The inspired Bible formula has to be true: Listening to God's New Covenant promises + believing them = a changed heart and life (John 3:16, etc.). It's like a simple recipe in cooking: when God's promises are "mixed with faith." What comes out of the oven is genuine conversion (Heb. 4:2). That was the miracle of "the hearing of faith" that the Galatians experienced when Paul preached Christ's sacrifice so clearly that they saw Him "crucified before them" (3:1-5). And it was the miracle of sour, bitter Sarai's melting of heart and repentance (Abraham's wife) by hearing God's Good News that made it possible for her at last "by faith" to receive the miracle from God, to get pregnant with Isaac (Gen. 16:2; 17:15, 16; 18:9, 10; Heb. 11:11).
But there are counterfeits! How can we tell the difference? Why are so many preaching "love, love, love," yet the listeners sense no need to overcome sin itself? What's wrong? There's nothing wrong with love itself if they just knew the right idea of it when the Bible says that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). They assume our natural egocentric human idea. The New Testament word is agape, and it's a totally different kind of love than we humans know naturally. It's impossible for an honest heart to hear, to understand, to contemplate, to "survey" that agape displayed in the "wondrous cross," and then go on in captivity to sin.
There are many contrasts between the two loves, but the greatest is this: that agape-love of Christ led Him to choose to go to hell, to die the equivalent of the hopeless second death, because of His love for us. "He poured out His soul unto death," He "was made to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (Isa. 53:12; 2 Cor. 5:21).
You can never understand the cross of Christ (it's something far greater than a gold or silver symbol!) unless you understand Galatians 3:13: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree." He voluntarily took that "curse" upon Himself, gave up all thought of life eternal, "poured out His soul" completely. Contemplating that love plants it in our hearts; and lives are changed. Just be sure the Good News is not distorted by an intrusion of false doctrine, such as the non-biblical natural immortality of the soul.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 10, 2003.Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Wieland.
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