I was born in a house where my mother taught me the best-known Bible verse in the world:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
Lost people sometimes tell me God couldn’t possibly love them because of all their sins. They know the difference between right and wrong, they “shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness (Ro. 2:15).” The Bible teaches that such people need to be persuaded that God loves them enough to forgive them because they already know that their sins have violated His holiness:
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
Once they understand God’s love enough to truly love Him, they’ll follow His commands because they want to please Him. As the Apostle Paul put it, “For the love of Christ constraineth us: (2 Cor. 5:14).”
Some people are saved by being told about Hell, others by being shown that God loves them. We’ll discuss God’s love first because “keeping ourselves in the love of God” is the foundation of marriage. If wife and husband both bathe themselves in God’s love, it’s easier for them to love each other and everyone else in the church. That’s how we show the world that we belong to Jesus:
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. John 13:35
To be fair to people who doubt God’s love, it is hard to understand how a Holy, perfect God can love wretched sinners like you and me (Ps. 8:4, Heb. 2:6). God knew that, so He not only told us in His Word that He loves us, He gave us mothers to show every one of us how His unconditional love works.
I understood sin because my mother objected and punished me when I disobeyed. I learned forgiveness because my mother loved me enough to forgive me. I understood confession and repentance (2 Jn. 1:9) because life went better when I admitted my wrongs and tried not to do it again.
Mom and Dad taught me what I needed to know to accept Christ as my Savior when I was in 2nd grade. I loved Jesus because He loved me enough (Ro. 5:8) to accept the punishment for my sins – taking the punishment for my brothers’ sins was hard for me to think about.
I didn’t realize that Jesus loved me far more than “just” being willing to take on the evil of all my sins and lose His close fellowship with His Father (Ps. 22:1, Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34). I thought that when Adam soiled himself through sin and a perfect God could no longer associate with polluted Adam, Jesus agreed that He would become sin for us so that we could be washed clean enough to be with God in Heaven. That’s because I was a child when I accepted Christ. As the Apostle Paul put it:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I Corinthians 13:11
I was 14 when I saw the difference between how true Christians behave and how everybody else behaves. Once I understood the difference between the saved and the unsaved, I had to choose a side as Joshua and Elijah chose (Jos 24:15, 1 Ki. 18:21). I remember standing in the school hallway and deciding that I really did love Jesus, so I couldn’t be friends with some of the people in the school. At some point, every Christian must decide whether to follow the crowd or to stand for Christ (Eze. 22:30).
Years later, I understood that Jesus knew Adam would sin before He said “let there be light” to start creating the world. Rev. 13:8 speaks of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Jesus knew He would have to die before He created Adam, yet He loved all of us enough to create us anyway!
It’s hard to understand loving us enough to die for us long before we were even born so God shows us by having mothers be willing to risk death to give their children life. Before modern medicine, a woman had roughly 98.5% chance of surviving a pregnancy. That sounds like death in childbirth was unlikely, but without birth control, women had so many pregnancies that 1 woman in 8 died in childbirth.
Every girl knew someone who had died in childbirth. Every girl knew that she would walk the valley of the shadow of death for each child (Ge. 35:18, 1 Sam. 4:20), yet women wanted to marry and bear children (Ge.30:1, Lk. 1:25) anyway. Women want children badly enough to risk death; Jesus wanted so badly to create us that He chose certain death!
Jesus knew He would weep when people He loved wouldn’t accept His offer of salvation (Is. 53:3, Mt. 23:37, Lk. 13:34) and that He would have to die to save us from our sins, yet He created the world which led to my birth anyway. I was born before antibiotics could fight childbed infections. My mother gladly risked her life to give me life and did it again and again for my brothers. That’s the woman’s part of Ge. 5:1-2 “in the likeness of God made he him,” and “he [that is, God] called their name Adam” to include Eve.
I thanked my mother for teaching me about God’s love for me and for showing me her love (Is. 49:15) so that I could believe in God’s love. I thanked her for feeding me and changing my diapers to keep me alive, but she died before I matured enough to realize that I should also thank her for risking her life to give me life. Let your mother know you appreciate her wanting you in spite of the peril and pain she’d bear giving birth to you (Pr. 31:28-29). Then thank Jesus for creating you in spite of knowing that He would have to die to take the punishment for your sins (Jn. 15:3).
Death in childbirth is less common than it was, but happens. Your mother risked her life to give you life, shed her blood in painful labor to birth you, then labored to keep you alive; Jesus died to give you more abundant life (Jn. 10:10) followed by life eternal (Mt 25:46, Jn. 4:36, 12:25, 17:3). Thank them both.
What did you do to earn Jesus’ giving His life and His blood (He. 9:12, 9:22) to pay the penalty for your sins and my sins? Nothing. There is nothing we can do to earn salvation (Is. 64:6, Ro. 3:10), it is an undeserved gift of God (Eph. 2:8-9) He died to give us because He loves us (Ez. 33:11, Ro. 5:8).
