Only the real thing will do

The Bible is considered the greatest love story ever written because it is all about real people in a real love relationship with the Creator of the universe--the one who says of Himself, "God is love." But for those who believe the Book is comprised of fables, allegories, concocted characters and made-up stories written by men . . .

Flipping through a best-seller Christian memoir recently inside Barnes & Noble, I came across this passage: “With our own love stories, every detail comes alive. Our own love stories are so poignant, so detailed, so unforgettable—at least to us. When it’s someone else’s love story, however, we will be polite and listen, but usually it’s entirely forgettable. It’s like looking at someone else’s vacation pictures. When I have skin in the game, the outcome all of a sudden matters to me and I become engaged.”

Believers are in a special type of love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who brings God into EVERY aspect, facet, experience, etc., of life.

I John 4:7 says, “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” That means if you don’t know God, you don't know how to love people.

“When you live in a consciousness of God’s love for you in Christ, it gives you an insight,” explains Richard Jordan. “You’ve got the information, and when you believe it, it becomes the energy, the life, the transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you.

"It’s not a warm, personal feeling. It’s a love that abounds in knowledge and in judgment. It’s a mental-attitude love. It’s the capacity to look at a thing and value and esteem it the way God does.

“You can take divine viewpoint and look at it and know, ‘God thinks that way.’ God says, ‘I’LL love them through you, but it isn’t your love that’s the issue. It’s my love and, by the way, it’s my love for you.’

“When you get loved that way, and you realize how you love that way, you begin to love back and you begin to think like He thinks. You begin to love the things He loves, not because you have to.

“He just begins to love them through you and you begin to think about them the way He thinks about them and you know what? That’s what love is!”

*****

Ohio preacher David Reid explains, “God didn’t need us to give Himself someone to love; our role is we have the privilege, honor and the incredible grace of God to participate in the love that already existed between the three members of the godhead before the world began.”

One time Jordan was asked during the Q&A at a Bible conference, “What do you find the most exciting subject in the Bible?”

After pondering the question a few seconds, he answered, “For me personally it’s to stand back and look at who the Bible says Jesus Christ is and appreciate the fact that I’m in Him and that I’m complete in Him. He is the source of all my blessings, and the source of my true, real identity, and He's the one I have all my status in.

“You see, the thing that's so wonderful about the grace of God is that it makes Jesus Christ everything! And the Bible says that it ‘pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.’ If you asked God the Father what is to Him the most exciting subject in all the universe, He'd say, ‘My Son.’

“Any way you slice it, dice it, look at it, think about it, take it apart, put it together, Jesus Christ is the apple of the Father's eye, as Psalm 17 tells us. He's the thing that causes the Father's heart to rejoice. He's the one.

“It's mind-boggling when you look at who the Scripture says He is. It sort of numbs your mind. It's so big, you can just never get your arms around it.”

*****

In other religions, God is simply this “transcendent holy one” you can never touch. When Jesus Christ came back to earth following His death on the Cross, He said to His disciple known as “doubting Thomas,” “Just come and feel me so you know I’m real.”

“The reason Christ is called the Word is because He’s the manifest person of the godhead; He's the one who brings God out of the theory—the ether and the unknown—and down into the place where He could actually enter into your experience,” explains Jordan. “He steps out of eternity where He is and steps into His creation and literally takes it upon Himself. And that’s something my mind doesn't grasp! He literally joins Himself in creation to Him, and in that unique person of all of the universe—the celebrity of all time—He becomes the man Christ Jesus.

“When you look at that, you say, ‘Wow, I understand what Jeremiah's talking about back there when he writes, 'Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee Lord.’ He's saying, 'Man, there's nobody like him! Nobody.' You say, ‘Wow, God, thou art great—who wouldn't fear you?! Who wouldn't bow before you and say, 'You're the man!'?"

“After Thomas did as Christ instructed, he cried, ‘My Lord and my God,’ to which Christ responded, ‘Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’

“When He says, ‘I'm the Lord, there's none like me,’ He's saying, ‘There isn't any room in my heaven and earth for anybody who says he's me. No room out there. I've been all over creation; I've looked, I've seen; there isn't anybody like me out there.’

“The fascinating thing about John 20 (in the conversation between Christ and Thomas) is He says, ‘Just come and put your hand on me.’ You see God has designed it so, in the person of Jesus Christ, you and I come and touch with Him. He can become real and tangible; not just the ‘transcendent other’ of theology and of religion."

*****

In Calvinism, adherents simply can't allow God to change from one dispensational system to another—as Paul tells us He did when He went from law to grace, or Israel to the Body of Christ—because their theology says He had to have prefixed everything ahead of time.

In Arminianism, they say, “Well, everything's open; anything man wants to do he can do and the choice is up to him.” With this they try to limit what God knows.

Jordan says, “When you come to that debate between the Calvinists’ ‘little God’ and the Arminianists’ ‘ignorant God,’ or ‘limited knowledge God,’ and then you back up and just look at what the Bible says about the Lord Jesus Christ, He doesn't fit in either one of those models. You get a glimpse of His character and the awesomeness of who He is and it almost numbs your mind. You can't get your arms around it. It won't fit into all these little systems people have.”

“When John 1:1 says, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ that’s talking about God’s name: Word. The statement’s saying, ‘I am the ultimate ground of all being and existence. Without me, there's no existence. Without me there's nothing.’

“Paul says in Colossians that ‘by him all things consist.’ In Acts 17, Paul says of God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’ How do you know there's a God? Well, how do you know who you are?!

“You see, whatever you call God—whatever you name Him and whoever He is, if He's just that ‘holy other’ that you can't contact and don't know who it is, like the Unknown God of the Athenians, at least you have to recognize there has to be some grounds for existence; some reason to believe you exist. There are great philosophers in the world who don't believe you exist. They believe all of this is an illusion.

“By the way, when Jesus said, ‘I am the truth,’ that's what He meant. He wasn't talking about, ‘I’m just always right and you're always wrong.’ He wasn't talking about truth like ‘two plus two equals four.’

"He was talking about truth in the ultimate basic sense of the ultimate ground of ALL of our being and who we are—the essence of our being—and Christ said, ‘It all resides in me.’ Now, there's not a sane person on the planet who would ever claim that!”

(new article tomorrow)