A God of Love

Love requires communication for its very existence. 
These studies were largely inspired by the [truth]LINK series of Bible studies.
Before beginning this study, pause to pray for God’s guidance. 

A DIVINE LOVE LETTER

To love and be loved is the most deep-rooted of our human desires. Intuitively, we know without being taught, that we are made for faithful, trust-filled relationships.
We are built with longings for connection, interpersonal engagement, and a sense of belonging. The Bible gives a simple, yet profound reason for this.
Compare Genesis 1:27 and 1 John 4:16 to discover why.

(NOTE: All scripture is taken from New King James Version (NKJV) unless otherwise noted.)

We are created in the divine “image,” so we are engineered for giving and receiving “_____ .” That's what and who we are as human beings.

It makes sense that a loving, unselfish God, who would create others in His image, would naturally be a communicator, since communication is so important to love’s existence. We would expect that a God of love would desire a relationship with those He created. And this is exactly how it is. Jesus Christ, who claimed to be God in the flesh, got to the heart of this matter:

“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not _____ what his master is doing; but I have called you ______ , for all things that I heard from My Father I have  _______  _________ to you” (John 15:15).

It’s honestly really mind-blowing that God, the most powerful being in the universe, desires to communicate with us and develop a friendship with us.
This is why God has given us His Word, in written form.

“All _______ is given by _______ of God” (2 Timothy 3:16).

The Bible—here called “Scripture”—makes the bold claim that it is God’s communication device. But God didn’t intend the Bible to be a demand for blind obedience or to override our freedom of choice. Instead, friendship is His goal. The Bible is a channel for God to show us His love and teach us about Him. Regarding human words Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Likewise, if the Bible is God’s word, then we can expect to find in it an unfolding of God’s heart. But how can we be confident that the Bible is what it claims to be?

AN ALL-KNOWING AND HEART-SEEKING GOD

There once lived a king who was completely self-absorbed. Intoxicated with his power, all he could think about was how great he was. One night, God revealed to him in a prophetic dream more than 2,500 years of world history in advance, leaving the proud king humbled and transformed.The story is recorded for us in Daniel 2-4.

In his dream, the king saw an image of a man with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet of iron and clay, and a stone that struck the image at the feet, ground it to powder and became a great mountain. The prophet Daniel, a captive in Babylon, interpreted the dream for the Babylonian king.

Read and discuss the interpretation of the dream in Daniel 2:36-45.

Written some 600 years before the time of Christ, the prophecy received by King Nebuchadnezzar foretold the rise and fall of four successive empires and the formation of modern Europe, providing convincing proof that the Bible is inspired by God. In fact, the predictions came true and are recorded in history:Babylon was succeeded by Media Persia, which was succeeded by Greece, which was succeeded by Rome, which divided into the ten main kingdoms of Western Europe. The accurate fulfillment of the first five parts of the vision gives us the assurance that the final prediction will come to pass as well: “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed” (verse 44).

This prophecy shows us a God who knows the future, but also one who knows us too. He knows everything we’ve ever done and will do, every one of our weaknesses and failures. And yet, knowing everything about us, He still loves us and longs to be our friend. God is not a friend who would be disinterested or enabling, but a true friend who will push us to be better. It was an experience with this God that changed Nebuchadnezzar’s life. 

“ I, _________ Nebuchadnezzar, ______ and _________ and __________ the King of heaven, all of whose works are _________, and His ways __________ . And those who walk in pride He is able to put down” (Daniel 4:37).

Now God and the king were friends. Bible prophecy invites each of us, as well, into friendship with God by giving us a rational basis for trusting Him. Jesus explained the relational purpose of Bible prophecy like this:

“Now I have told you _________ it comes to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might ________” (John 14:29).

The whole point of Bible prophecy is to give us a solid foundation for faith in God. But not only does God know each of us, He also wants us to know Him. Addressing God the Father, Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know You” (John 17:3). In the Greek the word “know” is ginōskō, and refers to the intimate kind of knowing we experience in a relationship, not merely to factual knowledge. Later in this prayer Jesus expanded on this by asking the Father for something truly amazing: “that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). Eternal life—or salvation—is not merely an endless duration of life, but also a quality of life that is defined by knowing God as an intimate friend. God wants to be known, and can be known, through the truths He disclosed in Scripture.

ONE CENTRAL TRUTH

As we study Scripture we need a direction, an orientation on the biblical landscape. In this series of Bible studies we will discover over and over again that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). God’s love is the one truth that defines every other truth. Truth is not merely a list of factual topics, but rather a composite whole that paints a picture of who God’s character. Since the core reality of God’s character is love, it follows that all truth is simply an unfolding of God's love. We can expect, then, that every true doctrine reveals some dimension of God’s love, and we can be equally certain that any teaching that contradicts God’s love is, by definition, false. This will be our working criterion in these studies. With the “God-is-love” premise before us, we have the base equation for working out all truth. We know where we’re going and what we’re looking for as we make our journey through Scripture.

RELATE

Truth is not just a list of concepts and facts. Rather, truth is an embodied reality, the sum total of which is to be found in the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ

The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, shows us God’s character. It reveals who God is at heart—how God thinks, feels, and behaves. Every story, prophecy, and doctrine of Scripture invites us into personal relationship with God upon the premise that God is worth knowing, that God is attractive, because “God is love.”

Each morning you wake up and pursue life. Sure, you go after things like education and career, material comforts and adventurous experiences. But deep down you know you were made for something more—something incredible and amazing and extraordinary. That something more is connection with your Maker. Getting to know Him is the most meaningful thing you can pursue and doing so makes everything else fall into place.

PARTICIPATE

I want to hear God speaking to me through the love letter He gave us, the Bible.

