“If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it c would be utterly scorned.” Solomon’s song of songs 8:7
Here we learn that love is priceless, you can’t give anything in exchange for it, unconditional and free.
For the long version livestream video of this post go here. Love is priceless.
You can’t be thinking in your mind that since I ___________________(you fill in the blank as to what you think you did that deserves God’s favor, grace or felt experience of His Love. Since I read my Bible, repented, had high thoughts of you, I worshipped, I gave to the church or poor etc., then I should feel close to God and He is not letting me. I should feel loved because I did so much for Him today, but He is letting me. I call this stinking thinking. A lot of pride in those thoughts.
Interesting how the devil will get you to believe a lie, the lie that God owes you something so that you work or try to offer something in exchange for God doing something for you, as if His Love to us had a price.
God promises more Christlikeness Rom. 8:28-29, but the timing is up to God.
Love is priceless. You can’t put a value on love. Love is unconditional.
Can you give all you own and offer it to God so that you could experience and have His Love? The offer would utterly scorned. The offer would be despised and then think the utmost despised. Despised, despised.
Are you crazy? You can’t give all you own for love! God treading down, treads down upon you and your offer.
I’m thinking here. Would it be sin to try to put a value on God’s Love?
If you think that you deserve love then that idea comes from self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is a righteousness that comes from self or your own doing. Something you did that was loving, good or right and thinking you alone have done this good thing is a self-righteous attitude verses 2 Cor. 5:21. We have no righteousness of our own. It’s “filthy rags”. Is. 64:6
Imagine offering God filthy rags in exchange for love?
Do you think that the things you have done have enough value in them that God owes you Love?
That would be out of a servile fear. Not a reverential awe. Not out of love. For love is free.
Now you should and will expect God to give it to you. This is true because He has promised it. He said it we believe it. Jesus purchased God’s Love or the indwelling Holy Spirit. It cost Him His life and blood! So the gift of love is invaluable. But the timing is up to Him. When Love desires.
A humble view is to wait with faith, in obedience and increasing desire for Him alone. He is our all in all.
We want to get a better idea of love. I could tell you it is priceless, and you agree so now intellectually you know the superlative value of love. But experientially, have you done it? Have you freely given your life? Are you getting better and better at doing good for the joy of it?
Ask in Jesus Name. Consistent with who He is, our relationship to Him and His promises.
Let me see your Glory.
Make me more like Christ.
Let me sense and experience your Love at a greater degree.
Make me holier.
We ask these things of God, knowing Jesus has purchased them for us and God will give them to us based on us being in Christ Jesus.
Am I asking God to give these things because I, I, I, I did good or Jesus, Jesus, Jesus purchased and promises them for me in His timing.
So, you must practice praying in Jesus Name, knowing what that means. So, you pray expecting a yes answer because you prayed God’s will or promise but the reason why you expect it is because of the Person and work of Jesus including His intercession with the Father on our behalf. Rom. 8:27. So the prayer is not self-righteous, but God centered.
“Dark am I, yet lovely in Christ Jesus“
The habit of praying rightly and humbly based on who Jesus is, our relationship to Him and promises to us, and waiting on His timing, will help us get a right idea of Love. That It is Soveriegn and free by God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
“experimental ” knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” 2 Corinthians 4:6.” JE
The habit of praying rightly and humbly based on who Jesus is, our relationship to Him and promises to us, and waiting on His timing, will help us get a right idea of Love. That It is Sovereign and free by God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
“In the reflective act (of love) lies ” experimental knowledge,” because in that act the believer finds a sympathy or likeness between what is in his soul and what he finds in God’s Word.” JE
This fulfills the command to grow in the grace and (experiential) knowledge of God. (The puritan would use the word “experimental” knowledge of God.
It’s not only sensing God’s love to us that gives us a better idea of Love but also us doing it. Loving God gives us a right idea of love. Meaning that the more you love, or duration of love is known. A greater duration of love is known by you when you love longer. Higher, deeper, wider etc.
Edwards subdivides this “spiritual light” into three categories: a “sight” of the truth and reality of divine things, the knowledge of the excellency of divine things and consequently of our own “deformity of sin,” and “the experimental knowledge of the saving operations of the Holy Spirit.” ” Experimental knowledge ” comes with the reflective act in which the believer identifies for himself the likeness between his new-born state and God’s will. You know your own heart and the Word of God cuts through to the thoughts and intentions of your heart so you know you intended to do God’s will. God’s will is in you and you know it by reflecting upon what you did. So, you and God share the same will, due to the pure communication of love.
So the light comes with these 3 things. Love is a flame of God. The flame when awoke or arouse gives light. Or light is communication. In the communication is experimental knowledge.
This spiritual knowledge, which all natural men are destitute of, is the experimental knowledge of the saving operations of the Holy Spirit. This is more especially called the knowledge of “the things of the Spirit of God,” that is, of those things which he does, of his operation on the mind and heart. This may be what is especially pointed at in the eleventh verse of our context: “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” The comparison is very lively and the puissanity very strong. The things of a man are understanding, memory, will, joy, sorrow, anger, and the like. Now nothing knows what these are but the spirit of man that is in him. We know what love, and grief, etc. are, because we have felt them within ourselves. Otherwise, it is not all the men in the world could make us understand what they are. This the Apostle means when he says, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him?”
What am I trying to help us know?
What love is by doing it. Freely doing it, for love is priceless.
You don’t do anything in exchange for it, for we are dark but lovely in Christ Jesus!
The hand doesn’t give the mind something in exchange, but the hand just does as the mind wills the will of God.
Categories
Uncategorized