“the [instructions] which you have heard from me along
with many witnesses, transmit and entrust [as a deposit]
to reliable and faithful men who will be competent and
qualified to teach others also”
A MINISTRY OF JESUS FIRST, NEW ZEALAND
By This We Know Love
by Peter Whitcombe
In I John 3:16 we read: "By this we know love, that
He (Christ) laid down his life for us." John
effectively declares that this is how we know what
love is - this is how we can know how much God
loves us - when we understand that Jesus laid
down His life for us.
There is a familiar song I sang to my grandchildren
which says "Jesus loves me this I know, for the
Bible tells me so." Although that is a cute ditty, the
truth is we will never understand the breadth and
length and height and depth of God's love for us
personally, until we know for ourselves, the reality
of Christ's sacrificial death for us on the Cross.
However, we will never understand the significance
of the fact that Jesus laid down His life for us, until
we understand what the Bible says about sin and
about the consequences of sin. Without that
understanding, the Cross has little meaning to us.
Scripture teaches that every person born after the
fall of Adam and Eve in the garden is born with an
inherent sin nature that is bound by self-seeking
rebellion against God. We read in Romans 3:23:
"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God." Romans 3:10 says: "None is righteous, no,
not one."
The Bible does NOT present God as a divine
Book-keeper, keeping a record of good deeds and
bad deeds, who then tallies up the records on
Judgment Day to see if we are good enough to get
into heaven and good enough to escape hell. The
Bible simply presents a black & white fact that we
"have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and
that "none is righteous, no, not one."
The Bible teaches that God is holy and just and that
in His holiness He must reject all sin and that in His
justice, He must punish all sin.
The consequence of sin in every person born of a
woman, is that from birth, we are under the wrath of
God, destined to eternal separation from God, in
the Lake of Fire.
Mankind and you and I, in and of ourselves, had no
capacity to pay the price to redeem us from sin.
God Himself made the sacrifice to atone for or to
pay for the punishment for man's sins by sending
His Son to die for our sins - in our place. Jesus paid
the price for our salvation, for our forgiveness and
to make us righteous before a holy God, by laying
down His life for us. "By this we know love, that He
(Christ) laid down his life for us."
We enter into that salvation by acknowledging our
sin before a holy God, by repenting of living a life
apart from God and by surrendering our lives
whole-heartedly to Him as Saviour and Lord. "By
this we know love, that Christ laid down his life for
us."
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