The Love of God Part 10

THE LOVE OF GOD IS MANIFESTED THROUGH WHAT HE DID:-- "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9). God the Father set the example. He does not demand that his children manifest the love of God by what they do without having first demonstrated His love by His own action.

Take this "with a grain of salt," but it illustrates the point:-- I once heard of a preacher who had apparently had been used to making altar calls and who got a job as a life-saver at a swimming place. One day he saw a man out in the water frantically waving his hand, but instead of swimming out to save him, the preacher-turned-life-guard simply said, "...I see that hand".

He acknowledged that the man had a need -- BUT DID NOTHING ABOUT IT! Of course the story is probably quite fictional, but it does illustrate how that simply acknowledging that someone has a need does no good, unless it is backed up with the deeds necessary to help extract that person from their plight.

When God saw a lost world about to plunge under the raging waves of eternal damnation, He did more than say, "I see that hand"! -- "I see that need"! -- He gave the best and most that He could by sending His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. His Son saved us, but was Himself drowned in the billows of the Lake of Fire, suffering all of its pangs in our stead.

As I see it, the fact that Jesus was cast into the Lake of Fire in behalf of a lost world is typified in the experience of Jonah, who said: "Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me" (Jonah 2:3).

Was it not this unimaginably painful baptism into the Lake of Fire in our behalf that Jesus anticipated in the Garden of Gethsemane, and which made Him "sweat was as it were great drops of blood" (Luke 22:44). Yes, as a man He no doubt shuddered at the prospect of the physical agony awaiting him on Golgatha, but I suspect it was the prospect of enduring the immeasurable agonies of the Lake of Fire that cause Him to pray: "O my Father, if it be possible, let THIS CUP pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39 ).

Further, when the writer to the Hebrews says that "Jesus.. was made.. the suffering of death... that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man," (Heb. 2:9), I believe that this "tasting of death" probably meant that Jesus was destined of God to "taste the Second Death" of the Lake of Fire -- for every man!

In using the figure of Christ's baptism into the Lake of Fire being the fulfillment of Jonah's being cast into the sea to save those on-board his ship, as I see it, this is the baptism to which Christ referred when He said prior to His suffering: "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (Luke 12:50).  He saw that only after He was baptized into that awful suffering could the fullness of his salvation be accomplished in all men throughout the entire world.

When Jesus said to the sons of Zebedee, "Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mat 20:22), was He partly alluding to the fact that when it came to the suffering beyond physical death -- when it came to suffering the Second Death for a lost world -- only HE could do this. Only the Son of God could suffer the whole of Man's Eternal punishment -- endure all of its awful billows -- drink all of its immeasurable dregs -- and return therefrom. Only He could do this, because He was God Incarnate. I assert that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HE DID when "He by the grace of God tasted death for every man -- and it was by this deed greater than any mere man could do that the love of God was manifested in the Person of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ!