Word for Life in Love— Scripture Meditations By Stephen Brown
Ephesians 5:13-14 ESV
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Choosing the light will bring us into the image of God. In this way we become visible and take on His form.
Christ will shine on you and in you. We become children of light.
Matthew 5:44-45 ESV
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
God so loved the world, but not as He loves His children. We are to love our enemies and our neighbors as God loves the world with the knowledge that we are no longer part of the world.
We are to love our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves. This is the love that the Lord has for the body of Christ, for it is of Himself.
Joel 3:16-17 ESV
The Lord roars from Zion,
and utters his voice from Jerusalem,
and the heavens and the earth quake.
But the Lord is a refuge to his people,
a stronghold to the people of Israel.
“So you shall know that I am the Lord your God,
who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain.
And Jerusalem shall be holy,
and strangers shall never again pass through it.
To be a Zionist is to agree with the Lord.
To be a Zionist is to believe and hope in the Lord.
The New Jerusalem will be part of the mountain of God.
The holy mountain will be a stronghold to the people of Israel and where the New Jerusalem will descend from heaven.
It will be holy because God will be present.
Revelation 3:12-13 ESV
The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
The promised land for Israel has Jerusalem as its center. They are re-gathered there today, though not in peace. That will not come until the King of Peace comes to claim the throne.
The promised land for the Bride of Christ is the new Jerusalem which descends from heaven. She will come when Jesus returns. Then it will become the city of peace.
The olive tree will then be made whole, with Israel as the trunk and the Church as the branches. The tree of life is fully realized and formed as God intended from the beginning, and will serve as healing for the nations.
There is one God, one people of God, and one Jerusalem. All the people on earth will know that He is God.
Adam was a man created from the dust of the earth and given life.
Jesus was a man born from above bringing life with Him.
Adam received the breath of life from God.
Jesus is God bringing the breath of life to all men.
Adam returned to the dust of the earth.
Jesus returned to the throne of God.
It is better to follow Jesus than any man of dust.
John 3:16 ESV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
God loves all mankind, but not in the same way.
Agape love is the love God has for the world and applies in the collective sense. This love provides for the salvation of everyone. However, it does not provide salvation for everyone. Salvation is given to those who believe.
Remember God loved us while we unlovely and sinners. He loves all mankind in that way. He wishes no one to die. This is agape love. He has provided the way for everyone to live through the sacrifice of His Son, but not everyone will choose that life.
Scripture tells us not to love the world because we are no longer of the world. Instead we are to love the Lord. We love Him by loving our brothers and sisters who have become the children of God. In this way, we have entered the house of the Lord which is the body of Christ.
We have come out of the world in a spiritual sense for now. The day will come when we will come out of the world in the totality of who we are. That is the day when we will be revealed.
John 14:21
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Intimate love between God and the individual is reserved for those that love the Lord, which is demonstrated for those who believe by keeping His commandments. This is the ultimate fruit of God's love for us and the fruit God seeks from the planting of His seed.
God was made manifest to the world in man Christ Jesus. God now manifests Himself to each believer. This is the abiding love that is only possible when two abide, who have become one. This love is given to those who choose the narrow path to God's heart. That heart beats in the flesh of the children of God.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Where is the temple of the living God? It is in the flesh of one who has become a living spirit in the life of God. This is the temple Jesus would rebuild in three days.
Glorify God in your body because His glory has entered your body. You have become holy, for He is Holy. You have agreed to walk together. This is the abiding as one.
Collectively we make up the temple of God. In the New Jerusalem there is no temple because the Father and Son are the temple. We are in that temple and minister as a royal priesthood.
What is different about the election in the Old Testament versus the New Testament?
In the Old, God chose who He would. In the New, He accepts anyone who would choose Him. In both cases He elects to do this.
1 Timothy 6:6-7 ESV
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
A key to contentment is in giving thanks to the Lord for any and all circumstances, for any and all things, and for life that leads to life.
Focus not on the things you've gained and lost here on earth, but the riches that are yours in heaven.
Man is as grass here on earth. We spring up from the ground and take on the greening of life, flower for a moment, then fade away and are no more.
A different fate awaits the one who has found God, for God is life and life everlasting. While the flesh must wither and die, the spirit will not. We discard this flesh to receive an immortal flesh appropriate for the everlasting life which is ours.
Do not despair for that which is passing, but celebrate with joyful expectation for what is coming next. We have been given life that we might find life. The life we have found will never end.
