The Son Sent as a Peace Offering
Contents
1. Words that begin
Years ago, at the end of every year, I wondered whenever I received a card with a picture of the family on the front instead of the baby Jesus, the shepherds watching the flock at night, the magi or the temple. However, this year, without exception, I laughed bitterly when I received a family card, not a Christmas card, on a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, God's greatest love for mankind. However, what is more problematic are all the church events without Jesus, and the meaning of Christmas is a world that pursues all kinds of sinful pleasures such as derailment and debauchery without regard to the meaning of Christmas. We should seriously consider the problem of forgetting the stable while drunk in the grand temple during the season, the problem of not seeing the Lord while excited in the midst of a huge number of church members, or the problem of not hearing the gospel because of a beautiful and splendid sequence.
A church spends millions of won on flower arrangements every week, and I used to think that it would be good if some of that money could be returned to the homeless, boys and girls, and hundreds of thousands of undernourished children.
2. Those who know God
John, the apostle of love, is proclaiming a truth that is very important to the saints. “Beloved, let us love one another. Love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, and whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The reason we should love one another is that love comes from God. Not with selfish love, instinctual love, or natural love, but with the love that originates from God. Everyone who loves is a child of God who has been born again from God, and therefore, we come to know God through the experience of loving with the love we receive from God.
Everyone! Do I sometimes wonder if I am really a born-again child of God, or am I really a person who knows God? Are there times when I wonder if I am really saved and enjoying a new life, or if God calls me tonight, will I really be able to enter the kingdom of heaven? In other words, this is a serious thought about whether I really believe in Jesus, who came as my Savior, as my Lord, and live obediently by acknowledging that I am the Lord, Sovereign, and Ruler of my life. It's a very, very serious and serious problem for all church members, and the answer to that question is very simple. In a word, it is love. As an attribute of God, it is to love and live with the love that comes from God. Please believe that this love is the basis of all life, especially the life of faith. In 1 Corinthians 13:3 it says, “If I give with all that I have and if I give my body for fire, but without love, it is of no avail to me.” Galatians 5:6 says, “In Christ Jesus! Circumcision or uncircumcision has no effect, but only faith that works through love.”
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said that a Christian's actions motivated by love are "Christian perfection." Mistakes and errors may be made, but living a life motivated by love means perfection as a Christian.
3. The Only Begotten Son, God's Greatest Love
The evidence that we are God's regenerated children of God and the evidence that we know God experientially is to love with God's love. If so, what is the most certain way to know God's love? Verse 9 says, “And this was how the love of God was revealed to us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Please believe that God's greatest love is that the God of love sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to save all mankind from sin. This is the essential meaning of Christmas.
The decisive proof that God loves mankind who have become slaves to sin, the trap of the devil, and are being led to destruction is the atonement of the cross, the ultimate purpose of Christmas. Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
God's love was revealed in creation, and it is also revealed in the providence of nature and history and the control of life and death, and the decisive manifestation of that love was the sending of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Verse 10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as a propitiation for our sins.”
4. Conclusion
We are the regenerated children of God and those who know God. This Christmas, as Philippians 2:5 says, we need to receive more fully the heart of Christ Jesus in us. And I earnestly pray that God will show the love of God widely through all of our lives, following the example of the Lord who came to save mankind in obedience to the Father's will.