Jesus Lavished the Love of the Father Upon the Church

What Did Jesus Do?

See what kind of love the Father has given to us…
1 John 3.1

Marie Antoinette is popularly believed to have said, “Let them eat cake” when informed that French peasants were rioting over a lack of bread due to famine. Though she in fact probably never uttered such words—biographers and historians in fact note that Marie was quite concerned about and sensitive to the needs of the poor—she and the words are often offered together as examples of the often callous and oblivious attitudes of “haves” towards “have nots”. How uncompassionate for someone who “has it all” (Or at least a lot) to exhort another, who has little or nothing, to live on what he or she is even less likely to have. John wrote the first of his canonical letters to exhort and instruct the Church, which receives little love from the world, as to how we are to live—John tells us that we are to live in the love of God (See WDJD for 11/19/11). Was John callous or oblivious? Does he exhort the Church to live with what she lacks? By no means! John knew firsthand that Jesus lavished the love of the Father upon the Church.

John’s beloved little children, the term of endearment John frequently employed to address the Church (1 John 2:1, 2:12, 2:13, 2:18, 2:28), were and are the objects of the Father’s almost indescribable love. Note, I said "almost" indescribable. Actually, John had a powerful and true way to describe the Father’s love for us—the Father loves us in such a manner that we are to be called his children (1 John 3:1) Children of God perfectly describes our relationship to the Father through Jesus. This truth, that we should be called the children of God, is not at all indescribable, but it is absolutely incredible! And, even as it expresses what is essential about who we are, it also tells us how we are essentially to live—in the love which the Father has lavished upon us in and through the Son.

At the time John wrote, and to this very day, the world didn’t get it. The world doesn’t get who we are, because the world doesn’t get whose we are, because the world doesn’t get him to whom we belong. (1 John 3:1b) Regardless of the world’s cluelessness, Christians are God’s children. And it’s not just that we are to be called children of God now, while having to wait until some time when we will in fact be his children, the truth is we are his children right now, though what we will ultimately become has not yet been revealed. (1 John 3:2) However, we do know that when the risen and glorified Jesus returns to this world, we shall behold him as he truly is right now, though we cannot see him at this moment while he remains in heaven and we are yet earthbound. In that day, we, who are here and now the Father’s children, will be something different, something more. We will be perfected. We, that is the Church, will all become exactly like the Son himself.

All this, who we are and who we shall become, is the result of one thing, and one thing only. When the Church, which is full of truly needy people, as in needing forgiveness, salvation, and a whole lot more, cries out because the world has no love for us, John’s compassionate, not callous, reply is, “Let them live in the love of the Father.” In and through the Son the Father supplys all we need: the forgiveness, salvation, and a whole lot more. The fact is, Jesus himself is the love of the Father lavished upon us.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4