The love and grace of God are completely outside of anything man deserves. The original sin that we (in Adam) committed in Eden is of itself a forever damning indictment against us. You, who are now walking upright before God, are still a former sinner who is now saved by grace. Grace, which springs from divine love, makes all the difference.

Somewhere in our ongoing battle against evil we have to acknowledge there is a carnal nature within us that is waiting only for the opportunity to break out like a plague. We who are saved are not super humans. Without the ever-present grace of God, we are grossly imperfect; our natures are utterly depraved and, when our record is viewed in the light of the Word of God, we have added many outrageous sins to the first one committed in the Garden of Eden.

We can’t gloss over our sins simply because they hurt our self-image. The hard fact is, of ourselves, we are sinners, ugly, dirty and repulsive. We can be nothing else in the glare of the perfect righteousness of God.

The Love of God for Man

Before proceeding further we shall try to comprehend the love of God extended to mankind as it is personified in Jesus Christ. We emphasize the word “try” because it would be folly and the height of stupidity arrogance for any pathetically ignorant human to claim that he in any substantial measure understands divine love. Such a feat is impossible in our present state, which is one of abysmal ignorance.

However, in making this admittedly feeble attempt, we need first to look at, and define, some of the attributes of God along with the supreme attribute of love that seems to be the quintessence of our God. They all have a bearing on, and are interrelate to love.

Selected Attributes of God

Righteousness		Doing and being right.
Justice		Fairness, equity, an evenness in exchange.
Mercy		Leniency not justly required or expected; grace (unmerited divine favor); an adjusting of a situation so that it is tolerable.
Love		A driving Force that seeks the well-being of the one who is loved in spite of all obstacles. It requires a need in the one loved that must be filled at all costs by the one who loves.

These attributes of God all demand expression just as our various traits of character clamor for expression. Satan, of course, warped our natural traits. He marred God’s handiwork in man after God had made man pure and upright. God is different from man in that all His traits are good and positive and can thus be termed attributes. But, attributes in God or traits in man, they all yearn for expression.

God’s Righteousness demands that He should adhere to that which is right, and it makes the same demand of mankind. Without righteousness man will die. So this is man’s situation as the Scriptures rder it: Since “there is none righteous, no not one” (Rom. 3:10), and since “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,…[therefore] death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Rom. 5:12.

God’s Justice also needs to express itself. Justice insists on an evenness, a like value for like value, “an eye for an eye.” It adamantly states that every sin should bring full penalty on the sinner. That is why, when Adam sinned, God evicted him from the Garden and any possible access to the tree of life. That is why the flaming sword of Justice flashed forth from its scabbard to slay man if he would attempt to gain the coveted prize of eternal life.

But God’s Mercy is not silent either. Mercy cries out for leniency for man, contending that the favor of God has to be extended to man. Without this favor, mercy laments, doom will be his eternal fate. Of course, mercy’s plea is apparently opposed to Justice and Righteousness.

Then there is the Love of God. Because of all that love entails (see definition above) God would never deny it expression. Man, with his errant behavior in Eden, his present tragic state, and his abysmally bleak future, seems to be a perfect recipient for the love of God. Looking closely at the situation, we can see that all the attributes of God are making demands within the being of God. And some of the demands seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. However, because they are a part of God Himself, they must be heard.

If a human had such a variety of apparently conflicting thoughts and feelings within himself, he would have all sorts of neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses. His fragile psyche would fragment into jittery unwholesome parts. But God is a perfectly integrated, whole Being whose attributes comprise a vastly complex yet positive Person. The Old Testament refers to God as “Elohim” or “gods” and there is a solid reason for it. God is very multi-faceted and abstruse beyond human words. He is truly all things wrapped in one mighty Person.

The Demands of Righteousness and Justice

Adam, who committed the first sin, was thrust out of Eden and condemned to an eventual physical death and an accompanying spiritual death. This last – physical death – was a terrible doom leading to the “second death,” which is the lake of fire (hell).

