Christian Living

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“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:11-12)
I start my day in a place I call the stoop. Now I know that the step down to my carport area on the side of my house is not actually what people would call a stoop. At the stoop is I take place for meditation in the early hour of my day. The word stoop means “a posture in which the head and shoulders are habitually bent forward.” So the stoop is not the place I am sitting but the posture of my attitude when I am there. On the stoop, I am in a posture of humility before my God. On the stoop, I read, listen, and meditate on the Word of God to help in governing my day. I close my stoop time in prayer to reinforce the truths I have learned from the Spirit I have chosen to be led by. It is the right way to start a day, and the blessings I receive are far greater than the dimes or nickels I might gather during the day.
The rut or routine that the days follow is seldom ho-hum as the opportunities are all around me, and shamefully, I do not exploit them properly. Despite the missteps, I realize and live each day glorifying the Lord as all is His, and the share I receive He has given me dominion over. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31) It is my responsibility to take what is placed in my path and use it in recognition of His Majesty over it. This is how to live a meaningful life, to follow the Lord in the way that He would have me go.
This morning on the stoop, I was looking at Psalm 103:11-12. I was trying to reach a comprehension of the vastness of God’s love. I couldn’t, and I wonder if a man who only knows this world can. David wrote this Psalm, and it is said that he was a man who searched to know God’s heart. I am sure that is an eternity long endeavor. David gave us a measuring stick in this verse to understand the vastness of God’s love in verse 12. “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Anywhere in God’s creation, the heavens and the earth and beyond, that a man places himself, the east and the west are so far apart that they never meet. The two points are constantly distancing themselves from each other.
I have to wonder how I or anyone can receive the gift of having our sin debt paid by the sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son on the cross as the payment of death for our sins and not be moved to a humble state of falling on our face before the Lord God. Jesus, the holy, perfect, righteous Lamb of God, paid the wage of our sin. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Jesus, a God, is the likeness of a man who would willingly give His life for our sin that we, by our acceptance of His sacrifice, can receive eternal life in God’s Kingdom. A man could not do that; neither can He comprehend it.
One cannot receive the free gift of having their sin forgiven for all of eternity and not be changed by the greatness of love that would do that. Man cannot even forgive one another. Oh, man can forgive, a man can live with a transgressor and look beyond past transgressions, but man cannot forget those past transgressions. I can’t, and you can’t. A break of trust remains broken and never is fully repaired. We can forgive, but we cannot forgive completely. But God loves you so much that He will forgive you completely. “For I will be merciful to their iniquities, And I will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:12) God’s eternal love forgives sin eternally. Just try and comprehend either end of that.
People banter the word love around, and I don’t think most can comprehend what love really is. I think so much of their proclamation is tied to the moment’s blissful passing emotions and has no real, lasting root. I don’t think a person of themself can of their own fully love one another. Looking at the way people mistreat themselves, I do not believe they can fully love themselves. That’s a wild statement I know because I have known plenty who are deeply in love with themselves. Their love of self is not complete as they are often just as abusive to themselves.
My point is that in the beginning was God. (Genesis 1:1) For our purpose, God is the beginning. We know little of the eternity before, but whatever that is, God is the beginning. All else that we know came from God, as He is the Creator. God’s greatest attribute is love, and therefore He is love, and the example of His love is the only true love that we have known. Adam and Eve may have understood the love of God, but they lost it when sin came into their life and fractured their existence with a sin-nature. The sin-nature corrupted every part of humanity and profoundly affected all of God’s creation. Humanity lost the ability to display an unconditional agape love, which is the love that God has and gives. Because that love, God’s love, is foreign to us, we can only copy His love without its full sincerity. I have known some tremendous Christian personalities that were people of great love, but it was still not God’s unconditional love for us.
Jesus gives us His love. He gave it to us in the expression of the cross when He died for our sins even before we knew of Him. Even before we accepted Him, and even before we followed Him. We couldn’t understand it, we have struggled with it, and know that He has given it to us, we live in that love towards Him. We share that love of God with everyone because we know we understand their worth. Jesus died for them just as He died for us. All were worth the price of His precious blood. The Apostle John plainly states that if we do not know the love of God, then we do not know God. “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
When it comes to a complete love for God, our relationships between people are unconditional love and must stand on three legs. The first leg is Christ’s love, the love that he gives us. The second leg is the love that we give back to God. That unconditional love that enables you to love God completely. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5) The third leg is the love you give to others, your wife, family, friends, and neighbors. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39)
If the love Jesus gives you is missing, then the love you have to offer will not be an enduring love. This is why I think so many marriages, relationships, and acts of charity, do not stand the test of time and are stubble in the fire of judgment in eternity. All love that does not come from God’s love lacks the root of God’s incomprehensible agape love.
If God’s loving-kindness forces His mercy to forgive our transgressions as far as the east is from the west, then God’s love must be bigger than our transgressions. If the east is farther from the west than we can imagine, then the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love are totally beyond our realization. We can ponder all our life throughout eternity and never fully grasp how great our God is. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19)
Thomas N Kirkpatrick
First Baptist Church of Durant, February 20, 2019

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