Tuesday 12 April 2016

Absolute, Extreme, Unutterable Love.


"I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame."   Isaiah 50:6,7

"Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."
John 13:1

Pulpit Commentary
 "Here the sentence ends with the climacteric expression, He loved them utterly; he manifested, and that before the Paschal Lamb should be slain for them, his absolute, extreme, unutterable love."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

"...having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end—The meaning is, that on the very edge of His last sufferings, when it might have been supposed that He would be absorbed in His own awful prospects, He was so far from forgetting His own, who were to be left struggling in the world after He had departed out of it to the Father that in His care for them, He seemed scarce to think of Himself save in connection with them: Herein is love, not only enduring to the end, but most affectingly manifested when, judging by a human standard, least to be expected."


Excerpts from Isaiah Chapter 53.


He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.


"...Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Hebrews 12:2

"For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not die, but have eternal life." John 3:16