To grind into man’s sinful forehead the hopelessness of the situation, God brought forth a law. This was not just any law: it stated specifically what sin was. Then it commanded man to live in perfect accord with the law. As Paul put it in Romans 7:13b, sin became “exceeding sinful” by means of the very law that was contrary to it. In Eden man fell into sin; on Sinai (where the law was given) he writhed in it. Thus God met the demands of Justice and Righteousness until man’s physical and eternal death would be fully accomplished.

Love Makes Its Own Strong Claim

Man’s death sentence and its confirmation by the law were paradoxically the very things that began to meet love’s demand (see diagram, “Selected Attributes of God”). This was the demand for a need on man’s part that would require a supreme sacrifice by God to fill it. The need was strongly evident: There is no fate worse than eternal death, which is not, as it might seem, an eternal cessation of existence. This “second death” of which we speak is an eternity of longing in the most acute sense for the satisfying of the appetites left uncurbed in this life. It is an eternity of most poignant and searing remorse for having finally passed up the last opportunity to come to God. It is an eons-long period of being cut off from the slightest sense of the presence of God. Even the sinner and atheist have the “unaware” sense of God’s presence. Man is made to be upheld by His Presence, and if he should ever lose even the sinner’s faint and unaware sense of His Presence it would be a literal hell. Mankind is completely dependent on God.

Man was damned for an eternity and there was nothing he could do to evade his fate.

But the love of God…suffering long and yet remaining kind, seeking not its own, bearing all things – it could never stand by and see man so devastated.

But the love of God… following close on man’s heels in spite of his perfidy and callous disregard for all God’s goodness, would not let man go. It pursued him. It persistently swelled within the righteous heart of God, crying out for the redemption of man by any means.

But the love of God… can never be denied. Ironically, man can refuse it, but it will impose itself on him in spite of himself. The love of God, never ceasing, never flagging in its fervor, will never fail. Prophecies and tongues and knowledge shall fail, but love, never. As long as we are amenable to this love we can never be lost. Is this Eternal Security (as we generally know the term) of a person? No. Just the eternal and undeniable love of God.

The demands of love did not mean that righteousness ceased to demand death as the penalty for sin. Sin inevitably brings on death. There would seem to be an impasse at this point. The situation was an impossible one. But Love accepts as final no position that is detrimental to man except man’s own decision to go to hell despite the love that will not let him go. Of course this is a contradiction in logic, but so is a love that dares to sacrifice its holy Self for unlovable, despicable man.

God, who is the essence of love, could not let man die. But God, who is righteousness, could not let man live in the sin that was an integral part of man. Nor could God violate His own Justice in His attempts to save man. This brings Love into play again. Love finally (yet from all eternity) drove God to the outer limits of possibility and into the realm of utter impossibility. Love devised a plan that would scale the heights of selflessness and take an extreme toll of God in the doing. It would snatch man back from the grip of death and sin, and give him eternal life.

Since man could not save himself by his own death, God, the Creator of the universe and the eternal God of all power, determined to die for him! Let this sink into your mind and reach deep into your heart. There were two things, though, that blocked this divine plan: 1) God is a spirit and a spirit cannot die; and 2) there had to be a sinless human life given for man’s salvation. The law required that man’s redeemer be close of kin to man. He must be human. Lev. 25:47-49.

Then came Jesus. In answer to the urgent demand of the love of God, Jesus the Son of God came to earth. This sinless perfect Man left the heavenly realm and came to a world steeped in sin. He came, He lived in the midst of the sin that He hated, and He died by becoming the very thing He loathed: He became sin in order to destroy it once and forever.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2Co 5:21)

The love of God – it surrounds all men, saint and sinner, and prevents man’s arch enemy from blasting him into nothingness. Love is the most determined force in all this chaotic cosmos and will hound man to the very ends of being. It effectively turns aside the sword of Justice and softens the punishment of outraged Righteousness.

This amazing love seeks out a Lot in a city full of sinners who do not care to be saved. It wraps its caring arms around a thief dying on a cross. Love replaces the severed ear of one who had lost that ear because he came to crucify the Lord of glory. Love does not care who its object is – a saint, a sinner, a self-righteous person, a backslider completely awash in the sin he once hated, a confused soul im­mersed in sexual lust, a gay, a murderer, a drug addict – love reaches even to such as these. How can we fail to respond to such love?

