Tag: love

You are loved

One of our most fundamental needs is to be loved. Oh the joy of knowing you are loved! You can put up with anything if you know you are truly loved. How our heart hungers and longs for love! “Love is (almost) all you need”. But a plaintive song in “Half a Sixpence” laments, “Where is love?” How many hearts are burdened by lovelessness! We appreciate any kindness shown to us, but oh! the deep personal longing to love and to be loved! And what anguish when relationships break up and love is lost!

One of the huge blessings of the Christian faith is to know that God loves us, and it is uniquely satisfying because his love is eternal, faithful, strong, forgiving, never-ending. God’s love starts in eternity past – before the creation of the world: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” he says. What comfort that gives the believer! “Underneath are the everlasting arms”: his love enfolds us in a warm eternal embrace.

How do we know? Jesus came from “the bosom of the Father” to tell us, and even to show us how great is his love. The Bible tells us, “God is love” (1 John 4.8) and love radiates unceasingly from God as the warmth radiates from the sun. As the children’s song says, “You can’t stop God from loving you”!

Most people think that God would love them if they were really, really good people, but they know they aren’t so they’re afraid God is against them. But Jesus teaches us that God even loves people who he calls sinners. Jesus’ self-giving on the Cross, for us unworthy sinners, is the great demonstration of how much he loves us. “God proves his love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8). “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13). “I am the Good Shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10.11). God has shown how much he loves you by sending his Son to die on the Cross, so that through his sacrifice your sins may be forgiven, and you may be welcomed into a loving relationship with him forever.

The amazing thing about God’s love is that you do not have to earn it. You just have to believe it and turn to him, opening your heart to receive him as your Lord, your Saviour, and your Friend.

This is how Jesus stated it: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16). God’s love is a giving love: he gave his Son up for us; the Son gave up his life for us; on that basis, God is eager to give you eternal life as a “free gift” (Romans 6.23) if you will come to the risen Christ and receive him. “He who has the Son, has eternal life” (1 John 5.12).

How do you receive Christ? You do that by praying to God, right where you are; he hears you as you tell him you are sorry for your sins, you are turning away from them, and you want him to come into your heart to make you a true child of God. He will answer, because he loves you and desires to save and forgive you. If you are sincere, you will see how he answers that prayer, changing your life profoundly as you become a follower of Jesus.

Clive Every-Clayton

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What we need

What do humans need to find fulfilment?

The basics are food and drink, shelter and warmth and caring companionship. 

Beyond that, however, there are existential needs that must be met. There are at least three: our minds need understanding; our hearts need love; and our wills need purpose. That summarises the needs of our personal nature, whose three components are our intellect, emotion, and will. To that we may add our conscience which has complex needs of its own as we shall see.

Let’s begin with our minds: we need understanding of the basics of our human existence, and if we are misled, if we think something is true when it is wrong, we are in trouble. So we need education, and that education needs to be correct. This is already a serious difficulty, since fake news and unsound philosophies seem to be everywhere; even our own personal ideas are not necessarily wise and true. It would be great if we had an all-wise teacher to guide us.

Then our hearts need to feel loved. Some are blessed with loving parents or partners; but many are those who suffer from neglect, rejection, even hatred from those who ought to give them loving care. A lot of psychological pain is due to lack of love, and it is not at all easy to find the love that we all need. It would be great if there was someone who always really loved us. 

Thirdly, we need to have something to do which will give us stimulation and satisfaction – some purpose to which we can give ourselves and spend our energies. Boredom is a killer; it brings its own lot of psychological hang-ups. We need to know that what we do is not only something we like, but something of value. Our talents vary, but something worth living for is what our soul really needs. All the better if it fits into some overarching great purpose. It would be great if we knew what that purpose was.

Faced with imperfect solutions to our deep personal needs, we suffer – some more than others. If we fall short in any of these areas, or if we fail in some way, our conscience multiplies feelings of shame or guilt which compound our psychological disarray. Is there a way forward? 