You have been chosen by the Creator of all things to enter His life and to be with Him, because you believe Him. All things are yours and every blessing of heaven is yours in Christ.
The Lord knows what you need and He will give it to you. It is yours already. This is His promise and word, which are the same thing.
You became a child of God, you are a child of God, and you will always be a child of God.
Thanks be to God.
Genesis 5:24 ESV
Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
This verse captures the meaning and purpose of the gospel, of the reason for Christ coming to us. He walked with us that we might walk with Him. If we walk with Him, God will take us to where He is.
We will leave the world and disappear to natural eyes only to appear in the supernatural presence of God. Our eyes have been opened to the reality of this promise and it is with great expectation that we await its fulfillment.
John 15:4-5 ESV
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
The fruit sought by the Lord in the life man is the fruit of the Spirit which comes to dwell in man. We can do nothing apart from the Spirit. We can do all things with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Man is known by his fruit. God is known by His Spirit. Let the light shine forth.
Psalms 2:7 ESV
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father who came from heaven into the dust of our earth.
We are the begotten sons who come from the dust of the earth into the light of heaven.
We join with Him at the boundary between light and darkness. We become His light in the darkness, as stars in the night sky.
To become one means to become inseparable. This is what it means when we become one with Jesus. He enters us and we enter the body of Christ through the unity of the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:7-10 ESV
But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
What cannot be imagined by man is revealed through the Holy Spirit. He is our guide to the truth. It is the truth that will set us free. Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek the Lord and He will be found.
Do not stop with verse 9. Verse 10 will open the door to the power of God.
John 15:15 ESV
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
We have accepted Christ and His Holy Spirit, becoming one with Him as sons and daughters of the living God.
We are no longer servants, but have become stewards of the gift of life; children of the light.
The faith of Abraham made him a friend of God. His faith would lead him to the promised land. Our faith brings us into the kingdom of heaven and the house of God. This is our promised land and this is His promise to us.
John 14:1-4 ESV
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”
The place He prepares is the body of Christ. This is the temple He raised in three days. We are the building stones of the new temple with Him as the cornerstone.
The Holy Spirit works every day to prepare us, and the Spirit is none other than Jesus Christ. If you have the Spirit, you know the way. One day we will be with Him.
He will come again.
John 17:6-14 ESV
“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Jesus does not pray for those in the world, but those who have come out of the world. Jesus overcame the world and shows the way out for those interested in following Him.
Romans 9:13
As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
Esau foreshadowed those not interested in their birthright in God and choose to remain in the world.
Jacob foreshadowed those who would finally seek to be blessed by God and made into His image
God's sovereign choice rests on those that choose Him. These are the people of God.
We are part of a spiritual battle. You won't know this until you are made spiritually alive.
John 3:16 ESV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
This love is an action, not infatuation or a sentimental notion, but an act of good will toward men. Jesus came in love for all mankind, but He does not love all men, for He knows what is in each heart.
The love God seeks is the intimate relationship of His Spirit with the spirit of man that has become one, which reflects the intimacy and relationship within our God who is three in one. This is why we can say God is love, because that is part of His indivisible essence.
For some reason, He extends His love to us through the giving of His Son, which is the giving of Himself. He seeks those who will do likewise.
Exodus 19:5-6 ESV
Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation had they kept the covenant.
The body of Christ is a kingdom of priests and a holy nation if they keep the faith.
God acts out of who He is.
We act out of who we are.
We act the same only when we become one with Him.
1 John 4:7-8
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love is made manifest in relation to another. Love is alive and active as is the origin of love; our Creator. It is the primary force in and of creation. It is love that bridges the expanse between God and man. It calls and answers.
Scripture tells us that God is love. We can easily see how the love of another and the idea of God as the originator of love is compatible because we understand God in three persons.
The God who reveals His name as "I AM" is from everlasting to everlasting and has always been.
When we join with His life, we at last become a human Being and enter His eternal life.
Until then, we are just human.
God is not one thing, or several things. He is everything.
Everything is the context of anything.
Proverbs 4:18-19 ESV
But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.
God's light shines in the darkness and continues to grow brighter as righteousness draws closer. They increase in the knowing of the grace of the Lord.
Those who walk in the darkness do not know they do not know how deep in the weeds they are.
The seventh angel will sound his trumpet and a shout will be heard and the Lord will come for His body, His people He will gather from around the world.
Psalms 84:1-2 ESV
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
The Lord has chosen as His dwelling place the heart and flesh of man. A soul made alive to God will long for the place He prepares for us. That place is each one of us who have been made in the image of God.
