A Quote by John Calvin
For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.
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God always wants what's best for us, just as you want what's best for someone you really love. You put them before you, and God does that too. God puts us before His Son, who He sacrificed for our salvation. But the Son did it voluntarily because He has the love of the Father before us.
God loves us so much that he crushed his Son so that we might be his and that this love isn't based on our worthiness or performance. His love doesn't fluctuate from day-to-day. It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.
Many years ago, our father Ibrahim (AS) made a choice. He loved his son. But He loved God more. The commandment came to sacrifice his son. But it wasn't his son that was slaughtered. It was his attachment to anything that could compete with his love for God. So let us ask ourselves in these beautiful days of sacrifice, which attachments do we need to slaughter?
Value God and his love more than all the world, though there were millions of them. He valued you before the world, and therefore is beforehand with you in his love. He not only loved you from everlasting, (whereas your love is but of yesterday,) but in the valuation of it, he loved you before all worlds, and preferred you to all worlds: though you loved the world first, before you loved him.
God's love is so extravagant and so inexplicable that he loved us before we were us. He loved us before we existed. He knew many of us would reject him, hate him, curse him, rebel against him. Yet he chose to love us. God loves us because he is love.
One way to read the Book of Mormon is as a book of encounters between fathers and sons. Some of those encounters were very positive and reinforcing on the part of the father of a son. Some were occasions where a father had to tell his son or his sons that the path that they were following was incorrect before the Lord.
Jesus Christ was the only one capable of performing the magnificent Atonement because He was the only perfect man and the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. He received His commission for this essential work from His Father before the world was established. His perfect mortal life devoid of sin, the shedding of His blood, His suffering in the garden and upon the cross, His voluntary death, and the Resurrection of His body from the tomb made possible a full Atonement for people of every generation and time.
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God?
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and cet us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate.
The Bible says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." - John 3:16 and in that moment I realized, "Wow, there's a love greater than what I know of in this world."
It has been said that God's gift is also indescribable because of the grace by which it is given. God, who is rich in mercy, gave the world the gift of His dear Son while we were at enmity with Him. Paul says: 'But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us' (Rom. 5:8). Therefore, in Him we are freely given all things: redemption, forgiveness of sins, righteousness, peace, hope, wisdom and knowledge.
I call that god the Little G. Because the god that we've been worshipping is not to me the Supreme Creator. Anybody who needs to control and make people feel ashamed. . .It's like, 'I send my only begotten son. . .' Well you know, that concept of sending a son where we as women could, like, breastfeed him and give him milk, but he's not gonna soil his dinky with us? What's that all about?
For we love not God first, to compel him to love again; but he loved us first, and gave his Son for us, that we might see love and love again, saith St John in his first epistle.
When I sign people's stuff I put down John 3:16 and 17. Most people can tell you what 16 says, OK. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son." But they don't know nothin' about 17. It says Jesus didn't come to condemn us. If anybody had a right to condemn someone, it would be the son of God. If he didn't do it, then hey, we definitely are not qualified to do it.
God intends us to be like gods, he intends us to be like the Son of God. ... God has conceived in His heart of a plan to make a race of men that would live like gods on the Earth. He has conceived in His heart to have Sons that would live like His Son, the Lord Jesus lived... That we were to be on earth the extension and manifestation of God's life in heaven.
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