Archive for the ‘Reformed Theology’ Category
How To Know That You Are Abiding In The Love Of Jesus
Are you really abiding in the love of Jesus? If you are a Christian you can know for sure.
Jesus knows that by abiding in His love you will be what the Father wants you to be. But, He has given one basic rule for you to follow in order to abide in His love. You can know how to abide in His love. Breaking this rule will not cause you to lose your salvation, that can never be done. However, it can break your fellowship with the Father, but that fellowship can be restored.
In the Gospel of John chapter 15 Jesus talks about abiding in His love and He is very specific when He says in verse 9,
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you: abide in My love.”
So, how can you know that you are truly abiding in His love. Actually it is very easy to know. He tells us how to abide in the very next verse, verse 10,
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
Think about that for a moment. If you are not obeying Jesus you are not abiding in His love. Look at what He said again.
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.”
It’s very simple, if you love Jesus and want to abide in His love you will be obedient to Him. He said this same thing earlier. In John 14 beginning with verse 21 Jesus said the following:
“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Some examples of being obedient to Jesus can be found in His teachings on sex. Basically any sex outside of marriage is wrong and should not be done. If you do, then you are disobedient and are living in sin. As for marriage, in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 19 Jesus said the following:
“Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Just these few examples will give you an idea of how well you are being obedient to Jesus. These will also let you know if you are truly abiding in the love of Jesus. Don’t kid yourself and say that Jesus loves you no matter what. That is not found anywhere in the Bible and Jesus did give you specific ways of how to know whether or not you are abiding in His love.
There is no way around it. Unless you are being obedient to Jesus you are not abiding in His love. You are showing by your disobedience that you either do not love Jesus or you do not believe in Jesus or both. And this is a grave mistake because both is proof that you may not have born again in the first place. And you are destined to spend eternity in hell. Is that what you want?
In John 15 beginning with verse 5 Jesus said the following:
“I am the vine, you are the branches. he who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned (being condemned to hell).”
You can know that you abide in the love of Jesus. It’s simple. Repent of your sins, your being disobedient to Jesus, and trust completely in Him that He knows what is best, what is true and what is right. No matter what the world says it’s what Jesus says that counts. And Jesus said:
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
So, now you know. From what Jesus has said to you. Are you keeping His commandments and abiding in His love?
So You Think That God Loves You?
I can hear you now. Of course God loves me. Isn’t that what the Bible says? Seriously, does it really?
This will be one of the shorter essays I have done because the verse that I will quote says it all. It’s found in the Gospel of John and it is in chapter 16. In verses 26 and 27 we read:
In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.
So, let me ask you one question. Do you love Jesus and believe that He came forth from God the Father?
Before you answer here’s what Jesus said in John 14: 21 about those who say they love Jesus:
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.
Do you follow Jesus and obey Him? Not looking good is it? Well, here’s one more thing that Jesus said about following him. In Luke 14: 33 we read:
So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
In short, unless you are a born again follower of Jesus, God does not love you. In fact, well, here’s what we read in John 3: 36:
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
Do you really want to face the wrath of God? I can understand that you do not want to come to Jesus. You see, it is because of your sinfulness that you don’t want to come to Him. In John 3: 18 – 20 we read:
He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
Basically you are ashamed of the person you are. You do not want to give up your sin and you would rather stay in your sinfulness than come to Jesus and be cleansed and forgiven. The problem is, if you do not come to Jesus and submit to Him as Lord and believe that God has raised Him from the dead you will stay condemned to face the wrath of God.
And you will “never” know the Love of God.
God knows that you are a sinful person and in this sinfulness you can do nothing to be worthy of receiving forgiveness of your sins. That is why God, as Jesus, came to earth to do for us what man cannot do for himself.
Jesus has satisfied all of the demands of God the Father for receiving salvation and it is the work of God that you believe on Jesus and to come to Him for forgiveness. When you do, when you confess your sinfulness and submit to Jesus as Lord, you will then know the full love of God. The love that He has for those who love Jesus. There is no other way.
for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me,
You can stay in you sinfulness and never know the love of God or you can come to Jesus, be forgiven and cleansed of your sin, and experience the greatest love that man will ever know. Now, in this life, and for eternity.
Why would you not do so now? If you want to be loved by God, if you want to know what true love really is, then you must love Jesus. Come to Him now, submit to His Lordship over you and be saved.
Then you can answer the question, “So You Think That God Loves You?”, with a resounding… YES!
How Were You Saved?
Who gets the credit for your salvation? When you answer that question then you will know the answer to “How Were You Saved?”
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We know that no one can come to Jesus unless drawn by the Father, and that it is by His grace that we are saved. However, we argue over how man receives this grace.
One man says that even though God, by His grace, draws us to Jesus, we must still choose, by our own “free” will, to accept or reject Jesus as our Savior.
Another man says that God saves us by making us willing to receive Jesus, and that we do not have the power nor ability to make this decision for ourselves; that is, of our own “free” will.
The first man says that man is to determine whether or not he is to be saved. Thus he can say, “I know that it was by God’s grace that I was saved but, I had to choose whether or not I wanted to be saved. After all, I could have rejected Jesus, and I would have been condemned if I had done so, but I chose to trust Jesus instead. God didn’t save me until I accepted Jesus as my Savior. Besides, God won’t make me do anything against my will. He won’t do anything until I give in.”
Now the second man says that he was saved because it was by God’s will and not his that he was saved. He says, “When I was dead in my sins I did not see my need for a Savior. I did not see myself as a sinner, so there was no need for me to be willing to be saved. However, God gave me ears to hear His word, and He took away my heart of stone and gave me a new heart, a soft heart, where His word would take deep root and grow into understanding so that I would believe in Jesus.
Then He placed within me a new spirit, His Spirit, to free me from bondage to Satan and to make me alive so that I could respond to His calling. When these things happened I saw myself as the detestable sinner I was, and I was filled with a great sorrow. I knew I was destined for Hell.
Finally, I understood why Jesus died for me, to set me from sin. He saved me from God’s wrath, and that if it had not been for God’s divine influence in me, to show me all these things, I would never, of my own “free” will, have believed in Jesus. Whereas, I had been unwilling, God came in and made me willing. I had no choice because where I once was a slave to Satan, and unwilling to be saved, I was now a child of God and willing only to obey Him. It was by God’s will that I was born again, not mine.
Now, who gets the credit for your salvation?
In the case of the first man, man gets the glory because, in effect, he saved himself. His salvation came to him because of “his” actions. This is salvation by grace “plus works”, man’s works, because of his actions, for he (man) can say that he contributed to his salvation.
In the second man, God gets the glory for man was saved because of what “God” did. It is God who “wills” for man. It is by the faith that is given to him that he believes. It is God who gives an understanding to man. It is God who gives faith to man. Salvation in man is all of God. Man does not tell God what man will do.
So, who gets the credit for you salvation? When you answer that question truthfully, then you will know how you were saved. I pray that it was by God’s will and not yours…
For further study:
John 6:37, 39, 40, 44, 45, 65… Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23… Mark 4:3-9, 11-12, 13-20… Luke 8:5-8, 10-15… Jeremiah 31:31-34… Ezekiel 36:21-28, 31, 32…
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