Do we have to yield to the despair of a meaningless and frustrating existence? Is this what God has made us for? Isn’t there anything better? Could God provide what our soul needs and longs for?

What did Jesus say? “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14.6); “I have come that people may have life abundant”. “The one who believes in me”, he says, will as it were experience “streams of living water” flowing through him (John 7.37-38). Let’s consider this.

Our understanding needs essential truth: truth about who we are, where we come from, why we are here and where we are going. Our Creator God alone can give us that essential truth, and it comes through the One who said, “I am the truth”! God renders us this extraordinary and vital service! We do well to study Jesus’ teaching and commit to following him.

He is not only “the truth”, but he is “the way” to God: he leads us to know God, coming into relationship with him, discovering his purpose for us. Our Creator’s purpose essentially comes down to knowing that he loves us and forgives all our sins and failures; he will help us to live what is true “abundant life” (John 10.10).

The next blog post will develop that.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Walking with God

Our relationship with God is likened in the Bible to walking with God. Right at the earliest time in humanity there was at least one, Enoch, who “walked with God” (Genesis 5.24). In fact the New Testament uses the idea of walking to depict one’s way of life. For example, there are the unbelievers who “walk in darkness” (John 8.12); indeed, Paul describes them as walking “in the futility of their minds” before they came to know the Lord. Subsequently, they who “are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 4.17, 5.8).

This theme, recurring through the bible, teaches us something important: the Christian life is not just believing some facts or doctrines, nor just in practicing some religious acts. It involves maintaining a relationship with the Lord: walking with him means sharing our lives with him, talking to him about everything that worries us, asking his help in all kinds of situations. 

This is both a blessing and a challenge. To share our lives with Jesus is the way we show our love and attachment to him as our loving Saviour. It’s a way of speaking of our intimate prayer life. If you ever go for a solitary walk, that’s an opportunity to literally walk with God, opening up your heart to him, sharing your joys, your sorrows, your temptations, and your plans with him. It can be a time to offload your burdens, to entrust your difficulties into God’s hands, and to renew your confidence in his promises to help you.

But there is a challenge here too. 1 John 1.6, 7 points this up: “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth”. But in verse 7 he adds “if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another” and with God himself. He goes on to encourage his readers to confess their sins to God, for as we keep close to God in our walk, we need to be cleansed of any deviations from the right path. So walking with God, keeping up a living relationship with him, will keep us from erring into sinful behaviours.

Here is a verse that is worth memorising : Paul, writing to converts in Colossians 2.6,7, exhorts them: “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving”. This reminds us of how we started out on the Christian walk – we “received Christ” as our saviour and Lord. So we keep on, becoming more established in the faith, and growing in our obedience to our Lord.

To other believers he wrote similarly, “as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, … do so more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4.1). Let’s learn to maintain an open and clear relationship with the one who loved us and gave himself for us, and is now living within us by his Spirit. So we will become more and more like him, so as to “walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2.6).

Clive Every-Clayton

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A love relationship with God?

God’s purpose and desire in creating people in his likeness is that we experience a harmonious relationship with him; this is the real purpose of life, ignored or disregarded by so many.

And this harmonious relationship should be one of love! God is love, and he made persons in his likeness that he could love and that could love him in return. But loving God seems bizarre: so many people deny his existence, avoid him, or even hate him. But since loving God is our raison d’être, those who miss out on that harmonious relationship end up truly frustrated. Indeed, those who spurn God’s loving presence wander aimless, lost, and confused – and their bad relationship with God is the source of their inner distress.

