Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

Today’s devotion comes from 1 John 4:7-10.

 

“⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;  and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  ⁹ By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  1 John 4:7-10.

 

——————————-

 

We will not love as we should love by looking inside us and trying to be nicer:  “love is from God“.  Verse 7.  

 

Rather than lovely rose pedals inside us that we can gather and sprinkle on others, it is written:

“Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
“Their feet are swift to shed blood,
Destruction and misery are in their paths,
And the path of peace they have not known.”  Romans 3:13-17.  Reformed doctrine first teaches us about man’s natural condition, “Total Depravity”, the “T” of “TULIP”, the Five Points of Calvinism, the Reformed Doctrine of Salvation.  

 

Our hope to love others comes from God:  “… for love is from God;  and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”  Verses 7 and 8. 

 

“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  Verses 9 and 10.

                                

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;  and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  Ephesians 3:14-19.