Rome's Mammertime Prison where St. Peter was probably held – showing Jesus's sometimes unsteady disciple was faithful unto death.
By Elder Emmett Rushing
The other week at the Senior’s Church we run every Sunday in San Dimas I had a stranger come up to me after my message who shocked me very much.
He said, “That’s the first time I heard anyone say God loves me, and I’ve been going to church all my life.”
This was a shocker because I had to wonder what kind of a church he had been attending.
Well, let’s put it on record today – Yes, Jesus loves you, God loves you and that is one of the best things all of us can ever hear.
Rome's Mammertime Prison where St. Peter was probably held – showing Jesus's sometimes unsteady disciple was faithful unto death.Remember how Peter had denied Jesus three times the night of his arrest. This was a serious letdown. Peter went out and wept bitterly when he saw what he had done, the Bible tells us. He began to realize his unworthiness. And he was unworthy just as we are unworthy. But Jesus makes us all worthy and in John 21 you can see Jesus restoring Peter to usefulness and service once again.
That’s because Jesus loved Peter and he loves you and me the same way.
Twice we are told God is love, and one of them is in 1 John 4:16. Another minister told me how radical and new this concept of God was to the First Century world. No-one every wrote about Zeus and Jupiter being full of love and loving his creation. My senior pastor added that in the Greek “Iliad” about the siege of Troy, the gods were portrayed as almost comic characters, intervening where they shouldn’t, grabbing female targets, and generally speaking needing to be played off once again another.
A far far cry from the Christian teaching that God’s love doesn’t switch on and off. It flows from his real inner nature. God can’t help loving because that’s what he is.
How does he love us? Many ways. Creation itself for openers. But in Colossians 1:12 we are told that God has qualified us to be his sons in his kingdom. We don’t and can’t qualify ourselves for this high calling, not in a 1000 lifetimes. But God qualifies us by sending us the Son to live inside us.
Years ago we wrote a lot about “the mystery of the ages” but Paul writes what it is in Colossians 1:26. It is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Jesus in us means we have inside us through the Spirit the very fullness of the Godhead in terms of our new life as Christians (Colossians 2:6). That means God looks on us and sees Jesus Christ and, boy, does that every make us worthy.
Like Mr. Earle said last week, our righteousness is a borrowed righteousness, from Jesus who is our righteousness and who lives in us though faith – deep and earnest belief in his life’s work on our behalf.
That’s taught in 1 Corinthians 1:30.
It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
So now where does that leave us? God loves us and has made us worthy and has qualified us to translate us already into the Kingdom of his son.
This means we now have a fresh new purpose for living. Now we have to live as ambassadors of the kingdom, ambassadors for Christ, just think of that (2 Corinthians 5:14).
In conclusion I can’t think of a better way to end than the words of the old hymn:
Yes, Jesus loves YOU
Yes, Jesus loves YOU
Yes, Jesus loves YOU
The Bible tells you so.