament. David, Abraham, Moses and so on. They were all saved.
Because of the work the Lord would accomplish. So the sins that are past. There is not sins in our lives that are past, but it's the sins that were committed before the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus. In fact, now there's not a covering.
No longer. In the Old Testament, God covered, as it were, he. He passed over those sins.
Not that he was indifferent to them, but he didn't impute those sins.
Because he looked forward to the death of Christ. Now there's no more covering. The work has been accomplished. We have the we have settled peace with God. We have.
A full and complete redemption. There's no more covering over. There's no more waiting for something to be accomplished. It's completed. We have that wonderful.
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Salvation and redemption and pardon.
Through the propitiation of our Lord Jesus.
On the cross.
Just one word to me. It's a wonderful word that.
The apostle John repeats a number of times to his brethren.
Not trying to get all of them by any means, but just notice in chapter 3.
In verse 21, he starts the verse beloved.
In chapter 4, verse one, beloved, Verse 7, beloved, verse 11, beloved. That's enough to get the thought.
We all who have relationships and families and wives and husbands and so on, or brothers and sisters, we often come up with terms of endearment, a nickname perhaps, that is a special expression of our relationship and our affection for each other. And because we've been brought into the family of God, particularly here, that this is family matters.
And the John, I think, loved to use such an expression to his brethren, Beloved, that's what they were. To him they were beloved, they were somebody. And to me it's a term and it's an expression that.
Likes sometimes and today you'll hear Sweetie or honey or deer or something like that.
Why is it so special? Well, when the Lord Jesus came into the world, God opens heaven and he says, this is my beloved.
Run, and in Ephesians chapter one, when it says, He hath taken us into favor.
In the beloved, it's actually a name of the Lord, a special name of endearment that God has given to the Lord Jesus. And because we belong to the same family, we can use the same expression. You know, you, you cure somebody say to somebody else and I'll say, sweetie, you don't feel immediately liberty to start saying to that person, sweetie.
In fact, you'd be in trouble probably if you did.
But.
God, as it were, has given us the joy and the liberty of using the same expression.
That the Father gives to the Son, and I doubt not we can say to the Lord beloved, because just as the Father says, beloved, we can think of him and we can even say it, beloved, Lord Jesus, and to one another beloved because we are, as Scripture says, we're bound up or an expression that's often used, we're bound up together in the same bundle of life.
It's you. It's a little off, but we're talking about life here. You have your individual life.
I have my individual life. Yours isn't mine and mine isn't yours. And if this afternoon the Lord Jesus decides to take me into His presence through death and not you.
Then my life, my natural life, is done. But you still have yours.
That's not the case with the life we've been talking about this afternoon.
The life we have in Christ is different, it says in Colossians. Christ, who is our life?
Christ, who is our life, that is this gift of eternal life which we have, we don't have separate from His life.
And so the expression has been used. We're bound up together in the same bundle of life. Your life and my life is bound up. It is his life we have.
It's eternal, it's his life, and it's ours. Can we fully comprehend that? I doubt it.
I certainly can't. I suspect none of us can. But it's still true. Christ, who is our life.
When you love your brother, what are you doing?
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You're displaying the life of Christ to your brother because that's your life. And so if you're not displaying life to your brother, if you walk into the assembly and say there's no love here.
Then you're saying about yourself. Forget your brethren. You're saying about yourself, I don't have the life of Christ to bring here to display here.
But if you have it, if you're alive, it's pretty hard not to in some measure manifest that you're alive. And it is the very bundle. It's the life of Christ. And so it it has to love, it's his life. It can't do anything else.
And so that's why John makes such a point of it. He says if if you don't love your brother, you don't have life.
You would have to love your brother if you have the life of Christ in you and are displaying it to your brother and consequently you can go forward and say love just like he would. I mean every one of us, can't you in your mind and your hearts think, Oh, the Lord just says to me the Lord.
Lord says to me Donald, beloved, a personal individual and one that can be shared in sharing with others. You're mine, I love you, we're bound up together. Time is almost up, but I think it's important to verse 13 just to make a comment on it. Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he and us because he hath given.
US.
Of his spirit.
It says the Spirit witnesses with our Spirit that we are the children of God.
That is the Spirit of God who dwells in us, witnesses to us through the Word of God.
That I am a child of God, not I hope to be not, I want to be not as this or that, but I am the Spirit of God in US, witnesses to our Spirit that we are children of God. And so we can with confidence and assurance, say we know we have passed from death unto life, and it's a work of the Spirit in US.
To give us that assurance and knowledge, self knowledge that we say.
I am, I know that I am a child of God. And that's the privilege, that's the desire of God to work in everyone of us to the end that we we have this enjoyment.
Of being part of the family.
God says you can know each other as part of the same family, and all of us have probably in one time or another, sort of experienced that fact. When we met somebody, we never saw him before. We talked to them for a little bit and we find out.
That they really are a brother in Christ, a sister in Christ. And immediately upon the consciousness that we are having to do with a brother or sister in Christ, we have a sense in our hearts of belonging to each other. And we should, because we belong to the one true family of God. We're children together in God's family.
Is thinking through about these.
This expression here.
God dwelleth in us and His love is perfected in us. What does that mean?
Well, sometimes we love a person and we don't get a return.
And we're sort of frustrated and disappointed there's not the return of love.
For the love that is expressed.
But when there is a response in our hearts to that love of the Lord, and the Lord values our love, it's sometimes very feeble, but He values the least expression of love, and with one another too. If we get a return from our brethren, there should be, then there's a bond form our the love is perfected.
In us, between us, you might say, and that's what God did desires in our pathway. I was thinking in connection with what Don said, it's a lot of parents here with children. I think one of the truest signs that your boy or girl is saved is that when they come home and say mother I.
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Found another boy or girl at school that was that is a Christian. That's the that's almost a sure sign that that child is the Lord's because his divine life, that new life he has, responds to the life in another there. There is a connection there, so to speak.
Love is perfected. There's there's a risk, there's a recognition that there is a believer there, one who loves the Lord whom he loves.
Back to book number 19.
I will change my heart.
I exchanged.
My joy.
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I'm waiting for my crown.
I see.
I.