In 1 John 2:17, John makes an amazing statement, that “anyone who does the will of God lives forever.”
John also wrote in verse 5, that “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.” So that’s two things on offer for tuning into God’s will and God’s word: life for ever, and a life of love. Or put together, “a permanent world of love.”
If we’re serious about what God’s saying, then, a new world opens up to us, that’s not like this world. In this world, by comparison, life is only temporary. No matter how brilliant our medicines are, or how well we look after ourselves, our lives don’t last forever. And no matter how hard we try to make the world a better and more loving place, the wreckage caused by evil and selfish desires carries on unabated.
Maybe John had a point, then, when he wrote in verse 15, “Don’t fall in love with that (temporary, self-focused) world, because setting your heart on it means you’ll know nothing of the love of your heavenly Father.” To John, to think that this world is the only world in operation on this planet was tragic, because for seventy years or so he’d based his life “on the love God has for us” (4:16). He knew from long experience, therefore, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us” (3:1).
John had lived in that world too, which he described as being like a child again, only this time being God’s very own child, because “that is what we are!” (3:1). The process by which “God’s love is truly being made complete in us” (2:5) begins, therefore, with the realization that in God’s eyes we are just like a child in a human father’s eyes.
God created the perfect picture of his love for us in the love of a human father looking down at his newborn baby with nothing but love and delight. The baby has no naturally loveable qualities too. It’s a squished up, purple, puffy-eyed creature making odd faces as if battling some intense internal struggle, and it has no control over its bodily functions. But to a father that’s his child, and his child has just entered a permanent world of love.
As babies, though, we were totally unaware of how loved we were. And probably so as God’s children too. So how does God make us aware of his love? As with humans, it’s in “The power of sacrifice”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 