If someone gave you a birthday gift, would you hand over money to pay for it? That would refuse the gift. Trying to get to heaven by being good, being religious, going to church, tithing, doing good deeds, is not only impossible (Ro. 3:11), trying to earn your way into heaven blocks you from accepting Jesus’ free offer of salvation from your sins (Gal. 5:4). You’re trying to pay for a feely-offered gift whose price is far more than anyone could ever pay.
What did you do to earn your mother’s risking her life to give you life and then pouring her life into keeping you alive and teaching you how to behave as an adult? Nothing. She risked her life before she knew anything about you. She gave her life freely based on the emotional drives God put into her and looked forward eagerly to your birth as she felt God forming you within her womb (Is. 49:5).
We know that some mothers harm their children. Is that what God wanted? Of course not, this is because of the sin which came into the world when Adam refused to confess his sin and would not ask God to forgive him. God asked Adam, “Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat (Ge. 3:11)?” We Christians know that God has promised to forgive our sins if we confess:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
God doesn’t change (Mal. 3:6). God would have forgiven Adam if he’d confessed. Instead of admitting his sin, Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit and blamed God for giving him Eve!
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. Genesis 3:12
People forget that God told Adam to keep the garden (Gen. 2:15), which meant to protect it. Gen. 3:6 says “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Note two important words “with her!” People also forget that Adam was there with her the entire time! Why did he let the serpent deceive his wife? Why didn’t he protect his wife whom God had trusted to his care?
Be realistic, men, blaming your wives when things go wrong won’t help you any more than it helped Adam, you are the leader, so it’s on you. God designed women’s minds and hearts carefully so that for the most part, a mother’s love for her children illustrates His love for us, His children. Adam’s sin brought so much sin into the world that a few mothers fail to love their children as God planned.
We’ve seen mothers reject their children when men reject the mothers after getting them pregnant outside marriage. Women blame the father even though they wanted children badly enough to stop taking birth control pills without telling anyone. Rejected mothers often reject a child who looks or acts enough like the father to remind her that the child’s father sinned against her by taking her outside marriage even though she had wanted his baby.
Even if the father stays with the woman, he may resent the child because in his mind, the mother got herself pregnant by stopping her pills without his agreement. The mother got a baby, but at what cost?
And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. Psalm 106:15
In several cases we know, the father accepted later children when he had agreed to be a father. His resentment of his oldest and his acceptance of his younger children are evident to anyone who knows the family even years later. What could we say when relatives asked why the kids were treated differently?
God loves fathers, mothers, and children in such cases, but the parents’ violation of His holiness by breaking His rules about sex brings leanness into their souls. These situations are caused by the birth control pill. Before the pill, a man knew that if he came together with a woman, he’d be a father within a year. Couples can now “play house” and pretend that God doesn’t care that they’re breaking His laws.
If a woman’s on the pill, a man feels she expects to have sex, so why not with him? If she isn’t on the pill, she can say “No! Not unless we’re married, and I won’t marry you unless you grow up and get a job.” That’s taught in Ge. 24:67. If a man’s offer to a woman doesn’t include food, clothing, and shelter, it’s not Biblical. If he can’t pay for her, all he can do is play with her and discard her. God hates that!
A man may have some vague head knowledge about pregnancy, but deep down in his heart, where it really counts, a man doesn't believe he has anything to do with making babies. A baby clearly belongs to the mother - she had it last - but what has her baby to do with him? Remember the old saying - "The time my father got me, his mind was not on me." What was he thinking when you happened? Was he thinking at all?
God made men possessive to help give children fathers. If a man has a strong emotional, financial, logical, and psychological connection to a woman, she chooses to belong to him, and encourages and establishes his possessiveness of her as taught in the Song of Solomon before she persuades him to agree with her becoming pregnant, her children will also belong to him. If she won’t belong to him, the kids are hers, and she can look after them herself.
From the beginning, God's love and God's salvation are undeserved gifts of God. Most mothers show how His love works. We should love Him because He first loved us (Ro. 5:8). His love should drive us to serve Him as He requires of us (2 Cor. 5:14). God never bullies us into obedience; He always lets us choose (Joshua 24:25) whether to obey His commands or not. He yearns for obedience (De. 5:29, 30:10), but He never forces us. The choice is ours.
Have you thanked your mother today for risking her life to give you life and then pouring her life into you? And thanked Jesus for dying to save you?
The Apostle Paul pointed out that we do the work of spreading the Gospel because our love for Christ “constraineth us,” that is, makes us do it. We serve Him because our love for Him makes us want to please Him.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; II Corinthians 5:14a
In the same way, our love for our spouses should constrain us to do whatever we can to please him or her. If lost people see married Christians working to please each other out of love, they’ll often ask how we can handle the problems the other person causes. That gives us a chance to talk about God’s love and God’s forgiveness. God forgives us, so God expects us to forgive other people in the same way He forgave us.
This article shows how God demonstrates His holiness so that we can all see it:
https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2021/04/god-demonstrates-his-holiness-in-way.html
No comments:
Post a Comment