God is Love

A dear friend of mine is wrestling with the different accounts of religion and of what/who God is. After a fabulous visit, I thought about what she said and wrote the following letter to her.

I would appreciate any comments and thoughts.

Dearest Friend,
I've been thinking a lot about what you said: God is Love.
yes, that is ABSOLUTELY true, but, my love, it is only a part of the story. Mind you, it is the BEST part, but it is the best part because of what comes before it:

So, I share what the "gospel" really is with my most precious friend.

Going to the personality of God, we must first remember that He is God, and we are not, so we can only understand God through ourselves, which is ultimately inadequate. This is why we have scripture (and sometimes disagreement :-) ).

the four atributes of God:

1)God is perfectly Holy/Pure: He cannot be around that which is not perfectly pure. He cannot sin. He cannot violate his own law, nor simply "look over" when it is violated. Whether one believes we violated His law and commandments (they are pretty good - that top ten has yet to be beat!) through birth, or after, the fact is that we all have done so. We are, therefore, not pure or holy.
2) God is perfectly Just. When we have violated our relationship with him through sin, there must be penance. "The wages of sin is death." Pretty drastic, I know, but not when you even try to consider how perfect He is in His being and doing.
3) God is perfectly Merciful: God does not want us to die. He does not want us to be out of fellowship with Him. He wants to be with us, His creation for EVER. He wants to Love us...so..
4)God is perfectly Loving. This is where Jesus comes in. In the Old Testament, God required a sacrifice of a perfect Lamb from the Hebrews each year. This lamb died for the sins of the Hebrew people. However, even the Garden of Eden, God promised a savior one day. That savior is His son, Jesus Christ. "He that knew no sin, became sin for us that we might be Holy in Him."

Jesus died to pay the price for our sins because we could not pay for them ourselves. God made a way for us to be with Him forever! We must be pure to be with God, and the only way to be pure is cast our sin/transgression/disobedience on Christ. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one may come to the Father, but by me."

Many people simply call Jesus a great teacher, but no other teacher has said what he just said, and no other teacher in the world has ever done what he has done - conquered DEATH!

Jesus has given us a legacy of peace (not perfect easiness, but peace) if we will believe and follow Him. I hope you will be blessed by experiencing and living in His perfect Love forever through Jesus-the only way.
All MY LOVE, FOREVER,
Charly

I visited here today and thought that you would enjoy it too! - check this out at: http://wandascountryhome.com/trilogy/