God Demonstrates His Holiness in a way Everyone Sees!

Although some people need to be persuaded of the love of God because they already know that they’ve violated His holiness and find it hard to repent without feeling loved, others need to be persuaded that God’s holiness means that God must send them to Hell if they don’t repent:

Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. ²²And of some have compassion, making a difference: ²³And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.  Jude 1:21-23

Jesus spoke about Hell more often than He spoke about heaven.  We must be ready to show others God’s love by the way we treat our families and other church members, and they need to see our love for them.  Having done that, however, we must be ready to show the holiness of God and explain His utter hatred of any and all sin, that's what “hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” means.  No matter how good a person may try to be, the Bible teaches that compared to God, the best we can be is no good at all.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags:  Isaiah 64:6a

People have a hard time accepting the fact that they can’t be good enough to satisfy God, so God gave us examples.  Fathers love their children, of course, but it isn’t the same as mother’s love.  God uses mothers together with fathers to show His Holiness.  My mom knew that charity, which is undeserved love in action,

“Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.  Charity never faileth.”  I Corinthians 13:6-8a

Her love never failed - she always loved me no matter what I did and rejoiced when I did well, but she did not tolerate misbehavior or disobedience.  She loved me while hating my sins.

That’s hard to do – most people find it hard to condemn sin without also condemning the soul who committed the sin.  When we tell lost people about their sin, we must be careful to convince them that God loves them in spite of their sin.  Mom showed me God’s desire that His people strive toward His holiness (Lev. 19:2, He. 12:14, 1 Pe. 1:15-16) by correcting me when I did wrong and explaining how I could do better while showing me God’s love every single day!  Seeing her love made it easy to believe in God’s love.

My dad was much more focused on ensuring my obedience than my mother was.  God warns fathers to be careful not to overdo emphasis on God’s holiness:

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.  Colossians 3:21

Some churches preach the “buddy god” who loves everybody so much that he’d never send anyone to hell - repentance and turning from sin aren’t needed.  A love-only message is meaningless because it doesn’t define sin or tell people that God hates sin (Ps. 7:11b) as my parents taught me.  How can people seek forgiveness without being made aware of how much God hates their sins (Ro. 3:10)?

Others preach the “bully god” by hammering away on God’s holiness without emphasizing His love.  The bully god wrote a bunch of rules in the Bible which the leadership interprets and extends.  The bully god watches your every thought, word, and deed so he can whack you with the pastor’s help when you get out of line.  No forgiveness for you, miserable miscreant!

Holiness without love is repugnant because it’s too harsh.  Sinners don’t want to hear about holiness alone because they don’t want to feel hopelessly bad about themselves.  Showing God’s love gives hope and helps sinners accept God’s holiness.  Sinners can’t understand why Jesus had to die on the cross unless they’re taught to cling to His love.

Without knowing God’s love, people can’t feel confident of His care for us (1 Pe. 5:7) or of His promise never to leave us (He. 13:5).  Jesus love for us keeps us following Him because we want Him to be pleased with us (2 Cor. 5:14).  We follow His holiness because we love Him.  You can’t have one without the other.

God insists that we love one another fervently (1 Pe. 1:22) to remind each other of His love for us – that’s how lost people know that we belong to Him (Jn. 13:35)!  When we give the Gospel, nobody cares how much we know about God unless they know how much we care about them.

Getting the right balance between God’s love and God’s holiness for each child is the hardest part of being a parent or a pastor.  One reason God requires pastors to have children (Titus 1:6) is to help them learn the balance.  They can’t help young Christians develop without learning how young children develop.

Love, Holiness, and Marriage

Love and holiness are the keys to marriage because salvation and marriage both require that we die to our former lives.  We must die to our sinful lives to be born again into union with Christ (Ro. 7:4-6).  In order for two people to become one as Jesus expects (Mt. 19:4-6, Mk. 10:6-9), they must both die to their self-centered individual lives in favor of giving everything (Ro. 12:1) to the one-flesh family unit that God expects His people to form and build.