The Bible says that God loved us first: he is the one who desires a good relationship with us. Human sinners don’t want God to get close and personal, for God is holy, and we feel his disapproval. Yet he is kind to the unworthy creatures that we are and comes looking for us. “God so loved the world [therefore, you] that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish [in an aimless existence here and hell hereafter] but have eternal life”. He loves us so much he sent his Son to save us – at the cost of his horrendous suffering on the Cross; and he warmly invites sinners to be reconciled to him. When we are converted and start to follow Jesus, doing what he taught us, then God loves us in a further way; for Jesus said, “He who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14.23). God is glad to find hearts that open to his love and respond in loving obedience to him. He is pleased to find people in tune with his heart and purposes.

Jesus radically laid down the first of all God’s commandments: to “love the Lord your God with all you heart and… soul and… mind and… strength” (Mark 12.30). This is his main command, because he loves us and wants us to love him in return. In fact, “we love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). He wins our love by granting us salvation by grace – undeserved love; our gratitude for being saved is the beginning of our love for God.

We are therefore called, by our conversion, to develop a love relationship with God, responding to his great love for us. To love God is to seek to please him. We find ways to show him we love him: we can cultivate closeness and intimacy with him in prayer, we can submit to his perfect will for our lives, we can depend on him for help, unite our hearts with his and seek to fulfil his purposes for our lives. It’s a whole new relationship to cultivate, with a loving Saviour who is ever close to us.

Then as we learn to love Jesus, we become more like him. Indeed, we learn to love our neighbour as well, showing others something of the love that has touched our hearts. Furthermore, Jesus even calls us to love those of our neighbours who we consider our enemies; loving them, says Jesus, will show them how God loves; for he loved us when we were either indifferent to him or rebellious against his will, living in sin. “As I have loved you,” said Jesus, “you are to love one another” (John 13.34).

Clive Every-Clayton

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What about our failures?

There is one further aspect to the Christian’s struggle with ongoing sin in his or her life that I need to deal with. It is the universal experience of believers, albeit born again justified and children of God, that at times they still sin. Indeed, the new Christian may well feel more conscious of his moral imperfection after his conversion, whereas his sins didn’t bother him before. The new believer may be distraught when he sees that despite his conversion, he still falls into sin sometimes. (I refer principally to what we may consider lesser sins such as selfishness, ill temper, untruth, pride, jealousy, and covetousness – though this problem would also arise with worse sins). What does a good Christian do when he is conscious of having sinned? Might our sins annul our justification?

Here again, the Bible has the answer and it is good to read the first letter of John chapter 1 verse 8 to chapter 2 verse 2. This passage shows that no Christian is perfectly without sin. So we all have to deal with our failures as Christians. The passage tells us what to do, and gives a wonderful promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1.9).

To confess our sin means to acknowledge the wrong we have done and to tell God we are sorry. We need not confess our sins to any person, unless we have sinned against someone and we feel we should apologise for what we did. But as we confess our sin to God, we recommit to living as best we can without sinning.

God’s promise is that as we confess our sin, “he is faithful and just and will forgive our sin”. He is faithful to his fatherly promises to be gracious to his children; we can count on him to wipe them all away and never to come back at us to reproach us about them. When he forgives, he forgets. More: the promise says he will “cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. Christ’s blood was spilt so that we might be cleansed from our sins, and God’s faithfulness renews his fatherly forgiveness whenever we confess.

Technically, there is a difference between God’s fatherly forgiveness of his saved children and the full legal forgiveness granted as supreme judge, when he justifies the sinner when he believes, freeing him of all condemnation. God’s legal forgiveness is forever given. God’s fatherly forgiveness is ongoing: as we repent and confess sins committed in our Christian walk, he forgives them and cleanses them away. By this fatherly forgiveness, he renews his love towards us, his erring children, and as we return from our devious ways, submitting afresh to him in repentance, our fellowship with God is renewed.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tacitly recognised the imperfection of his disciples, when he taught them to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we also forgive those who sin against us”. In our confession, we ask and receive by faith the forgiveness our Father promised. But we are reminded in this prayer that we must show to others the like kindness that God has shown in forgiving us. This is a kind of spiritual law: the one who is forgiven must forgive. Indeed, refusal of forgiveness, according to Jesus, is a serious sin. We are to forgive others because we have been forgiven. Harmony is restored in our relationship both with God and with others as we confess our sins and forgive others. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Already saved? So why not sin?

The believer may count on the promises of the saviour, that he is saved, forgiven, and has eternal life: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5.24). The believer who is justified by faith in Christ is accepted by God as righteous and needs fear no final condemnation in God’s ultimate judgment. 

So one might wonder: why not therefore sin as much as I want, since I am justified and accepted at God’s final judgment? This question has its full answer in the teaching of the Bible. 

First, as I wrote in the previous post, the justification of the one who repents and believes in Jesus remains intact. God has promised it and we can count on him. Jesus in the verse already quoted promised “he will not come into judgment”: the ultimate salvation of the true convert is assured.

Two factors in our experience confirm this truth for us: first, at conversion, we repented and made a commitment not to sin any more. We obviously cannot stretch out our right hand to receive God’s forgiveness while our left hand continues committing all kinds of sin. We are saved from sin – not only from its punishment, but also from its grip on us. We dedicate ourselves therefore, as sinners forgiven by grace, not to betray God’s kindness. Rather, motivated by gratitude for our salvation, we will honour our commitment to follow Jesus as our master and Lord by doing his will, overcoming temptation and refraining from sin.

The second factor is vital in this: no-one is justified by faith who is not also, at the same time, born again by the Holy Spirit. They are both operations of the same conversion experience. And being “born of the Spirit” is a life-changing dynamic, as the Holy Spirit comes to make his dwelling in our hearts, and there proceeds to the work of purifying us. He gives new aspirations for a holy life, new love for God and a desire to please him. The Holy Spirit communicates the presence of Christ within us: the result is that we no longer desire to sin, but rather to obey and please our saviour. This is, in fact, the deep reason why the true believer does not continue in sin. The believer who experiences this has reassuring proof that the Lord Jesus has indeed saved him.

So God justifies you by granting you full legal forgiveness and a status of being accepted as righteous before God; he can do that because he also gives you the Holy Spirit to energise you in the way of holiness with new desires and new power to conquer sin. You have to commit to continual repentance, of course, taking a stand against all sin in your life. You will understand progressively what that entails, but conversion involves the decision in principle not to displease your Saviour. He has called you to be his disciple, he has called you to holiness, and your growth in Christian living involves further repentance of whatever sinful deed the Holy Spirit reproves you of.

Having said that, we are not totally delivered from sin in this life; there will always be a struggle between the old sinful pre-Christian nature, the “flesh”, and the nature renewed by the Spirit: hence the call and the promise, “Walk according to the Spirit and you will not fulfil the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5.16).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Relationships

What contributes most to human happiness? Surely loving relationships must come high, if not first, on the list. Of course, good health, sufficient finances, and a decent place to live contribute a lot to our happiness. But the Good Book says, “Better is a poor meal where love is than a great feast with hatred” (c.f. Proverbs 15.17). To experience true love is joy of a deep kind that seriously boosts our level of happiness.

The search for true love is therefore a big part of our existential quest, for human relationships can be the source of great pleasure if they are good; however, they can be the cause of much pain if they are bad. Either way, they are an intricate part of everyone’s existence and the object of the deepest human longing.

The first difficulty, of course, is finding that special someone to love. But even when he or she is found, the next difficulty is putting up with their negative traits! The problem is that whoever we love, they are never 100% good, kind, loving, faithful, truthful etc. all the time. Not only that, they see and criticise our faults too!

What the human heart really yearns for is to find a perfect partner with whom we could enjoy a deep and lasting relationship of mutual love. Have you ever wondered why we so long for that? It is certainly not because we have evolved to want to pass on our genes to the next generation: such a ridiculous suggestion demeans our human nature and debases the whole concept of love. No: rather, our passion for love issues from our having been created in the likeness of a God of passionate love. 

Why does Christianity alone declare that “God is love” (1 John 4.8)? Because it reveals a Triune Godhead where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have existed forever in a relationship of love. Jesus said that the Father loves the Son and that he loves the Father; and the Spirit of God sheds abroad God’s divine love in the hearts of believers (John 5.20, 14.31, Romans 5.5). So love is of the very essence of God. He did not need to create in order to have someone to love; the love within the persons of the divine Trinity was totally fulfilling. He created humans capable of love so that he might have the pleasure of loving them and receiving love from them. This is one of the key reasons for our existence – we are designed so as to enjoy a loving relationship with God. If we do not experience that we suffer dysfunction!  

Not that God is against human love: he grants us also the relative joy of loving human relationships. Having created Adam, he insisted it was not good for him to be alone, because he was a loving person with no companion. So God instituted marriage and created Eve. Before they sinned, their relationship was a wondrous reflection of the loving relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. In that relationship, that first couple which was truly human like we are, was able to enjoy the gift of sexual union according to God’s intention and have a family, with a third little human to love and which would return their love. Thus the love of the Trinity would be even better reflected. 

So love is so vital for us because we are image-bearers of a God of love. But full satisfaction in love can only come from a loving harmonious relationship with our loving Creator and saviour.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves you very much

We may not be keen on loving God, but we should know that he loves us very much. His love is of immense, eternal proportions! There was love in the heart of God before he began creation: Jesus prays to his Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). That is mind-blowing!

Before creation began, God had foreseen his plan of action, to create persons able to love each other and to love him, and one day he would reveal to them the greatness of his love for them. His love is all the more powerful in that he allowed us humans to live in potential rebellion against him, and indeed, we humans are not, in general, passionate about loving God. But despite our indifference, going our own way instead of His, he has persisted in drawing people out of their inner reticence into his arms of love.

So he demonstrated his immense love in a mind-boggling manifestation. He came into the world like an ‘undercover boss’ by sending his Son, Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way,” says the Bible, but Jesus came as the Good Shepherd, seeking the sheep that was lost.

Let’s face it, we’ve all wandered far from God in thoughtless disinterest in doing his will, and so by our disobedience we have incurred his displeasure. He would be quite entitled to cast us away, to pay no attention to us, even to visit righteous judgment upon us. But when he came in Jesus, he did not come to demand we pay for our sins – no! the marvel is that he came to pay for our sins! That’s what Jesus’ death on the cross was all about. The Good Shepherd gave his life for us, the wayward sheep!

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this” – says the Bible – “in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. We didn’t have to clean up our act before God loved us – we were, in his verdict, “sinners”. We were guilty, we deserved righteous judgment; but Jesus – who never ever sinned – interposed and bore our sin in his body on the cross, suffering the horror of punishment that should have fallen on the guilty. “He died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “This is how God showed his love to us”, says the Bible (1 John 4.9-10) “He sent his only Son into the world… not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. 

It’s maybe hard to grasp, but an atonement was needed because of the demands of justice. Since God is absolutely just, he cannot grant pardon to all the guilty people in the world – that would be a supreme injustice. Yet he desires to forgive and receive us into a warm loving relationship. How could he do it while yet upholding the demands of his justice? By himself providing the atoning sacrifice, whereby his Son, truly man but also truly divine, accepted out of love to come and bear – on the Cross – the full penalty of our many sins. His death for us is the most loving event ever, in the entire history of the world. 

And he did it for you, because he loves you that much.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God loves

Love puts a spring in your step, a smile on your face and joy in your heart. What happiness to love and to be loved! That’s because we were made for love. But therefore how sad is the experience of those who are not loved, or whose love relationship has ended in acrimony… There is deep pain in feeling unloved – because we were made for love, not for disputes and hatred.

