Dec 31
God is love. It is who He is. Matt Chandler dissects how God shows His love for us through Jesus.
Scripture References
7.Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8.Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9.This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10.This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
18.As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
1.Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
6.You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7.Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8.But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
1.Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2.the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3.regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life1:3 Or who according to the flesh was a descendant of David, 4.and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power1:4 Or was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5.Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from1:5 Or that is faith for his name’s sake. 6.And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7.To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s Longing to Visit Rome
8.First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9.God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10.in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
11.I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12.that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. 13.I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,1:13 The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family; also in 7:1, 4; 8:12, 29; 10:1; 11:25; 12:1; 15:14, 30; 16:14, 17. that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
14.I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15.That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
16.For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17.For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,1:17 Or is from faith to faith just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”1:17 Hab. 2:4
God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18.The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19.since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20.For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21.For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23.and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24.Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25.They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26.Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27.In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28.Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29.They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30.slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31.they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32.Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
5.The arrogant cannot stand
in your presence.
You hate all who do wrong;6.you destroy those who tell lies.
The bloodthirsty and deceitful
you, Lord, detest.
10.For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
16.For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17.For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
10.The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
14.but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
4.In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
Matt Chandler
Senior pastor of Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, and the executive director of the board of the Acts 29 Network