Intro:
1. In the 1980s, people shelled out thousands of dollars to own a potbellied pig, an exotic house pet imported from Vietnam. Their breeders claimed these mini pigs were quite smart and would grow to only 40 pounds.
Well, they were half right. The pigs were smart. But they had a tendency to grow to about 150 pounds and become quite aggressive.
What do people do with an unwanted potbellied pig? Fortunately, Dale Riffle came to the rescue. Someone had given Riffle one of these pigs, and he fell in love with it.
The pig, Rufus, never learned to use its litter box and developed this craving for carpets and wallpaper and drywall. Yet Riffle sold his suburban home and moved with Rufus to a five-acre farm in West Virginia. He started taking in other unwanted pigs, and before long, the guy was living in hog heaven.
There are currently 180 residents on his farm. According to an article in U.S. News & World Report, they snooze on beds of pine shavings. They wallow in mud puddles. They soak in plastic swimming pools and listen to piped-in classical music. And they never need fear that one day they'll become bacon or pork chops. There's actually a waiting list of unwanted pigs trying to get a hoof in the door at Riffle's farm.
Dale Riffle told the reporter, "We're all put on earth for some reason, and I guess pigs are my lot in life."
2. How could anybody in his right mind fall in love with pigs?
I'll tell you something even more amazing. An infinite, perfectly holy, majestic, awesome God is passionately in love with insignificant, sinful, openly rebellious, people - people like you and me.
3. Beloved by God the Father.
Trans: We are looking at the Descriptive Greeting. We have seen the Author of the Greeting; Now we are looking at the Audience, who are Called by the Spirit of God; and Beloved by God the Father.
Immediately we have a textual variant - NKJ has "Sanctified by God the Father; while NAS has "Beloved in God the Father."
"Those who are called are described as those "who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ." The NIV translation does not represent the view of many commentators in its translation of this verse. The KJV and NKJV reflect a different textual tradition in the first phrase and read "sanctified by God the Father" rather than "loved by God the Father." The KJV tradition depends on the Majority text, but the textual tradition overwhelmingly supports "loved" rather than "sanctified." The variant reading in the KJV signals to the reader the difficulty of the expression used by Jude. Some scholars and translations understand the first participle phrase (en theo patri egapemenois) to say "beloved in God the Father" (RSV, NASB, NRSV). Such a rendering is attractive because often the verb "love" (agapao) is linked with the preposition "by" (hypo) if agency is intended. The preposition en, on this reading, suggests the sphere in which God's love is exercised. Such an interpretation of the phrase is certainly possible, but I think it is unlikely because the participle "loved" is passive, and God is the agent of the passive verb. Hence, it seems that the NIV rightly captures the meaning here. Believers have been loved by God the Father, and his effective love is the reason they belong to the people of God."
[New American Commentary - New American Commentary]
"Again we have a textual problem. It is "sanctified" [KJV] or "loved" [NIV/NASB]. Facts are that hegiasmenois, "sanctified" is not found in any Greek manuscript before the ninth century. Paprus 72 [3rd century], Aleph and B [4th century], many minuscules, and the oldest versions all have here egapemenois, perfect passive participle of the well-known verb agapao, "love." [Word Meanings in the New Testament, Ralph Earle, p. 455]
It is translated "Beloved" also in Williams translation /ESV/MOFF/NET/PHILPS/HCSB/MSG/WUEST...AMP has both
BUT LETS KEEP IN MIND THE BIBLE TEACHES IN OTHER PLACES WE ARE BOTH LOVED AND SANCTIFIED...
I. FIRST, THIS IS A PARENTAL LOVE.
"20 He got right up and went home to his father. "When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. 21 The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.' 22 "But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! 24 My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time." Luke 15:20-24 (MSG)
Country singer George Strait sings a song entitled, "Love without End, Amen." It tells the story of a young boy coming home from school after having a fight and expecting punishment from his dad. Fully expecting the wrath of his father, the son waited, expecting the worst.
However, the father said, "Let me tell you a secret about a father's love . . . Daddies don't just love their children every now and then . . . it's a love without end. Amen."
The young lad grew up and passed this secret on to his children. One day he dreamed that he died and went to heaven. He was concerned, as he waited to go in, because he realized there must be some mistake for if they knew half the things he's done they would never let him in. It was then that he heard his father's words again, "Let me tell you a secret about a father's love . . . Daddies don't just love their children every now and then . . . it's a love without end. Amen."
If your are God's child, then God's word clearly teaches that we have a Father like this!
I. FIRST, THIS IS A SACRIFICIAL LOVE.
Jn. 3:16 says it all! Rom. 5:8
"In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:10 (NASB)
On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport, killing 155 people. One survived: a four-year-old from Arizona, named Ce-cel-ia.
Cecelia survived because, even as the plane was falling, Cecelia's mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.
Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of his own body to save us.
II. FURTHERMORE IT IS ETERNAL.
"Beloved" translates a perfect passive participle derived from the familiar verb agapaō. The perfect tense indicates that God placed His love on believers in eternity past:
"4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, Ephesians 1:4-5 (NASB)
With results that continue in the present and into the future - a love that will never end!
"Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." John 13:1
Rom. 8:35-39!
"35 Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: 36 They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. 37 None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. 38 I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, 39 high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us." Romans 8:35-39 (MSG)
If it's eternally past and eternally future - then it is eternally now!
