How Great The Love Of The Father

Listen to this! "See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him" (1 John 3:1). I see here that God, the Father has captured my heart with His love.

Also there are other things to notice within this verse of scripture. "For this reason the world does not know us..." I look at this part of the verse and it reminds me of the meeting between Eve and the serpent in the Garden way back in Genesis 3. I view the world as tempting us, God's children, in basically 3 areas of life and they are lust, materialism, and pride.

• First of all, "Lust" is a preoccupation with gratifying our physical desires. One such desire that comes to mind is sex. But look at the way it is presented in Genesis 3:6 "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food..." You see, Satan has made sin appeal to our appetites which is a lustful desire whether it be food or drink or sex. So his objective is to get us to let our guard down by using everyday normal things in life.
• Secondly, the sin that Satan presents to us appeals to our ecstatic (subject to or in a state of ecstasy; rapturous) nature (or our desire for things/craving and accumulating things). This is seen in the same verse where it continues "and that it was a delight to the eyes..." Satan knows that if he can draw our attention away from our understanding of God (and he uses possessions a lot) then he can distract us just enough to slip and fall.
• Finally, sin appeals to our intelligence, continuing "and that the tree was desirable to make one wise..." BINGO, she ate from the tree that God had forbidden; Satan wins.

There is one more aspect to how the world works in our minds and that is that there is always a "social" component to sin as we see continuing the verse and it says, "and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." Read the rest of the story and see just how sneaky and shady Satan is and what capabilities he has here in this world.

So when you go back to the original verse in First John 3:1 you can really see how the world "does not know us" because the love of the Father has captured our hearts and that love is not of this world. So with the sin of lust, we can see and understand that it is not of God, we can see the materialism and know that "Our God shall supply all of our needs according to His riches in Glory..."(Phil. 4:19) and we, with God's help can intelligently understand that pride is nothing more than an obsession with one's status or importance which cuts cross-grain with our Heavenly Father.

Where am I going with this? Well I believe that it is important for us to know that we, as children of God the Father are NOT OF THIS WORLD AND THIS WORLD DOES NOT KNOW US! We are adopted children of the living God and we all know that this world belongs to the "prince of the power of the air"! Who else? Satan himself.

"See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God..." Now there's a promise you can take to the bank!

Dave