1 Timothy 4:12: Seize Your Youth! (Part 4)

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12

Perhaps there is no greater example we as believers should set than one in love. Out of the five ways Paul sets before us to set an example in, he places love in the middle. As you look at the list, there is an obvious progression in the examples we are to set. For example, there are those out there that watch what they say, but that does not truly set forth a Christian example. On the other end of the spectrum you have purity. If you are truly and completely pure, then you are Christ's, for in Christ there is no spot nor blemish. Look at love's place in the progression now. It seems to ebb and flow in the progression. What is Christian speech if it is not in love? What is Christian conduct if it is not in love? What is faith without love? And is there purity outside of the realm of love?

Love flows in and out of every one of Paul's admonishments. It is no wonder he puts love in the middle. If you imagine love in its purist sense, you might not be able to refrain from recollecting these words of John:

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:9-10)

To imagine love in this sense is enough to make a grown man weep. Love is the middle of the Gospel. You have nothing to the left or the right if you have not love. You have no beginning and you have no end. What is Christianity without love? John says that God is love (1 John 4:8). What is Christianity without God? What is Christianity without Christ? It is nothing. The crux of the Christian faith is love! It is where we as Christians stand or fall in our faith. It is where we set an example or we defile the name of Christ. It is where we represent our Holy King of Kings as the Savior we so desperately need, or we represent the folly and sinfulness, the utter wickedness of the human race in rebellion against love; against God Almighty.

The love of God has no greater manifestation than sending His only Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins. What does that mean? You might be thinking, I don't get it? I only hope that I can paint a picture for you now, a picture that I see in my mind whenever I recall the love of God.

God is. He always has been and always will be. He has existed from all eternity before us, and He will exist for all eternity after us. Although we have a beginning and our finite minds struggle so terribly to imagine the infinite existence of our creator, if our minds could only grasp but a speck of the grandeur that God's infinite existence portrays to us as His creation we would be well off indeed. For if we could truly grasp God's infinite existence then we would not help but wonder why we now exist and why He willed to create us at all. God is not only infinite in existence but He is also infinite in all things. His love is perfectly sustained and it can neither be increased or diminished. His glory is perfectly attributed to every attribute, and He requires no refill or reinforcement ever. God had absolutely nothing to gain by creating man. He was infinitely whole without man, and did not have to create man so that He could gain more love, more power, or more glory.

God exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. All three exist at the same time, all three are perfectly God, and all three are equal in power, glory, and love. Again, our feeble and finite minds struggle so desperately to wrap themselves around this idea. We wish there was something that we could compare the Holy Trinity to, but that is what makes God's Trinity so glorious! There is nothing like it! God exists in three persons, but although three, they are truly one. The Father is not a God in and of Himself, but God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all exists as one. However, they are still three distinguishable persons in the Godhead. If you truly imagine it, you will give yourself a perplexing migraine. It is by faith and faith alone that we can even start to understand this amazing truth.

Within the trinity you can understand God's love. God the Father has only one son, God the Son. The Father has completely and perfectly loved the Son for all eternity. The Son has completely and perfectly loved the Father for all eternity. God requires no other creatures to exist in order to perfectly and completely fulfill His glorious attribute of love. In His very existence He perpetually and immensely emanates love! He did not create man so that He would have someone to love. He needed not man nor angels to utilize His love. He is, therefore he loves. He is love!

So, where does that leave man? Why do we exist? Apart from God's will, there is no other answer. Let no man believe in his heart that he in some way of fashion is needed by God. As if to think, If it were not for me, God wouldn't have someone to love? Or perhaps the vilest person will imagine in his heart, God created me because without hate there is no love. God is not ruled by any law and that includes any allusion to a necessity for opposites. God has created a law in nature that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but let us not imagine that the creator is governed by His own creation. Because God is love does not in any way necessitate the existence of hate. No, God always has been but hate has not. Rejoice with me that there will come a time yet again when hate will cease to exist yet again.

God created man. He did not need to. He had nothing to gain from man's existence. He would be as loving, as glorious, as powerful, as infinite as He is with or without man. Apart from His good pleasure, there is no reason for the existence of man. He was not lonely. It was not that He could not reach His full potential unless He created another being. He is. He is perfect with or without man.

God did create man, and man sinned. Now imagine, you are perfectly sustainable without by your very existence. You need no one else. You have nothing to lose or gain by creating something. In your good pleasure, you draw a picture. You draw a perfect picture. A picture without any flaw. You are love and you are perfect, and you perfectly love that picture. You give that picture an ability to remain in perfect conformity to the way you drew it, or you give it the ability to alter itself in any way. If the picture alters itself it is no longer perfect, because perfection can undergo no modifications. If perfection is to change it cannot change into a greater form of perfection. It can only diminish in perfection. It cannot diminish slightly, but only completely. Any alteration is not a little less perfect, but instead, it is perpetually, grotesquely imperfect.

