The Greatest
12 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in Our Daily Bread Tags: Christ, Deus Caritas Est, First Epistle of John, God, God the Father, Gospel of Matthew, Jesu, Palestra
What is the greatest thing in sports? Is it championships? Records? Honors? In the Palestra, the University of Pennsylvania basketball arena, a plaque offers a different perspective on the greatest thing in sports. It reads: “To win the game is great. To play the game is greater. But to love the game is the greatest of all.” This is a refreshing reminder that sports are, after all, just the games we played with joy as kids.
A religious leader once asked Jesus about greatness: “Which is the great commandment?” (Matt. 22:36). Jesus responded by challenging that leader to love—love God and love others. Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37-39).
Whatever else our faith in Christ compels us to do, there is nothing greater we can do than to show our love—for love reveals the heart of our holy heavenly Father. After all, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It’s easy to be sidetracked by lesser things, but our focus must remain on the greatest thing—loving our God. That in turn enables us to love one another. There’s nothing greater.
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Tozer Devotional-Love the Cause of Redemption
23 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in A. W. Tozer Tags: Christ, Deus Caritas Est, God, God's love, Holy Spirit, Jesu, John, Religion and Spirituality
Love the Cause of Redemption
Everything that God does is done without effort or strain. He does all his acts with equal ease and tranquillity. We are often tempted to wonder how God could love us, but honest as this feeling is, it is nevertheless the result of a wrong way of looking at things. God does not love us because we are hard or easy to love; He loves us because He is God, not because we are good or bad or more attractive or less so. God’s love is not drawn out of Him by its object; it flows out from God in a steady stream because He is love. “God so loved the world,” not because the world was lovable but because God is love. Christ did not die for us that God might love us; He died for us because God already loved us from everlasting. Love is not the result of redemption; it is the cause of it. One question may demand to be answered: Does God love some people more than others? If not, what was meant by calling John “the disciple Jesus loved,” as if to say that He loved John more than the rest? The answer is simple. John was more responsive to the love of Christ and could receive and enjoy it to a greater fullness. The divine love could operate toward this loving man with a joyous freedom not possible with others who had not his simplicity and faith. The sunflower that turns its face to the sky all day long gets more sun than the violet that hides among the leaves. But the same sun shines in fullness upon both. God has no favorites, except as some of His children by their loving response make it possible for Him to shower more love upon them.