The Love of Christ Viewed from a Different Perspective

The love of Christ for mankind is forever unfolding before us like one of those old-fashioned barber shop rotating poles. It keeps moving and coming from – where? and going to – where? Or a better figure would be that the love of Christ is like a kaleidoscope that, the more you turn it and look at it, the more beautiful and amazing it becomes. Without attempting to be “deep” (this is not the place for that), I want to run this bit of truth by you:

“The human Jesus was the Logos or Word of John 1.1, enclosed in a body of flesh. (John 1.14) Therefore, He was fully aware of the relationship existing between Himself (the Logos/Word) and the Father, an unbreakable bond that was greater than any attachment between a man and his closest relatives and friends. But the human Jesus, in full concert with the Father, chose to take on the sins of all mankind, knowing that God the Father could never be associated with sin, a thing loathsome to both the Father and Jesus Himself.

“Jesus knew the Father would have to abandon Him (the human Jesus), and when the Father did in fact turn His back on Jesus, Jesus could only cry in terror, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Blackened by sins He had not committed and cursed by atrocities to which He had not acquiesced, Jesus became the first denizen of a hell prepared originally for the devil and his host of fallen angels. No human has ever suffered to the extreme that Jesus did… for you and for me. He willingly submitted Himself to the rejection and the wrath of His Father because He and His Father both loved us, mankind, with a love stronger than suffering and death – even greater than the torment of hell.” http://www.lulu.com/content/1839991

This is not a sermon; it’s a laying out before you how much Jesus loved us – and if He loved us that much 2000-some years ago, He loves us even now while we are turning our backs on Him and rejecting His overtures of peace and love. I am not nagging at you; I am just wondering what on earth is keeping you from this love, which is the only thing that will save you from an eternity in hell.

Please study the diagram on the following page. (You will note there is no representation for the Holy Spirit in the triangle of God, Christ and man. The reason is simple: the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus returned to earth to direct the activities of the Church and its individual members. Therefore when a believer opens his heart to Christ, he opens his heart to the infilling of the Holy Spirit at the same time.)

An Amazing, Incomparable Love

God – Father, Logos (sometimes called the Son – a misnomer in that the human Son was a created being and did not come on the scene until the birth of Jesus who was both Son of man [human] and Son of God [divine]), and the Holy Spirit – all three major expressions of God had decreed that God should die for humanity. The three are ONE GOD. No one else could save men and women from the fires of hell. The decision of course was unanimous as there are no split decisions within the Godhead (the totality of God) as though the Godhead were an imperfect judicial body like the U.S. Supreme Court with its nine pompous, opinionated men and woman whose biased breath is in their nostrils. A split decision within the divine fullness of God (which is unthinkable and impossible) would indicate that God has a split personality, and we know that only imperfect humans are liable to schizophrenia.

God has blessed us with the continual awareness of Jesus’ great sacrifice for us. And that is as it should be; a divine self-sacrifice like that strips away the old actor’s mask we have put on the face of love and gives it a beauty and vitality we have not known before. The sacrifice involved a physically grotesque, cruel mockery of Jesus and was the worst sort of blasphemy mankind could devise. It was a bloody repulsive scene, but its grotesqueness and savage cruelty – committed against the Great Creator – only serve in contrast to highlight the exquisite beauty and splendor of divine love. We who are wholly surrendered to Christ can never in this realm of existence express what God has revealed to us of His love. It is awesome. We are unable even to fully express to one another what God reveals to our innermost beings about the inexpressible love of God.

Jesus’ sacrifice is not always in the very forefront of our minds, but it is always there subliminally, just below the surface of our awareness. There are also times that those who are walking closer to God are further blessed with a brief and horrible consciousness of just a small sense of what Jesus endured during His hour of Passion. It lasts just long enough for our minds to be torn and our spirits to be wrenched by what our Lord endured; and, contrariwise, our minds and spirits are wonderfully blessed and renewed by the experience.