Who ordained salvation?  God.  Who ordained marriage?  God.  Jesus loved us enough to create us even though He knew He would have to die to give us a way to be cleaned from our sins so we could fellowship with God in Heaven instead of burning forever in the lake of fire.  How did His love for us play into the way He ordained marriage?  The Bible teaches that Christianity is a thinking faith which is based on reason:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD:  Isaiah 1:18

Let’s be logical for a moment.  Men, Jesus valued us and loved us enough to create us even though He knew He would have to die to save us from our sins.  When you build something, don’t you feel affection for it?  Let’s draw on the emotional nature God puts in all of us along with logic.  Mothers, you know how you feel about your children.  Would a truly Christian mother do anything to harm her children on purpose?

Would a God that loved us enough to die for us create men and women in such a way that there was no way we could enter into joyous marriages?  Did God design the powerful drives He put into men and women to draw us into marriages which will bless us if we follow His plan?  Or did a God who loved us enough to die to save us from our sins on purpose design us so that men and women can’t find joy in entering into long-term commitments to create safe spaces where their children can grow?  Certainly not:

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?  Matthew 7:11

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.  Proverbs 18:22

God gives good things to those that ask Him.  Salvation, marriages, and wives are good things.  We must ask for salvation based on the salvation instructions He put in His Word and we must ask Him how to have good marriages by reading the marriage instructions He put in His Word.

God Himself uses a mother’s love to show both His holiness and His unending love:

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.  Isaiah 49:15

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.  Hosea 4:6

God will never forget us or stop loving us, but we must study and follow His laws or He’ll reject us.  If we try to go to Heaven our own way, we go to Hell when we die.  If we try to do marriage our own way, we can make life Hell on earth.  We must follow God’s one program for both salvation and for marriage!

There’s a story of a young man who disgraced his family and left town.  He came to himself (Lk. 15:17) but wasn’t sure if he’d be accepted back into the fold.  He wrote his mother saying he’d take a train through town.  If she wanted to see him, “Tie a yellow ribbon on the old oak tree.”

As the train came near, the conductor saw him weep and heard the story. “I can’t look,” the young man said.  As the train rounded the bend, the conductor told him, “Open your eyes!  There’s a ribbon on every branch (Lk. 15:18-27)!”  His mother loved him and wanted to see him in spite of all the wrong he’d done.

Pr. 31:1 shows that King Lemuel’s mother taught him how to care for his future wife.  A mother can teach her sons how to honor wives and teach her daughters to demand respect from men (Tit. 2:3-5), but she can’t teach her children at all unless their father teaches them to honor and respect her by showing his respect for her daily and commanding their children to “call her blessed”:

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. ²⁹Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.  Proverbs 31:28-29

Mrs. Lemuel expected her son to teach his children that they had the very best mother in the entire world!  Children are born selfish; they won’t honor their mother unless they see their father constantly honor her as taught in the Song of Solomon and learn that he demands that they follow his example of honoring her.

Over and over, the Bible compares the relationship between husband and wife to the relationship between God and His people; God our Father welcomes us back when we return to Him.  Mothers cannot fully reflect God’s love because they’re sinful human beings, but a godly mother’s love shows us the high level of love God expects husbands to give freely to wives and children.

Being honored, valued, and appreciated by husband and children nourishes wives.  Seeing their father do it teaches sons how to honor their future wives and other women.  Their father’s love for their mother shows his family a picture of how Christ loved the church, which is a very high standard indeed:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; Ephesians 5:25

Although a man should be ready to die to protect his wife from any danger, God generally expects a man to give his life day by day to nourish and cherish her.  I earn so much per hour.  When we spend that much on our home, children, or church, I have freely given one hour of my life to walking the path of service to my wife (Mk. 9:35, 10:44) that He wants me to walk (Ro. 12:1).

Watching their father honor them and their mother teaches daughters that God requires that all men treat “The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity  (1 Timothy 5:2).”  Girls must be taught to insist that men deal with them in purity as God commands or they’re apt to fall into sexual sin.

Everyone bases what they do on what they believe about God.  Atheists try to convince themselves that God doesn’t exist so they can do whatever they want without worrying about what God thinks about it (Ps. 14:1, 53:1).  Christians who believe that God is good read the Bible looking for keys to happiness.

Theology, the study of God, can be complicated.  Here’s a 10-word theology for marriage and for practical living:

https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2017/10/10-word-theology-for-marriage-and.html