{"id":269,"date":"2015-06-24T03:31:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T03:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicanconnection.com\/?p=269"},"modified":"2015-12-10T01:50:05","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T01:50:05","slug":"pentecost-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anglicanconnection.com\/pentecost-love\/","title":{"rendered":"PENTECOST: LOVE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span class=\"yellow\"><strong><span class='et-dropcap'>I<\/span>n his recent book, <em>The Road to Character<\/em><\/strong>,<\/span> David Brooks observes,<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><em>For many people, religious and nonreligious, love provides a glimpse of some realm beyond the edge of what we know. It also in a more practical sense enlarges the heart. The act of yearning somehow makes the heart more open and more free. Love is like a plow that opens up hard ground and allows things to grow\u2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<footer><span style=\"color: #333333;\">&#8211;\u00a0<cite>The Road to Character (p.173)<\/cite>.<\/span><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span class=\"yellow\"><strong>Love.<\/strong><\/span> When we stop and reflect on life, most of us acknowledge our need for love \u2013 be it marital love, familial love or filial love. But even then we are not satisfied for long, for we know that this kind of love will never satisfy the depths of our soul. Nor will it last.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Douglas Coupland in his <em>Life After God<\/em> confessed:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><em>Now\u2014here is my secret. I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God\u2014that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<footer><span style=\"color: #333333;\">&#8211;\u00a0<cite>Life After God <\/cite>.<\/span><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><strong><span class=\"yellow\">Consider Peter\u2019s words in his <em>First Letter<\/em>:<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><em>Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of <strong>the grace<\/strong> that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory<\/em> Life After God.<\/span><\/p>\n<footer><span style=\"color: #333333;\">&#8211; <cite>1 Peter 1:10-11<\/cite>.<\/span><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Notice the words, <strong><em>the grace that was to be yours<\/em><\/strong><em>\u2026<\/em> It is the promise of God\u2019s love. It is a love that is humbling and disturbing, for God\u2019s love is unmerited on our part and costly on God\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">God\u2019s love involved the greatest sacrifice of all \u2013 the pure for the stained, the powerful for the weak, the glorious for the inglorious. As Peter tells us here, God had long planned to do what he had to, to reveal a love that is far beyond our imagination, a love that would rescue us from his just condemnation of our sin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Notice how Peter puts it. He tells us that the prophets of old anticipated God\u2019s grace, his act of love, and that the apostles and the gospel-preachers proclaimed it. God\u2019s action in and through his eternal Son was developed over centuries. What the prophets of old <em>searched <\/em>and <em>inquired<\/em> about concerning God\u2019s Messiah and his suffering, has now been <em>announced<\/em> through the gospel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span class=\"yellow\"><strong>God\u2019s love and the salvation he holds out to us<\/strong><\/span> is found in the sufferings and subsequent glory of the Messiah. <em>Jesus<\/em> is his name; <em>Messiah<\/em> or <em>Christ<\/em> is his title. His <em>sufferings<\/em> and his <em>subsequent glory <\/em>have made our rescue possible. As Peter goes on to write in chapter 2:24, Christ\u2019s sufferings were sustained when he <em>bore our sins in his body on a tree<\/em>. Messiah\u2019s \u2018glory\u2019 occurred when God raised him from the dead and gave him a position of honor and power.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span class=\"yellow\"><strong>Two great themes<\/strong><\/span> that bubble throughout the Bible are the \u2018sufferings\u2019 and the \u2018glories\u2019 of the Messiah. Isaiah, Jeremiah and other prophets had important things to say to their generation, but ultimately they were speaking about the coming of Messiah and the unfathomable blessings he would bring. The Old Testament prophesied the Messiah, the New Testament proclaims him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">No wonder John Newton could pen the words, <em>Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me\u2026.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">When our own faith is awakened afresh to the reality of God\u2019s love \u2013 a love that is deeper and more satisfying than any human love \u2013 we will surely want to live in it and live it out. Indeed, when we experience the riches of God\u2019s love we will want to do great things for him.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>n his recent book, The Road to Character, David Brooks observes, For many people, religious and nonreligious, love provides a glimpse of some realm beyond the edge of what we know. It also in a more practical sense enlarges the heart. The act of yearning somehow makes the heart more open and more free. Love [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>PENTECOST: LOVE - The Anglican Connection<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/anglicanconnection.com\/pentecost-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PENTECOST: LOVE - The Anglican Connection\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"n his recent book, The Road to Character, David Brooks observes, For many people, religious and nonreligious, love provides a glimpse of some realm beyond the edge of what we know. 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