No one in this life has yet come face to grotesque face with the enormity of the distress and terrible pain that Jesus went through in that awful time of retribution and redemption. We are totally unable to fully know His suffering and yet continue to live. Nor was Jesus able to actually sustain in His own body, mind and soul such comprehensive distress and pain. He died in unbearable agony – agony of body, mind and soul.

Sometimes we are not sure whether to refer to the love Christ has for us as an undying love or a dying love. It is both. It drove Jesus to the cross where He died for our sins: in that way it was a dying love, one that caused Jesus to die for us. But the same love that made Christ die is so strong that it will never die, so it is an undying love.

God Loves As Only Divinity Can Love

God loves as only Divinity can love. He suffered as only Divinity could suffer. In one mighty composite act He took the powerful bolt cutters of grace, broke the chains that bound mankind to this sinful earth and blessed us to rise to the heavens and “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The gift of righteousness is now readily available, but individual men and women can avail themselves of this grace only as they have faith in, and commit themselves totally to the God of all grace.

“And immediately [after Jesus’ baptism by John] the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.” Mark 1.12. Also see: Mat. 4.1; Luke 4.1.

Jesus was headed to His hour of temptation. This is a very interesting remark: “driveth him into the wilderness.” The stark necessity for such an ordeal was a lash applied to His spirit; it was an ox goad keeping Him from deviating from the strait, narrow path ordained for Him. Is it possible that the man in Jesus’ nature did not want to go through the coming wilderness ordeal and that the Spirit of God in Him compelled Him (Jesus) to go against Jesus’ own natural will? It seems likely that, as a man (although not a rebellious man as we are by nature), Jesus would naturally want to avoid suffering.  Disliking the difficulty of the Way is not rebellion or disobedience; it is only being human. There is no doubt that His human nature recoiled from the forty days of rigorous testing that lay ahead of Him. But His will, as man or God, was now and always to do the Father’s will. (Heb. 10:7)

Testing, temptation: these words indicate stress, even suffering; and without them Jesus could not have been our near kinsman. The wilderness was no more a place of relaxation than Gethsemane or Calvary, each of which would soon cast its fearsome shadow across Jesus’ appointed pathway. It is true that Jesus did mentally recoil from the “moment of truth” blocking His pathway, but within Himself He would not and could not go any other way.

There was a reason for the use of the phrase, “driveth him into the wilderness.” Jesus had now, before the world’s sins were summarily laid upon Him, assumed the world as His burden. He knew that He had to endure the rigors of the desert ordeal as part of that burden.

There are times when the dedicated man of God has to go through the fire for a purpose. The higher the purpose the more he is determined, in spite of inborn aversion to inconvenience and distress, to enter the flame. When there is no other way for the man of great commitment to achieve a lofty goal for which he avidly yearns, he steels himself for the worst. He resolves in himself not to be denied his necessary pain. A person of this spiritual caliber is driven (not against his will) by the necessity that the Spirit lays upon him to accomplish God’s sovereign will. Thus it was with Jesus. He was led by the Spirit and He was driven by the urgency that the same Spirit impressed upon Him to push boldly into His distasteful mission.

This was one of the painful climactic hours that He dreaded but to which He had to commit Himself. Jesus was now caught in a hellishly trying vortex of continuous temptation for forty days. We tend to focus on His last three temptations because only they are detailed in the Bible, but they were just a summing up of all that had gone on before. During the forty days Jesus was tried in every conceivable way, not just in the general class of temptations that are reflected in the last three temptations, (Lust of the Flesh, Lust of the Eye, and Pride of Life). He was assaulted by every low, vile and despicable allurement to sin that we can know.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15)

Jesus was tried in a “genteel” manner; He was assaulted fiercely in an all-out show of Satanic force. Satan attacked Jesus in direct ways and he approached Him in insidious, indirect fashion. Billows of longing washed over His Being at times; and anger and greed assailed Him. Hatred attempted to force its way into His heart. Jesus ran the gamut of temptations, “yet without sin” …Yet without sin.

