Does God’s Love Supersede or Void His Requirement?

 

Does God’s Love Supersede or Void His Requirement?

 

Let’s begin in the book of 1 John 4:8, - But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:16 - So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

 

Those two Scriptures make clear that God is Love, and if we do not love we are not abiding in God.

 

We also find in the book of John in chapter 3 that mankind needed love, but they needed something greater than goats, bulls, and doves, as an atonement for sin.  For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23.  That shows us a need, and John 3:16-18, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

 

In three verses we have the answer to our question. Yes, God is love, and we need His love and without it, we cannot abide in love.  But He also is just, and rejection of His gift of His Son to pay for your and my sin brings about His condemnations. 

 

Does, God Require His Church, to put Love for the Lawless above all of His Command we are to live by?  We find this in Romans 13:1-2, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”  When the government violates God’s command, (no worship service or call a special day to honor Homosexuality), at that point, we the Church, are to take a stand as Peter and the apostille did in Acts 5:29, “But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” 

Our Lord Jesus was very clear on who you should render to in Mathew 22:21, 
They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”  It all goes back to a question asked of Jesus, how can I be acceptable to God?  Matthew 22:35-39, ^“And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Now as one who has taught and been taught the Truth of Scripture, I have some bad news, It is impossible for you to love in the Entergy in the flesh.  It requires God to do it all for you, but that comes with abiding in Him.

Yes, we are called to Love, but also to Stand Firm on Honoring what God honors.  Let me close this with two verses for each of us to ponder; 1 John 3:4, “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.”  And 1 John 2:4, “Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice