Knowing God's Love through the Holy Spirit

The Love of God in the Qur'an and the Bible

« The Revelation of God's Love in Jesus Christ

Because God is our Father, we are able to have genuine love in our hearts towards him. Through his great work in his Son Jesus Christ we have seen how worthy he is of that love. But now, through the Holy Spirit (which is given to every true believer in Jesus Christ) we are able to actually experience his love for us within our hearts. As the Apostle Paul put it:

"Hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us". Romans 5:5

What a wonderful statement this is. God's love has actually been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to every one at that moment that he turns and puts his faith in Jesus, seeking salvation in him alone. Not only do we behold God's love, therefore, for us in the gift of his Son but we can actually experience it within our own souls through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This principle of our adoption as children of God through Jesus Christ and our living experience of this relationship in the Holy Spirit was summed up by Paul in these words:

"But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!'" Galatians 4:4-6

Here we have the climax of the revelation of God's love towards us. We have become children of God through the work of Jesus Christ whom God sent into the world to save us from our sins. But now, by sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, he has made us conscious right within our beings of our status before him. Not only are we children, we know we are children. We have been brought into the very same eternal, intimate communion that the Father and the Son have shared with each other from all eternity. Just as Jesus was able to call on his Father in heaven with an expression of intense intimacy, namely "Abba, Father" (Mark 14:36), so we have now been brought, by the mercies of God, into this same intimate relationship. ("Abba" is a Hebrew word which means "Father" but which is not translated into English because we have no corresponding word in our language which can possibly express the intimacy and closeness denoted by this word in Hebrew). Sufi Masters of old claimed to know the hundredth name of God (there are ninety-nine al-asma al-husna, "beautiful names" of God according to traditional Islam) but, in our view, if there is indeed another name of God which is missing from the ninety-nine, it is not the hundredth name but the first - namely this one: Father.

Within our very own hearts God has made us conscious of our relationship with him. As Paul put it:

"When we cry, 'Abba! Father!', it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God". Romans 8:15-26.

Christians, through the Holy Spirit, are able to call on God as their Father, a title which represents their relationship with him as no other really can.

The Holy Spirit within us has made us particularly aware of the fact that God is now our Father and we, therefore, call on him as such out of the deep knowledge of the love that he has for us. He is our Father in the very closest manner that he could be and through his Spirit he has impressed this fact very surely on us. All this has been done through the redemption which he set forth and accomplished through his Son Jesus Christ. By dying for our sins to cleanse us from all evil Jesus has made it possible for us to fully enjoy this new relationship.

"For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father". Ephesians 2:16

Through him the Christian has obtained access to this grace in which he now stands. The love of the Father, made manifest in the Son, has now become our own personal possession through the Holy Spirit which he has given us. Jesus himself urged his disciples to strengthen and develop this love in their hearts:

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love". John 15:9

We cannot tell how deeply the Father, through the Son, desires that we should know this love in our own hearts. When Jesus prayed to his Father in heaven on the last night he was with his disciples he made it clear that his whole purpose in coming to earth was to make this love real to them:

"I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them". John 17:26

Ten days after the ascension of Jesus to heaven his disciples first received the Holy Spirit. From that day the personal knowledge of God's love has become available to all men. All who turn to him in faith and love through his Son Jesus Christ will not fail to discover the joy of salvation that accompanies the consciousness of this love in our hearts. As Jesus said to his disciples again on the last night he was with them:

"For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father". John 16:27

Here, then, we find the final proof of God's love towards men. By becoming our Father he has made it possible for us to express genuine love towards him without fear of his wrath in our hearts. He has shown his love to us in a remarkable way by giving his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins. By giving us his Spirit he has made it openly possible for that love to become thoroughly mutual between him and us. In turn we are now able to truly love him with all our hearts, souls and minds. He is worthy of such love and has made it possible for us to express it to the full.

What will a man offer to God in return for such love? Can he give anything to compare with it? After all that God has done for us, can we honestly believe that we can merit favour with him through our own half hearted, feeble religious efforts?

"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealthy of his house, it would be utterly scorned". Song of Solomon 8:7

God does not want from sinners their pilgrimages, prayers and religious devotions and various ecclesiastical duties mixed through and through with the evils they think and do every day. He cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly (Isaiah 1:13). If we hope to obtain his good pleasure by anything we do on our own account, while we casually overlook the sins we commit, we scorned utterly the love he has revealed to us.

The Father wants none of your efforts - he wants YOU. He desires that you respond to this glorious manifestation of his love. This wondrous revelation of the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been given to the world so that God may obtain from us that which alone is acceptable to him. He wants us to become his children and to love him with all our hearts, souls ant minds. Any good work of grace or religious deed that flows out of such love is acceptable to him. But no work other than this can ever merit acceptance with him.

So many, with no certainty of forgiveness, offer religious works to God with the hope of thereby obtaining his approval and forgiveness. But how can our paltry efforts, wrapped in the multitude of sins that we commit every day, ever possibly merit his approval?

God has provided a better and more certain way of gaining his commendation. He who turns away from his own works and trusts in Jesus Christ instead obtains forgiveness of his sins and newness of life. The true Christian dies in the assured knowledge of God's love and favour. Will you not rather turn to him who can save your soul? God stretches out his hand to you in eternal love - will you not clasp it and obtain the salvation God is freely offering you? Will you not believe in his Son who died for you so that you can become a child of God? Will you not receive the Holy Spirit so that, like an orphan, you can experience his warm embrace and know in your heart that God is your Father?

"That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ". 1 John 1:3