Imperishable Inheritance

If you forced me to pick two words that aptly described Chris­tian­ity and the Chris­t­ian it would be “truth” and “love.” By the lov­ing pro­vi­sion of a gra­cious God we have been redeemed, and we have been set free from dark­ness and lies to see and embrace the truth. It is a won­der­ful area of med­i­ta­tion and con­tem­pla­tion, and Peter describes what the Chris­t­ian should be:

“Since you have in obe­di­ence to the truth puri­fied your souls for a sin­cere love of the brethren, fer­vently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is per­ish­able but imper­ish­able, that is, through the liv­ing and endur­ing word of God.” (1 Peter 1:22–23)

The dif­fi­culty becomes when we try and do the two together. I’m speak­ing of how we present Christ and his vic­to­ri­ous atone­ment to non-believers. It is a del­i­cate bal­ance that takes time, matu­rity, and the Holy Spirit to get down. Paul’s words to the Eph­esians was that they needed to be “speak­ing the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (4:15).

Often times we can become full of pas­sion, frus­tra­tion, or maybe we are being per­se­cuted for the gospel; and it is at those times that the con­cept of being lov­ing becomes dif­fi­cult. Being redeemed we must also remem­ber that: “Hatred stirs up strife, But love cov­ers all trans­gres­sions” (Prov 10:12), and that we need to put love on dis­play for the unbe­liev­ers to see the glory and the joy of fol­low­ing Jesus in all we say and do. Peter says after his apolo­getic man­i­festo that we should defend the faith “with gen­tle­ness and rev­er­ence” (1 Pet 3:15).

John wrote prob­a­bly the great­est dis­course ever on true love in his first epis­tle, and he makes the point that “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). This love should spur us to take the ulti­mate mes­sage of love to those who don’t know what true love is. I love the words by Stu­art Townsend in his hymn “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”.

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all mea­sure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure