I know God loves us but do we deserve his love?

[Templar81]

I've been thinking about hsi for a while. I believe in a loving God but he can also be hard and stern at times like a stern parent he loves us but doesn't coddle us.

However, God's love for us is truly amazing and so is his patience when you consider all the awful things man has done goign right back to the first time when a man and a woman disobeyed God's specific command. We have been payign for this ever sicne and sicne then man has committed atrocity after atrocity and yet God has formed covenant after covenant with man, culminating in the New Covenant which is CHrist's deatha dn ressurerection. Sometimes I just can't get my head around why God wants to save us because we are terrible, even the good people are terrible, for what we have done we all deserve death and Hell, but yet God wants to save us from what we deserve because he lvoes us. He even goes so far as to send his only son to us to lead us away from our sin, and what did mankind do? We killed him, we subjected the sinless Son of Man to die in a horrible way. Crucifixion was one of the most cruel forms of execution in the ancient world and was eventually banned in the Roman empire. Yet is God angry with us for doign this? NO! but he has every right to be for killing his son, but yet Jesus death and ressurection is what saved us from our sins, not what condemns us further. Jesus himself when on the Cross said, "father forgive them for they know not what they do." He didn't curse them, he forgave them and he asked his father to forgive them also. No human father would forgive his son's killers so readily and I thnk this is why God's love is so amazing. In the Old Testament God killed those who disobeyed him but he allowed Jesus to be killed and he was sinless and then instead of smiting us all from the face of the earth he gives us all the chance through the death and ressurrection of his son to be saved from are sins which are abhorant to him.

I'm posting this becasue I know God loves us, but I jsut don't udnerstand why and I wodner if any of us can really udnerstand why?

 

[Miss Hepburn]

Well, as usual I completely and totally know why.

All one has to do is love the bad puppy in the litter or love the husband that cheated on you
or love that one person that doesn't love you back and hurts you so much --- to understand a teeny amount of the very Nature of Love.

Since God Himself is Love - and I'm just a mere human - His Love for me (us) is
the unimaginable --- my God, when I love someone I could watch them breathe all night ---puppy, baby, partner...
God loves me so much He's inside me breathing me - I accept being a joint heir
and accept what Love is and open like Sunbathing to Him...

I must admit -it 's because of a lack of understanding of the Nature of God and the Nature of Love that keeps humans
so separate in this illusion of low self worth.
We are princes and princeses of the King !!

This humilty thing is great for a second - but try loving a dog or a child that is filled with humble shame -
you can't even approach them - no fun for me and no fun for God either.

I am so worthy of His Love and so is everyone else.
Miss Hepburn

 

[Templar81]

Thanks, that was a good answer!

However in the Old Testament God smites and punishes people. In the New Testament he caused Herod to have som kind o heart attack or seizure and die and St Paul tells us that those who recieved the Lord's supper improperly in Corinth were punnished with ill health and death.

I don't mean to blaspheme and I really hope I'm not doing but I really find his love for us difficult to udnerstand. Am I right to discuss this or am I being sinful because I feel liek I'm judging God's ways with human standards and I might be in dangerous territory.

 

[martinlawrencescott]

Thanks, that was a good answer!

However in the Old Testament God smites and punishes people. In the New Testament he caused Herod to have som kind o heart attack or seizure and die and St Paul tells us that those who recieved the Lord's supper improperly in Corinth were punnished with ill health and death.

I don't mean to blaspheme and I really hope I'm not doing but I really find his love for us difficult to udnerstand. Am I right to discuss this or am I being sinful because I feel liek I'm judging God's ways with human standards and I might be in dangerous territory.

It is dangerous territory, but necessary. One way I think about it is how God promised in the garden that he would conquer the enemy through the seed of man. Ever since then there was a fight between good and evil, and man and the devil in their enmity against God have tried to prove Him a liar and prevent Christ's redemptive work as man by destroying the seed of Adam. God, in order to save mankind, destroyed entire nations in order to preserve His promise through the nation of Israel. That nation was even divided against itself and Judah from whom the messiah was to come was nearly wiped out by its brothers and other enemies. God worked so hard and patiently and wisely to prevent as much death and pain and suffering as possible, and even included nations that were foreign to Israel in His promise. What judgment he did cast was necessary to preserve the plan unto its completion in Christ. It is a miracle that man existed long enough for Christ to come.

 

[Robbie]

Do any children deserve their parents love?

 

[gregg]

Well, as usual I completely and totally know why.

All one has to do is love the bad puppy in the litter or love the husband that cheated on you
or love that one person that doesn't love you back and hurts you so much --- to understand a teeny amount of the very Nature of Love.

Since God Himself is Love - and I'm just a mere human - His Love for me (us) is
the unimaginable --- my God, when I love someone I could watch them breathe all night ---puppy, baby, partner...
God loves me so much He's inside me breathing me - I accept being a joint heir
and accept what Love is and open like Sunbathing to Him...

I must admit -it 's because of a lack of understanding of the Nature of God and the Nature of Love that keeps humans
so separate in this illusion of low self worth.
We are princes and princeses of the King !!

This humilty thing is great for a second - but try loving a dog or a child that is filled with humble shame -
you can't even approach them - no fun for me and no fun for God either.

I am so worthy of His Love and so is everyone else.
Miss Hepburn

dtto,ditto,ditto

I've been thinking about hsi for a while. I believe in a loving God but he can also be hard and stern at times like a stern parent he loves us but doesn't coddle us.

However, God's love for us is truly amazing and so is his patience when you consider all the awful things man has done goign right back to the first time when a man and a woman disobeyed God's specific command. We have been payign for this ever sicne and sicne then man has committed atrocity after atrocity and yet God has formed covenant after covenant with man, culminating in the New Covenant which is CHrist's deatha dn ressurerection. Sometimes I just can't get my head around why God wants to save us because we are terrible, even the good people are terrible, for what we have done we all deserve death and Hell, but yet God wants to save us from what we deserve because he lvoes us. He even goes so far as to send his only son to us to lead us away from our sin, and what did mankind do? We killed him, we subjected the sinless Son of Man to die in a horrible way. Crucifixion was one of the most cruel forms of execution in the ancient world and was eventually banned in the Roman empire. Yet is God angry with us for doign this? NO! but he has every right to be for killing his son, but yet Jesus death and ressurection is what saved us from our sins, not what condemns us further. Jesus himself when on the Cross said, "father forgive them for they know not what they do." He didn't curse them, he forgave them and he asked his father to forgive them also. No human father would forgive his son's killers so readily and I thnk this is why God's love is so amazing. In the Old Testament God killed those who disobeyed him but he allowed Jesus to be killed and he was sinless and then instead of smiting us all from the face of the earth he gives us all the chance through the death and ressurrection of his son to be saved from are sins which are abhorant to him.

I'm posting this becasue I know God loves us, but I jsut don't udnerstand why and I wodner if any of us can really udnerstand why?

sinking understanding is good. JESUS wasn't sinless,he TOOK the sins of the world upon himself. he die with our sins so we could live in his rightousness

 

[Templar81]

I know that Jesus realy had to die to atoen for OUR sins and the way he died was the most cruel way the Roman empire coudl think of and I think that God the Father knew that his son would have to die and Jesus himself, being God, he knew what was goign to happen and it was the man part of him that said, "take this cup of poison away from me." Though it was all of him saying it, I mean it was the human nature that really showed in that.

God's relationship with man was once explained to me as man always lrying to live up to God's standards and the standards were always to high for man. By this I mean the Jewish Law. God saw tha tman could not live upto these stringent rules and regulations and that humans were using them to condemn other humans so he sent his Son to earth todo for us what we cannot. By this I mean restore the rift between God and man.

That doesn't explain why God loves us but it does illustrate that he wants us back with him except this time it won't be two humans in agarden but many in a city.

 

[Miss Hepburn]

That doesn't explain why God loves us...

There is no explanation - like the above - Do children deserve the love of parents - is there an explanation?
How about when your son is a thief and behind bars?
Let me tell you - there is no explanation as to why I love a couple people that I simply love.

My friends role their eyes -"But he's an *******!!" or " But, she did this to you!!!!"
And why I love my little 8 pound peeing dog -otherwise known as Devil Boy, who knows.

The very Nature of Love - what Love is has no rhyme or reason...Ahh, no pride,
no conditions.
I love love - it goes beyond our rational mind and lifts us up
into the Heavenly Realms of spirit and truth. We are never a 'fool' loving someone.

To know the very Nature of Love is to truly know our Father and not from a book (Book);
but up close and personal - intimately.

Miss Hepburn

"The menu is not the meal."

It is a miracle that man existed long enough for Christ to come.

Good one!


I think alot of that was because of the dietary laws God laid out. I really do.

I just found out during the Plague of -what--the 12 or 13th c
the Jews didn't get sick ----that is supposed to be another
explanation as to why there was a hatred of Jews.

(ref: 'The Maker's Diet' - Jordan Rubin)