You have drawn the perfect picture of yourself. You didn't need to, but you did. You gave your perfect picture the ability to alter itself or conform to the perfection you drew it in. You didn't need to, but you did. Your perfect picture changes itself. It does not become a little less perfect, but because it has changed it has completely become grotesquely imperfect. You, the artist, don't need this drawing. You drew it out of your own good pleasure. You are completely and perfectly you with or without this drawing of you. It does not add anything to you. It is merely an image of your existence. It contains attributes of your existence because you drew it in your image, but you did not give away a part of your existence or image by drawing it. If you were to crumple the paper up into a wad and burn it in the fire, you would not lose a piece of your existence. You would lose absolutely nothing. In your very existence you are perfect and now you have drawn a perfect picture and it has made itself imperfect before your very eyes. Why not burn it in the fire and start another?

Although this analogy is in so many different ways completely flawed, you might be able to start to appreciate where man stands before his Creator. As the Psalmist asks in Psalm 8, "What is man that you should remember him?"

God created and loved man in perfection. Man sinned, rebelled against the perfection of God, sought to change perfection (which cannot be changed), and thus became grotesquely imperfect in God's sight. Man, like the rest of creation, was good in the sight of the Lord, but after he fell, he became desperately wicked, cursing the rest of creation to his same fate: death. As soon as Adam sinned, God could have obliterated His fallen creation in fewer words than He used to create it. Remember, God gains nothing by man's existence. God is perfectly God with and without man.

God doesn't obliterate His fallen creation, though. He does something much, much more extraordinary.

The Father has infinitely, completely, and perfectly loved His only Son for all eternity. Within this self-sustained relationship, God's love has been eternally sustained and kept perfect. God the Father loves the Son. The Son has felt nothing but the Father's love for all eternity. Try your best, although you will not be able to, to grasp this concept. There has never been a single moment in all eternity that the Son has not known the love of God the Father. That was until God created man.

Christ Jesus, the Son of God, became a man, was born of the virgin Mary, was wholly man and wholly God. He endured perfection in an imperfect world. He loved His Father perfectly as He always has from all eternity. He bore our weaknesses, our hunger, our thirst, our aches, our pains, and our finite existence. He loved God the Father. He kept the Law perfectly. Unlike Adam, Christ perfectly conformed to the Law of God, being God himself He could not sin.

Why? Why did Christ become man? Why did God send His only Son to live a man's finite life?

God did not obliterate His creation after Adam sinned. After man was made grotesquely imperfect and desperately wicked in the sight of God, He did not destroy what was once perfect. He loved His creation. He loved it completely and perfectly. After it was made imperfect by man's disobedience, He didn't have to love it. There was nothing lovely about it. He made it perfect like Him, but man's sin made it completely unlike Him. God is love and God is perfect. Man, created in the image of God, became completely unlike God. Man destroyed the image of God, an image he was created to bear perfectly.

God sent His only begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Instead of destroying the defiled and grotesque image that man had corrupted, God redeemed that image through His Son. God created man in His image. Man fell and defiled the image of God. Therefore, God, instead of destroying man, redeemed His image by placing it upon His perfect Son. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, bore God's image perfectly, as Adam was created to. But that was not enough. Although the image of God was get again redeemed by Christ's perfection, man's imperfection still needed atonement. God needed to place man in Christ's perfect image. This required nothing less than the Son of God, the perfect image bearer, the perfect Law holder, and the perfect love and lover of God the Father, to become the propitiation for our sins.

God the Father loved God the Son for all eternity. It was the perfect love relationship. It was love undefiled, unadulterated, and unsurpassable. No greater loving relationship could ever exist, for this relationship of love defined love itself. This relationship of love was love's very existence. This relationship of love was taken from the Son and placed upon you at the very hour the Son of God, Jesus Christ, screamed out:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Matthew 27:46

The eternal Son of God was nearing death. A death that was man's to die. A death that was the wage of sin, sin that He was completely devoid of. He bore the wrath of God the Father for the first time in His existence. For at that very moment, the eternal love relationship that the Father shared with the Son diminished from the Son and was placed on those who find their salvation in Christ our Lord. Conversely, at that very moment, the eternal wrath of God for man's sins and wickedness were placed upon Him who deserved no wrath at all.

It is no wonder that we are to remember Christ in His death by supping with Him at the Lord's Table. For it was at His death that He switched places with those that He loves. He completely loves those that are completely unlovable. He places His image, the perfect image of God redeemed by His conformity to the Law, and His promise upon us in our baptism. He did not die for all, but only for those who believe that He bore their sins upon the cross. Those who believe only believe because He gives them grace through the Holy Spirit by faith.

We only know love because we have been engrafted into the eternal loving relationship shared by God the Son and God the Father through Jesus Christ's death upon the cross. For at that very moment He placed His perfection once again upon His people, and He placed our imperfection upon Himself. God died in your place. What artist would die in order to redeem the perfection of his self portrait when he didn't need to? How much greater than is the sacrifice of our Holy and Almighty God, who did not even spare His only begotten Son for the redemption of His creation!

This is love! That God imputed His perfect love for the Son to unlovely creatures through the death of Him who He has loved for all eternity! As John says, "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19) As God is love, we are love through Him. Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, if we do not show forth the love of Christ then we must not be in Him. Listen to Paul, and set a Christian example in love!