Those of us who belong to God know it wasn’t our initiative that brought us to Him but rather it was God who “loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”, \u00a0I John 4:10b. \u00a0 So why did God love us and send His son to die for our sins? \u00a0I think it’s clear from Genesis to Revelation that the reason “God so loved the world”, \u00a0is that God so loved His only begotten Son!<\/p>\n
God’s reason for creating mankind by the Son and God’s reason for loving mankind \u00a0is that He loved His Son so much He wanted, in a manner of speaking, a whole universe full of people like His son for Him to love and fellowship with. \u00a0No, God didn’t design mankind to become divine, but rather as mankind to live by His life, in His love, like Jesus did as Son of man here on earth. \u00a0And yes, Jesus was always divine but chose to live His by by the Father’s divine life.<\/p>\n
In God’s call for mankind into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (see 1 Cor. 1:9b) He’s working from a model or pattern, something already in place. \u00a0That model, that relationship already in place is THE HEART OF THE MATTER. It is the ETERNAL LOVE RELATIONSHIP among the members of the Trinity. \u00a0There are many scriptures that bear this out! \u00a0Here is one of the many. \u00a0Jesus prays, John 17:24, “Father I desire that they also, whom thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory which thou hast given me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world”. \u00a0The love with which God loves His own is a heavenly, divine love and there’s no way this love can be understood \u00a0other than to understand it as displayed in the love of the Father for the Son in the Trinity.<\/p>\n
According to Romans 8:29 God’s purpose for His own is that they be “conformed to the image of His Son”. \u00a0 Mostly we understand this to mean that God wants us to have a Christ like attitude and be in submission to His will as was the Lord Jesus. \u00a0And there is the what to do and what not to do part of it as well. \u00a0And that of course is all true. But the part of the meaning of \u00a0being conformed to the image of His Son that we often miss is that God wants us to live in the security of the reciprocal love relationship that’s been in place for all eternity between the Father and the son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those of us who belong to God know it wasn’t our initiative that brought us to Him but rather it was God who “loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”, \u00a0I John 4:10b. \u00a0 So why did God love us and send His son to die for our sins? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}