Our song of joy will never cease.
Psalms 103:15-18 ESV
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
A man who revers the Lord will enter the love of the Lord. He will no longer be a wisp in the breeze, here for a moment then gone at the end of the day. Instead, the wind of the Spirit will lift him into the life of God which is from everlasting to everlasting.
We revere the Lord by keeping His covenant and remembering to do His commandments. His righteousness becomes ours through our faith in His word.
Daniel 10:12 ESV
Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.
The angel of the Lord appears to Daniel with words that could be applied to all true believers. Those who set their heart to understand and humble themselves before God will be heard.
The Lord hears us and knows what's in our hearts at all times. He is ever with us. He reveals Himself on His timing, but His presence is not to be doubted.
He is with us from the first day we seek Him. It becomes the first day of new life. A new creation can now begin.
Most things have small beginnings. From a seed comes a mighty tree. A deed originates from a thought. From a word springs creation. From the dust of the earth is man made into the image of God.
Ezekiel 38:10-12 ESV
“Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,’ to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth.
The center of the earth comes from the Hebrew word for navel. This can imply an image of the connection of a mother and her baby in her womb. This is a picture of the relationship between God and His chosen people.
They are the center of God's activity and attention on and in the earth. On the earth refers to the mountain of God which is Jerusalem. It is that city He has chosen for His dwelling place. In the earth refers to the earth of His people. They are the people who will inhabit the land and serve the Lord.
They will serve as the wall and gates around the city of the New Jerusalem that will provide access to the nations to worship the Lord and turn back anyone who are unclean or unworthy.
The light of God will shine from Jerusalem for the nations of the earth. The waters of life will flow from His throne and through His people into all the earth. They are the twelve leaves that serve for the healing of the nations.
The last thing to be done in the creation story is making man into the image of God. That is currently underway and to be completed on His return.
Romans 11:32
For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
Everyone person begins life without form and empty. In darkness are they conceived, but conceived for the light. God planned it that way to demonstrate His mercy.
This mercy is a two-way street. God extends His mercy to all, but requires a response from us in accepting this gift. Disobedience precedes mercy, just as darkness precedes the light.
Who can understand the riches of God's plan.
God will take you just as you are, but He won't leave you that way. If you are not changing, you're not walking with Him.
Don't stay where you are.
Luke 8:9-10 ESV
And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’
The word of God is given to the world. It is given to those who can hear the word and understand. The word is given to all that ask, but ask you must. Understanding can only come through the Holy Spirit. That is why it is foolishness to the world and the power of God to those who are being saved.
We have received the Holy Spirit and have access to the kingdom of God. In fact, He is with us and within us.
Life is a parable. It points us to the author of life, our Creator. The teaching and evidence is there.
As we are led by the Spirit, we are listening to the mind of Christ. Our mind transforms into the mind of Christ as we dwell in His presence.
There must be a boundary between light and darkness. This provides for the choice between the two. The knowledge of good and evil is required for a person to decide.
Psalms 119:105 ESV
Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
There is one way to God, and He has given His light for the way. He is the light of the world.
Matthew 24:13 ESV
But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
When one falls into the water off a boat, they need to keep afloat until they are rescued or reach shore.
If one does not stay afloat, they will probably sink below the surface of the water and not make it.
We are in the waters of the world that oppose God. We can only make it to the end if we keep swimming with Him.
We can reach an end at anytime, but to end where we want to be will take endurance.
The more sensitive we become of the wonder and mercy of God, the more we can realize our own sinfulness, and the more sensitive we become of the wonder and mercy of God.
Romans 14:4 ESV
Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
The Spirit blows where He will, and fills the sails of each believer in a unique way that will carry them to the temple of the Lord.
It is the doing of the Lord and He is more than able.
If we work with Him in the transformation of our minds, He will take care of the transformation of our bodies.
1 John 4:16-17
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
We are as He is. We are in the world and He is in heaven. He has brought us into the kingdom of heaven and we provide the flesh of the body of Christ in this world.
We have been given the Holy Spirit, which is part of the ever present and everlasting God. The same Spirit that descended and remained on Jesus now remains on us. He overshadows us like He did Mary and the Jesus in us is forming and growing to be revealed on the last day.
Luke 8:19-21 ESV
Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
God is doing a new thing. Our family evolves from an earthly center to a family who has God as it's center. We move from the house of man to the house of God.
It is in the hearing and doing of the word.
