Light Brings Salt
Volume 3, Issue 48
Iron Range Bible
Church
Dedicated to the Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
GOD'S CHARACTER AND PROVISION
People without a relationship with God are hungering for love, happiness,
meaning, and fulfillment, but nothing that this planet offers can fully satisfy
these longings. In theory, Christians acknowledge that God alone can meet these
needs, but in practice many believers hardly differ from unbelievers in the
ways they try to have their needs met. This is because they have missed one of
the most important principles of Scripture: love, joy, and peace cannot be
obtained by pursuing these things as ends in themselves; they are the overflow
and the by-product of our ongoing relationship with God.
Moses prayed in the wilderness,
"Let me know Your ways that I may know You, so
that I may find favor in Your sight," and God responded, "My presence
shall go with you, and I will give you rest" (Exodus 33:13-14). Like
Moses, we should pray to know God and his ways. By putting him first,
everything else falls into place.
In our quest for greater knowledge and
spiritual growth, we sometimes overlook or forget the foundational truths of
the faith. Unless we remember to return and build upon the basic biblical
doctrines, our spiritual progress will be stifled. The most basic of all these
truths is the character of God, and in this holy ground the Christian life is
rooted.
God's character is fundamental to everything else. In Scripture he has
revealed his person, powers, and perfections. In his person, he is the
self-existent, infinite, eternal, and unchanging Creator of all things. In his
powers, he alone is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. In his
perfections, his attributes include holiness, justice, truthfulness, love, and
goodness. We cannot hope to understand the spiritual life unless we come to
understand and cling to the truth of God's character, especially his love and
goodness.
God's love is manifested in
the fact that he is a giver. From the beginning, he has given in spite of the
fact that people have rejected his gifts more than received them. The essence
of love is to give and to seek the highest good of the recipient.
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16
Husbands, love your wives, just as
Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for
her. Ephesians 5:25
If we want to understand what God has done for us, we must believe that all
his actions are born out of love. When God loves, he is simply being who He is
(1 John 4:8). God's goodness is manifested in his plan of
bringing salvation upon the earth and in his ultimate intention for humanity.
In the ages to come, his desire is to "show the surpassing riches of His
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:7).
He wants to be kind to us forever, and he is committed to our joy. God
always acts for our benefit-he initiates redemption,
blessings, beauty, and purpose in life. Scripture portrays the relationship he
wants with us in terms of a shepherd and his sheep, a father and his children,
and a husband and his wife.
However, sheep can go astray, children can rebel, and a wife can be
unfaithful. This rebellion and rejection of God's love and goodness have led to
the problem of evil and suffering. All of us live in a world of pain,
injustice, disease, and death, and in the midst of this it is easy to blame God
for our problems. But our environment has been distorted by sin, and sin is that
which is contrary to the will of God.
Christ entered into our environment of natural and moral evil in order
to overcome sin and death. "For God did not send the Son
into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through
Him" (John
The LORD is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great
in lovingkindness.
The LORD is
good to all, And
His mercies are over all His works.
The better we grasp the love and goodness of God's
character, the less we will be tempted to think that he is carrying out his
plans at our expense. It is always to our advantage to conform to his will,
because it leads to our highest good. Obedience to God produces joy and
fulfillment; disobedience produces sorrow and frustration. There is greater
pain in disobedience than in faithfulness. Everything God asks of us is for our
good; everything he asks us to avoid is also for our benefit.
Because of who
He is, God can be trusted. His plan reflects his character. This plan involved
innocent creatures created in his image who would continue to develop physically,
intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually in such a way that they would
glorify God by becoming more like him and displaying to the entire universe the
beauty of his handiwork. The physical and the spiritual were perfectly
integrated, and God's people were to enjoy unimpeded fellowship with Him and
each other.
But love always involves a choice, and
God's loving and good purpose was distorted by human rebellion. When Adam
choose to violate the command of God, rebelling by eating of the tree he as
well as Eve became sinners by nature and antithetical to the character of God.
Beauty was replaced by ugliness,
holiness with evil, kindness with cruelty, generosity with greed, love with
hate, peace with violence, security with fear, and joy with anger. The Adamic
inheritance of physical and spiritual death has been passed from generation to
generation, and no one is untainted by sin.
(Rom.
Left to ourselves, we are unable to
fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. But God has not left us to
ourselves at all - with the Fall he immediately began
to put into effect a plan that would restore humanity to his ultimate
intention. God is not only our Creator but also our Redeemer; in Christ he has
made it possible for us to be given a new heredity. By removing us from the
line of Adam and placing us in the line of Christ, he has once again placed us
in a position where we will ultimately show forth his glory in our spirits,
souls, and bodies. In this way, he will demonstrate through us to all creation
that he is who He says He is.