Considerations ~ Love: The Major Constant

No matter how we look at our salvation in Jesus Christ, love is one of the major constants in the picture.

• Before time began, now, and always, “God is love” (I John 4:8)
• While God was love before time began, and there was nothing of sin and death to interfere with the holiness and righteousness of the divine triunity, God “foreknew” (foreloved) people as his children (Romans 8:29)
• The people that God foreloved, he also “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4)
• These ones God had foreloved, and chose to be holy and blameless before him, he also “In love… predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:4-5)
• The ones that God’s love predestined for adoption, “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29)
• God’s love predestined us to this glorious day when we would conform to the image of his Son “in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29)
• In Jesus, “the Beloved… we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:6-7)
• In Jesus, the Beloved, we “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him” (Ephesians 1:13)
• When we believed in Jesus, the fulfillment of the work of God who loved us before time began, we “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 2:13-14)
• At the same time as God sealed us with his Holy Spirit, “God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5)
• Now that God’s foreknowing love has been poured into our hearts, we can appreciate that “he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source,” and, “that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Hebrews 2:11)
• Those who are the sons of God through faith in Jesus, their firstborn brother, will one day “be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2)
• While we await the glorious day of Jesus’ appearing, we put into practice the exhortation of God’s word, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2)
• Or, another way of saying the same thing would be, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)