No 6: To Show His Own Love for Us

What a lovely chapter to wake up to - thank you John.  What has it stirred in my heart? 

I see again the invincible ability of God to reach all human beings with His love; but I feel again shock at watching God laying aside His reputation and His Kingly position to do whatever He must to reach us, each individual one of us.  All my conventional notions of God are turned upside down. 

Personally, this has to keep happening for me all the time - repenting is continuous, as my mind is renewed (Romans 12:2) and my heart is healed (Ezekiel 36:26).  I didn't start off as a Christian with a massive change of heart.  I didn't run to Jesus, burdened with a deep sense of sin. But I was powerfully attracted by Who He is, and by what some brothers were like, who followed Him.  So for me, it has always seemed a natural idea that real conversion happens as a life process, and that the very essence of spiritual growth is change.

But: if you let God keep changing you, you may face criticism from the defenders of church traditions.  That needn't surprise or offend us, because it happened first to Jesus - it almost seems the mark of a true prophet and servant of God.  Piper quotes St Paul : "Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25); and St John: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).  Christ was not just doing this for Christians who would later believe in Him; He was doing it for the church then, crowding into Jerusalem for the Passover, and about to turn on Him viciously.  Because they were all His own (John 1:11).