1 John 4:12-21

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:17-21;5:1-12

Although the love of God is clearly laid out in the Old Testament, why did humankind have to wait so long to have the message spelled out in such clear terms as John uses: God is love? People could not see this sufficiently clearly until they had looked into the face of Jesus. In the life of Jesus is the...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:7-16

We turn now to consider another aspect of God's nature and character - love. There are three things told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, "God is spirit" (John 4:24), which means He has no visible substance. Second, "God is light" (

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 7:15-18

One perplexing situation for which wisdom and a divine perspective is needed, says Solomon, is when we see the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. The psalmist struggled with this age-old problem (particularly in Psalm 73), and so have millions since. A tyrant...

For Reading and Meditation:     Hebrews 10:19-25

In every religion in the world apart from Christianity there is a note of uncertainty concerning this matter of personal salvation. Many modern religious attitudes are expressed in the limerick: For as much as without Thee We are not able to doubt Thee, O grant us Thy grace To inform the whole race That we know...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:7-21

There have been two great attempts to find God throughout the ages," said Dr. E. Stanley Jones, "one, philosophy, the other, moralism." The attempts of philosophy to find God are represented by the three great philosophical nations - Greece, India, and China. These three nations have taken men and women about as far as...

It is the present heaven of the saints, to know and believe the love that God hath to them. None can reveal it to us, or shed it abroad in our hearts, but the Holy Ghost. He can direct our hearts into the love of God, and into the patience of Jesus Christ. He is in office to show the saints the things of God, and enable them to believe and enjoy them.

Let us, beloved, daily pray that we may know and enjoy the love that God hath to us; it will be an antidote to all our miseries, a...

There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may...

Do you want a house for your soul? Do you ask, "What is the purchase?" It is something less than proud human nature will like to give. It is without money and without price. Ah! you would like to pay a respectable rent! You would love to do something to win Christ? Then you cannot have the house, for it is "without price." Will you take my Master's house on a lease for all eternity, with nothing to pay for it, nothing but the ground-rent of loving and serving him for ever? Will you take...

It is a sweet thought that Jesus Christ did not come forth without his Father's permission, authority, consent, and assistance. He was sent of the Father, that he might be the Saviour of men. We are too apt to forget that, while there are distinctions as to the persons in the Trinity, there are no distinctions of honour. We too frequently ascribe the honour of our salvation, or at least the depths of its benevolence, more to Jesus Christ than we do the...

Here is one of those New Testament truths that shocks us by its sheer audacity. We would not dare to utter the words if we did not see them in the Bible. But they are gloriously true, and we can revel and rejoice in them.

In what sense are we like Christ in this world? Our minds almost automatically think first of the ways we are not like Him. We do not share with Him the attributes of deity, such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. We are full of sin and failure whereas He...