Three Final Temptations and Total Victory

When the forty days of testing were drawing to a close, Jesus was weakened physically and drained spiritually. Satan thought to finish Him off. It is significant that the last three temptations represent all the testing that can come upon man. They do not comprise every individual test; they merely embrace the three broad categories of tests that man can experience. According to 1 John 2:16 they are:  1) the Lust of the Flesh; 2) the Lust of the Eyes; and 3) the Pride of Life. We shall look at them closely below:

1.       Lust of the Flesh

In this type of temptation Satan is striking at Jesus through one of the body’s natural and normally harmless appetites. It is notable, however, that throughout His earthly life Jesus deliberately refrained from using His miraculous powers for satisfying His personal bodily needs. Satan realized this inhibition and sought to cause Jesus to override it in His extreme hunger. Satan was also appealing to the pride that was at this time trying to gnaw its way into the consciousness of Jesus.

“IF,” Satan says as though not convinced, “if you really are the Son of God…” Prove that you are the Son of God because I don’t believe it. Satan’s approach through the distressful hunger Jesus was enduring was to be expected. He will strike at any chink or opening that he thinks he sees in the Christian’s armor; so how much more eagerly would he attack the Son of God when given the chance!

“It is written,” Jesus turned Satan off simply, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The body and its appetites may seem all?impor­tant, but they are always to be subordinate to the will of God.

2.       Pride of Life

Satan was not impressed. He whisked Jesus away to one of the highest places in the Temple, looking down on the courts below.  As Jesus stood there with the tempter at His elbow, the tempter threw the implied doubt in Jesus’ face again.

“If indeed you are the Son of God,” and Satan was saying that there was as yet no proof of it, “cast yourself down before the people in the court below.”

Then Satan actually quoted Scripture:

“It is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” (Psa. 91:11,12)

Jesus knew that in this instance Satan spoke truth. It would have been a master stroke to have thrown Himself down from the dizzying heights in the sight of all the horrified onlookers who were at the moment milling around, unaware of what was occurring high overhead. Suddenly angels would catch Him in His headlong plunge and deposit Him safely on the ground. Jesus would have caught the imagination of all the people by such a coup.

But Jesus countered Satan’s thrust with another scripture that put the scripture Satan had quoted in proper perspective. “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt [try] the Lord thy God.” (Deut. 6:16) In other words, you shall not put God to the test for any vain or unworthy purpose.

3.       Lust of the Eye

Still undaunted, Satan took Jesus to the top of a very high mountain. From that vantage point he gave Jesus a panoramic view of the nations of the world and all their glory. This would be tempting to Jesus as a man who certainly wanted to make His mark on the people, although not in an unworthy manner.

Satan pressed his case: “I’ll give you all this if you will fall down and worship me.”

This may seem to have been a transparent test to one who was divine, but bear in mind that this was Jesus’ hour of testing and He was, for this period, subject to every trying situation and temptation that we now endure. Certainly everything with which Satan could lure and test Him was illogical and easily coped with by the divinity within Jesus, but for this moment this divine/human man was human and vulnerable. For this hour He was capable of being tempted. Thus it became him to fulfill all righteousness.

Satan’s latest offer was enticing to Jesus just as the others had been, but He rejected it out of hand. “Begone!” Jesus commanded. “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Satan had now been ordered to leave; and he lost no time in doing so. However, it is notable that Jesus did not rid Himself of His adversary until His time of testing was finished. Jesus could have sent Satan fleeing at any time, but He allowed him to work his will with Him (Jesus) so that Jesus’ own righteous purpose could be served.

So it is with the believer in Christ in the believer’s hour of temptation. There is a righteous purpose that God wants worked out in and/or through him and the believer should fortify himself with that knowledge.

After Satan’s flight from the arena of testing, we can well imagine that Jesus was left lying, spent and motionless, on the ground in the wilderness. The forty unsparing days had taken their toll, and “angels came and ministered unto him.” He had been beset by a continuing series of tests that was unique in the history of mankind. But He had not committed one sin; He had not failed in the least.