Weekly E-Sights from Renewed Heart Ministries

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature . . . —Hebrews 1:2-3

This week I had the pleasure (via a phone call) of having my attention directed back to the book of Hebrews and the thoughts that are contained within its first two chapters. As I was studying through these sections, I remembered reading similar thoughts in the first chapter of another famous little book. I thought I’d simply share a few of the paragraphs that spoke to me as I reread it. I hope these thoughts are as meaningful, if not more so, to you as they are to me. I have left out some thoughts for the sake of space—for a more complete reading, I encourage you to pick it up yourself—but I know that even this short sampling will be a blessing:

"God is love" is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass . . . The word of God reveals His character . . . and the deepest and tenderest earthly ties that human hearts can know, He has sought to reveal Himself to us . . . Though all these evidences have been given, the enemy of good blinded the minds of men, so that they looked upon God with fear; they thought of Him as severe and unforgiving. Satan led men to conceive of God as a being whose chief attribute is stern justice,—one who is a severe judge, a harsh, exacting creditor. He pictured the Creator as a being who is watching with jealous eye to discern the errors and mistakes of men, that He may visit judgments upon them. It was to remove this dark shadow, by revealing to the world the infinite love of God, that Jesus came to live among men.
The Son of God came from heaven to make manifest the Father . . . In describing His earthly mission, Jesus said, The Lord "hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Luke 4:18. This was His work. He went about doing good . . . Love, mercy, and compassion were revealed in every act of His life . . . His life was one of self-denial and thoughtful care for others. Every soul was precious in His eyes. While He ever bore Himself with divine dignity, He bowed with the tenderest regard to every member of the family of God. In all men He saw fallen souls whom it was His mission to save.
Such is the character of Christ as revealed in His life. This is the character of God. It is from the Father's heart that the streams of divine compassion, manifest in Christ, flow out to the children of men. Jesus, the tender, pitying Saviour, was God "manifest in the flesh." 1 Timothy 3:16.
[His] great sacrifice was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, not to make Him willing to save. No, no! "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son." John 3:16. The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us. Christ was the medium through which He could pour out His infinite love upon a fallen world. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." 2 Corinthians 5:19. God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of Infinite Love paid the price of our redemption.
None but the Son of God could accomplish our redemption; for only He who was in the bosom of the Father could declare Him. Only He who knew the height and depth of the love of God could make it manifest. Nothing less than the infinite sacrifice made by Christ in behalf of fallen man could express the Father's love to lost humanity . . . Such love is without a parallel . . . The matchless love of God for a world that did not love Him! . . . The more we study the divine character in the light of the cross, the more we see mercy, tenderness, and forgiveness blended with equity and justice, and the more clearly we discern innumerable evidences of a love that is infinite and a tender pity surpassing a mother's yearning sympathy for her wayward child. (White, Steps To Christ, pp. 9-15).

May we all be in the throng that one day exclaims, “What love, what inexhaustible love.”

I wish you God’s best this week.

- Herb Montgomery

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