The good news is that God loves you. This is no mere religious fantasy, not just a heart-warming ideal that we are pleased to entertain: if that is all it is, we would be indulging in a religious illusion. Humans cannot invent a God of love. The real issue is not what we desire, but what God is objectively like. The Judeo-Christian God alone, in all the religions of the world, presents himself to us as a God who loves us dearly. Jesus, God incarnate, told us not only that God is there and that he is our Creator: he brought the astonishing revelation that God loves us. 

But what is love? Impossible fully to define, we may consider it as delight in the other, as emotional attachment, deep friendship, harmony and mutual understanding, caring and helping… On the human level, love is seen in seeking the good of the other, and acting on that love, even at extreme personal cost. All this – and more – applies to God’s love for his creatures: he seeks our highest good; he wants to be our friend and he desires that we come to know his love and enter into a warm loving relationship with him.

The one who loves longs for the other to respond in love; and so it is with God. That’s why Jesus insisted that the first commandment – which is God’s foremost desire for us his beloved creatures – is to “love the Lord you God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12.30). Such total love cannot just be demanded, however; it must be won. And God has taken steps to demonstrate his immense love for you in such a way as to win your total love in return. In other words, God loves you with a love so strong, faithful, immense and kind, that he considers your response to loving him with all you have as the only fitting response.

One of Jesus’ apostles wrote, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). God takes the initiative in love. He “proved his love toward us” says the apostle Paul (Romans 5.8). Why does no other religion teach that God is love? Because they cannot show any proof of God having shown great love. In Christianity this is unique: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3.16). “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4.10). Christians therefore see in Jesus’ self-giving sacrifice the supreme demonstration of God’s love for them. 

This needs to be developed in order to be understood; the one who has not grasped this yet has a glorious enlightenment in store!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Christ the perfect image

More than once the New Testament tells us that Christ Jesus is “the image of God”. While humans at the beginning were created “in the image of God”, Jesus is said to be the image of God. He reflects God’s reality perfectly because not only was he a holy man, and like God in his holiness, but he was the “I am” in person – God himself come among us in human form. As such, we may ask how he fulfilled the role that we humans should fulfil as being God’s image in the world. He reflected God’s nature so perfectly that he said, “Whoever sees me, sees him who sent me” (John 12.45), and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9). Jesus shows us what God is like.

What was Jesus’ purpose? He told us plainly: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). Using figurative language he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4.34). He did this so well that he could testify, “I love the Father” (John 14.31), and “I do always what is pleasing to him” ( i.e. pleasing to the Father, John 8.29).  Jesus was lovingly totally obedient to the will of God, his Father. That is the very definition of holiness.

But Jesus fleshed out what that will of his Father involved, particularly in two main services that he rendered to humankind.

The first, he stated to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who was judging him: “For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” (John 18.37). In another passage, he refers to himself as “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8.40). Elsewhere he affirms, “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.50). It is because of these affirmations that I have been insisting that we may know truth to answer our essential questions, since Jesus brought us truth from God. We need truth and God sent it to us through Jesus.

The second vital service, that Jesus was sent by God the Father to accomplish for us, is formulated in complementary ways by Jesus: “The Son of Man [Jesus himself] came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19.10). This was the supreme role that Jesus was sent to fulfil: we were lost, and he came to save us. How he did this deserves a fuller elaboration than I can give this time, but Jesus himself made it clear when he said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). Jesus’ mission was to “give his life”; he repeats this when having just said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, he adds: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life… I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10.11, 17-18). 

In other words, Jesus came from the Father into the world seeking to save the lost, and in order to do so, he was to give his life as a ransom. This is the deep meaning of Jesus’ death, which I hope to develop in subsequent blog posts. It is of the very essence of Jesus’ divine mission of salvation. And it was vitally necessary in order for us to find true life, to find God, and to find God’s forgiveness. 

Jesus could pray to his Father at the end of his life: “I have glorified you on the earth, having finished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17.4). Mission accomplished!

Clive Every-Clayton

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