Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Too late to say, “Good morning.”

Too many interruptions. And since I have an annual physical exam coming up on Friday, I went in for a fasting blood draw this morning. And because I went to bed late last night, and didn’t have any coffee after I rose about 4am, it seems I had more than normal difficulty making my head work right. I kept nodding off. Oh well.

Now I better see what we can scrape up for lunch, maybe squeeze in a little nap, then take on the rest of the day.

Yesterday I used my old crane truck on two little jobs…mounting signs on a building, and three crosses on the gable end of a church. She performed very well.

Have a great rest of your day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

These are words spoken by the Prophet Azariah to Asa King of Judah. It’s another spin of the same simple bottom-line principle that continually surfaces through the entire scope of Biblical revelation. It’s like a spiritual law as real and constant as gravity. King Asa took the concept to heart and basically lived by it. That allowed him to effectively communicate his passion to his people. At one point he called together his entire kingdom of adherants to Jerusalem and revival fires were lit. His people caught the vision—they came to see the principle clearly. They repented and worshiped and sacrificed and shouted and rejoiced—and went fanatical. At least I’m inclined to call it that. It’s like their zeal went overboard. The record reports, “All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman” (15:13). Come on, folks, how authentic will be one’s love for God if it is forced?—when the motive for obedience is only to escape death? I judge that the revival is now polluted. That’s a lousy way to gain conformity and unity.

Suddenly a light comes on—maybe we have just stumbled onto one of the most common flaws within the applied Christian faith—trying to love God only out of fear of the consequences for not loving God. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense that our best motivation for loving God is to be found in truly loving and worshiping Him?—that we have personally found Him to be most worthy of our love and worship?—which includes an emotional bond? There is something very wrong with the picture that views God on a par with a bandit holding a gun who says, “Give me all your money or I’m going to kill you!” There is subtle contamination of God’s character and motives to view Him as saying, “You’d better love me or I’m going to send you to hell!” Similarly, few of us would have very high hopes for a marriage relationship where the man says to his wife, “If you don’t love me the way I want, I’m going to divorce you!—on second thought, I’ll just kill you!” How effectively has he now endeared his wife to himself?

The more I think on this, the more convinced I become that our properly comprehending even a measure of God’s love for us is absolutely essential to our properly loving Him. Paul testifies to this when he says, “For Christ’s love compels us…” (2 Corinthians 5:14). It creates within the true believer a sense of “How can I do anything less?!”—a heart level response of “woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:16)!

Listen again as carefully as you can to Paul’s inspired perspective in Ephesians 3:14-19: “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Wow!