In his book Enjoying God, Lloyd Ogilvie writes:
"My formative years ingrained into my attitude toward myself: do and you'll receive; perform and you'll be loved. When I got good grades, achieved, and was a success, I felt acceptance from my parents.
My dad taught me to fish and hunt and worked hard to provide for us, but I rarely heard him say, "Lloyd, I love you." He tried to show it in actions, and sometimes I caught a twinkle of affirmation in his eyes. But I still felt empty.
When I became a Christian, I immediately became so involved in discipleship activities that I did not experience the profound healing of the grace I talked about theoretically....
I'll never forget as long as I live the first time I really experienced healing grace. I was a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh. Because of financial pressures I had to accordion my studies into a shorter than usual period. Carrying a double load of classes was very demanding, and I was exhausted by the constant feeling of never quite measuring up. No matter how good my grades were, I thought they could be better. Sadly, I was not living the very truths I was studying. Although I could have told you that the Greek words for grace and joy are charis and chara, I was not experiencing them.
My beloved professor, Dr. James Stewart, saw into my soul with x-ray vision. One day in the corridor of New College he stopped me. He looked me in the eye intensely. Then he smiled warmly, took my coat lapels in his hands, drew me down to a few inches from his face, and said, "Dear boy, you are loved now!"
God loves us now, not when we get better, but now, as we are...
III. THIRD, IT IS UNUSUAL.
“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are” (1 John 3:1).
The expression rendered “how great” is from po-tap-os, which originally meant, “From what country?” It describes divine love as something that is alien to human beings and outside their natural realm of understanding—an other worldly kind of love—as if it were a concept from a foreign culture or unknown race.
None of us love like God does - none of us, no not one!!!
People do not usually love strangers; and they especially do not love their enemies (cf. Matt. 5:43-48).
Yet, God chose to love elect sinners even when they were defiant sinners!
"1 It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2 You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. 4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah." Ephesians 2:1-6 (MSG)
Although believers did nothing to gain His affection (and, in fact, did everything to invite His wrath), the Father loves redeemed sinners with the same love that He has for His Son...that is unusual!
Out of the mouth of babes, I came across this true story:
The mother of a 9 yr old boy named Mark received a phone call in the middle of the afternoon. It was the teacher from her son's school.
"Mrs. Smith, something unusual happened today in your son's third-grade class. Your son did something that surprised me so much that I thought you should know about it. Nothing like this has happened in all my years of teaching. This morning I was teaching a lesson on creative writing. And as I always do, I tell the story of the ant and the grasshopper:
"The ant works hard all summer and stores up plenty of food. But the grasshopper plays all summer and does no work. Then winter comes. The grasshopper begins to starve because he has no food. So he begs, 'Please Mr. Ant, you have much food. Please let me eat, too.'"
Then I said, "Boys and girls, your job is to write the ending to the story."
"Your son, Mark, raised his hand. 'Teacher, may I draw a picture?'
"'Well, yes, Mark, if you like, you may draw a picture. But first you must write the ending to the story.'
"As in all the years past, most of the students said the ant shared his food through the winter, and both the ant and the grasshopper lived. A few children wrote, 'No, Mr. Grasshopper. You should have worked in the summer. Now I have just enough food for myself.' So the ant lived and the grasshopper died.
"But your son ended the story in a way different from any other child, ever. He wrote, 'So the ant gave all of his food to the grasshopper; the grasshopper lived through the winter. But the ant died.'
"And the picture? At the bottom of the page, Mark had drawn three crosses."
That is unusual - not as unusual as God love for us through Christ!
IV. FOURTHLY, IT IS UNCONDITIONAL.
It is a passive voice...we do not give but receive!
Wuest, "The participle is in the perfect tense, speaking of a past complete act having present, and in a context like this, permanent results. The distinctive word for "love" here is the word for God's self-sacrificial love which was shown at Calvary.
This love here is the outgoing of God's love for the saints in which He gives of Himself for their good. He will do anything within His good will for the saints. He went all the way to Calvary for them when they were unlovely and naturally unlovable.
He will do as much and more for His saints who in Christ are looked upon by God the Father with all the love with which He loves His Son. The perfect tense speaks here of the fact that the saints are the permanent objects of God's love.
Jude is therefore writing to those who have been loved by God the Father with the present result that they are in a state of being the objects of His permanent love, and that love extends not merely through the brief span of this life, but throughout eternity. And then some dear children of God fear that they might be lost."
I have seen kids tease their dogs, pull their tails, even kick em...yet those dogs wagged their tails, licked their faces, expressed love regardless - that is just a dim picture of God's love for us!
"6 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. 7 We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. 8 But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. 9 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. 10 If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! 11 Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!" Romans 5:6-11 (MSG)
Con:
1. All believers are Beloved in God!
2. You say but I don't deserve it! I still sin! Yes... but the Father's love is based on placing you into Christ where you are forgiven and righteous, giving you eternal security and value!
3. Here is a $10 bill. "Who would like this $10 bill?"
Crumple up the bill. "Who still wants it?" The same hands went up in the
air.
Dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, all crumpled and dirty. "Now who still wants it?" Again, hands went into the air.
"You have all learned a valuable lesson - No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.
Likewise, many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make to sin... But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value in God's eyes. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are loved by God.
www.StrugglingThruScriptures.ning.com
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