Video on the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus

The second of three Tyndale House films, well worth watching ..

The Jewel: God’s Free Love (1 John 4:7-12)

I wanted to post this week on the theme of the Cross of our Lord Jesus, which I often speak and think of as a great Jewel of unsurpassed beauty and worth which we can find in the pages of Scripture.

The Jewel
Diamonds are a girls best friend. There is a great jewel of unsurpassed worth lying before us in our New Testaments. Each year, every Easter we remember the cross of our Lord Jesus and yet few appreciate how precious and wonderful this work of Christ is.

Where do we begin?
To survey the wondrous cross, where do we begin? At the first Easter week? In Bethlehem’s stable? In the garden where Adam sinned? No, before this. “God so loved the world that he gave ...” (John 3:16)
The beginning of the formation of this great jewel is the free love of God for all peoples.

God’s free love
This free love of God is one of the themes of the passage, 1 John 4:7-21. God is love, but we ask, “Show me your love.”
Verses 9 and 10 – 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (ESV)
God displays his love in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
God’s love is free because there is no necessity compelling God to love us, to give his Son for us. He is free to love and to give.

Love one another
Knowing of the cross of the Lord Jesus we are to know that God loves us.
Knowing of God’s love for us, we are to tell others, for God also loves them.
Knowing God’s love we do not live in fear of the future, or the final judgment of God, because the Lord Jesus has died for us nothing can separate us from his love.Knowing God’s love for us we should love one another, sharing and displaying in our lives his great love for all peoples.

A display of love

I'm preparing a sermon for Sunday night on 1 John 3:11-24. In the midst of this section we read the following:

1 John 3:16-18 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

I've just written down for my sermon, 'Love is not a word to define, but a deed to do.'

In the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross God displays his love for us. The death of the Lord Jesus is self-giving, self-sacrificing, so that we might know the love of God for us Christ held back nothing of himself but gave everything for us.

This becomes for us the example we are to follow as we love one another, self-giving, self-sacrificing that God's love might be known by many in and through us.

Lent

One of the things I do at Lent is to change my desktop picture. This is the Grunewald Crucifixion from the Isenheim altarpiece, from 1515.

Unlike other works of art from this period the artist is not searching for a portrayal of beauty, but has given over his work to provide 'a sermon in pictures'.

The figure of Christ upon the cross is in agony, suffering all the torments of this moment, notice the gesture of his hands.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is in widow's clothing, Mary Magdalene, with her jar of ointment is wringing her hands in sorrow. John the Baptist stands beside the ancient symbol of the Lamb that was slain, proclaiming, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.'

I read somewhere that Karl Barth had a print of this altarpiece above his desk.

It is towards the cross, that place of atonement where by his sacrifice Christ turned onto himself all the wrath of God, that it might not fall upon us, towards the cross every figure in this work looks, and we journey there during Lent.