SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/21/2019 9:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Plea”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
5:1-2a
Message of the
verses: “1
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love,”
In our last SD we were talking about
love and we want to continue talking about love. We begin by talking about what
the greatest evidence of love is. The
greatest evidence of love is that there is undeserved forgiveness. I hope that as believers we do not take this
lightly, as if it were not for God’s love for us then He would not have sent
His Son to earth to die for us, and if that did not happen then all human
beings would end up in hell, a place that was made for the devil and his
angels. Let us look at what probably is
the most famous verse in the entire Word of God: “"For God so loved the world, that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but
have eternal life” (John 3:16). John
MacArthur comments on this by writing “God’s love brought man’s
forgiveness. God loved the world with
such a great love that He offered forgiveness to sinful, rebellious, wretched,
vile mankind, by sending His own Son to give His life on the cross that they
might not suffer death. He offered the
world the free gift of eternal fellowship with Him.” As I said at the beginning of this paragraph
we cannot take this love of God for granted.
I
have mentioned the parable that Jesus spoke of about forgiveness in an earlier
SD about the man who was forgiven a huge debt, a debt so large that no one
could pay it back, and yet the person he owed it to forgave the dept, but
afterwards the man went after another man who owed him only a small dept, yet
he would not forgive that dept. Once the
person who forgave the large debt found out about it he went after the man who
owed him the large debt to ask him why he would not forgive such a small dept
when such a large dept was forgiven to him.
Sometimes in life there is someone who does something terrible to you
and you have a very difficult time in forgiving that person, and yet if you are
a believer you must think about the fact that you have been forgiven every sin
you ever committed or will commit and so you must forgive the person who did a terrible
thing to you. Let us look again at
Ephesians 4:32 “32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each
other, just as God in
Christ also has forgiven you.”
Notice again the highlighted portion of this verse. John MacArthur writes that “Nothing more clearly discloses
a hard, loveless heart than lack of forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness betrays lack of love (see
Eph. 4:31). The presence of forgiveness always proves the
presence of love, because only love as the motive and power to
forgive. The extent of our love is the extent of our ability to
forgive.” “31 Let
all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,
along with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). The
sin that a believer has done against you or me, no matter how awful has been
paid for by what Christ did on the cross, Christ has forgiven them. We as believers are not to express, or even
harbor vengeance toward another believer as when and if we do this we not only
sin by allowing selfish hatred to control us, but we sin by profaning Christ’s
sacrifice—by seeking to mete out punishment for a sin whose penalty has already
been paid for by the Lord. I know that
these are difficult things to deal with, and yet if one thinks about it the one
who has not forgiven another person is probably the one who is the most
miserable.
John
MacArthur writes “Because Christ has paid the penalty for every sin; we have no
right to hold any sin against any person, even a nonbeliever. Peter thought that forgiving someone ‘up to
seven times’ was generous. But Jesus
said, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven’
(Matt. 18:22). In Christ all our ‘sins
are forgiven for His name’s sake’ (1 John 2:12); He has ‘forgiven us all our transgressions’ (Col. 2:13,
emphasis added). ‘In Him we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to
the riches of His grace’ (Eph. 1:7).”
There
is more to be written about this subject of love and forgiveness, but as in the
case of other passages we have looked at in Ephesians I can only do so much in
a day because of the passage being so hard for me to take. John MacArthur talks about the word that Peter
uses in 1 Peter 4:8 which is “fervent” and says that it’s Greek meaning is
about a muscle that is stretched to its limit, and this is kind of what happens
to me as I study these very difficult passages.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It seems to me that selfishness is the
subject of this section, and what I mean is that God was selfless in His
forgiveness, yet I suppose there are times when I am selfish in my forgiveness
and this cannot be.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Since I as a
believer are to be like Christ, then because of the fact that Christ is humble
then I too am to be humble. When I think
about the humbleness of Christ I have to think about what He went through when
and before He was put on the cross, that certainly is humility.
Verse that goes along with yesterday’s quote
is Proverbs 15:23 “A man has joy by the answer of His mouth, and a word spoken
in due season, how good it is!”
5/21/2019 10:14 AM
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