God is a fundamentally relational being. As such, He has things to say in order to communicate His thoughts and feelings to us. King David expressed well what we can expect as we explore the truths of Scripture: “I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure” (Psalm 119:162). God’s word is of extreme value. The kind of treasure we discover in God’s word is the infinitely valuable experience of knowing God for ourselves and discovering the personal reality of His beautiful love.

 Unimaginable Love

God’s love is the most precious and selfless love that exists.
These studies were largely inspired by the [truth]LINK series of Bible studies.
Before beginning this study, pause to pray for God’s guidance. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF A NAME

A couple in Sweden wanted to name their child, “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116,” to be pronounced, “Albin.” They stated that the unusual name was “a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation.” In Sweden, there is a court that makes the final decision on names. The court denied the couple’s request and suggested they choose a different name for the child. While this may seem odd, there was a deeper meaning to the strange request. The couple chose the name to protest Sweden’s court law that the government must approve the name. 

We all have names, and all our names have meanings. Just ask Google if you don’t know yours.  This is especially true in the Bible. Every name carries a message, revealing something about the character or story of the one who bears the name.

“Adam” means of the earth, and according to the Bible, Adam was created by God from the earth, the dirt of the ground.

“Jacob” means deceiver, and his story is plagued by the results of his deceits. 

“Israel” means one who prevails with God, and that was the name God gave Jacob when he overcame his tendencies and made things right with God. 

We can see in Scripture, people’s names had meaning. 

The first time we meet “God” in the Bible is by a very specific and peculiar name that reveals the most incredible thing imaginable about the Creator:

“In the beginning ______ created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

You probably answered the last blank with “God”--that’s what most versions of the Bible say. But if we look in the original language the Bible was written in, Hebrew, the word used for God is not the generic word. It’s actually a proper name, Elohim. But there is something odd about the name: it’s a plural noun, which would be like your neighbor introducing himself to you by saying, “Hi, I’m Johns.” Confused, you might think he was just a very poor student of basic grammar, or perhaps that he was imagining himself to be more than one person. Either way, you probably wouldn’t take his unusual introduction seriously. 

Why?

Because it doesn’t make sense that a human being could be plural, by himself. And yet, this is precisely how God introduces Himself to us in the first verse of the Bible—as a plurality of being in some sense. The idea is made all the more certain later in Genesis 1:

“Then God [Elohim] said, ‘Let ____ make man in ____ image’” (Genesis 1:26).

There is some sense in which God is an Us and an Our, not merely an I and a Me. God's own reality, apart from and before creation, involves a plurality of personhood. God is Elohim—the Plural One.

THREE-IN-ONE

While the idea of one God being plural seems very strange, we begin to understand what it means when we consider the most basic truth about God stated in Scripture:

“God is love” (1 John 4:16).

So what does this mean?

When the Bible uses the word “love,” it means something very specific:

“Love is…not self-seeking” (1 Corinthians 13:4 - 5, NIV).

Love, by definition, is self-giving and other-centered. In order for love to exist, there must be more than one person. If you stay in your room alone for the rest of your life, you can’t experience love. So then, since God is love, it logically follows that God is more than one personal being while at the same time existing as one essential divine entity.

Throughout the Bible God is described as one God and yet more than one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is God (Isaiah 64:8; John 3:16). The Son, Jesus Christ, is God (John 1:1; Philippians 2:5-6). And the Holy Spirit is God (Job 33:4; Luke 1:35). This is why we call God a Trinity, or a Tri-unity—because God is an eternal fellowship shared by three distinct divine persons who are of one essential nature, one in purpose, mind and character.

There is a logical genius in the fact that God is identified as three in one. Think about the logic of the number three as the minimum numeric value of love. Before reading the next paragraph discuss the following situation: a close friendship exists between two people, and then a third person enters the picture. What are the possible relational dynamics that may occur?

The saying goes “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.” The reason for this is because we know from experience that we are self-centered by nature and we feel threatened by the introduction of a third person into a relationship. Maybe you’ve experienced this: having a best friend, but then someone else comes along and starts to divide the focus your friend previously had on you. 

And yet, a third person is actually what’s best for the relationship, because if the third person is accepted, then self-centeredness will have to give way to a more selfless quality of love. Now you not only have to receive the love of your first friend, you also have to accept that your first friend is also friends with another. You have to accept a divided interest that is not exclusively focused on you. For this reason, three is the minimum numeric value of pure love. Where there is only one person, love cannot occur. Where there are two, each is the sole recipient of the other’s attention, giving potential for selfish love. But when there are three, each recipient must also humbly defer attention to the third party, and each one must occupy the position of the third person to the other two. Pure selflessness can now occur because each one must love and be loved with both an exclusive and a divided interest.

From this example, we can conclude that if the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were not eternally coexistent, it could not be said with any reason that “God is love.”

Scripture’s revelation of God as a three-way unity of perfect love is convincing evidence that the Bible is, in fact, the revelation of the one and only true God, whose essential nature is love. Yes, aspects of this truth are beyond our comprehension. After all, this is God we’re talking about. We are mere finite creatures attempting to comprehend the infinite. What we can begin to comprehend is that God is essentially a relational being of other-centered love. God is a social unit, a self-giving friendship of three who are one. And this picture of God is extremely beautiful. 

RELATE

Jesus’ life on earth demonstrated the glorious truth of God’s relational love.

According to the Bible, Jesus came into our world from having preexisted for all eternity past “in the bosom of the Father” or, as another translation says, “in closest relationship with the Father” (John 1:18, NIV). Speaking to the Father of the relationship that they had before He came to earth, Jesus said, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Then Jesus expressed to the Father His hope for the human race: “that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).

What beautiful insight regarding who God is and what He desires for us!

God is more, far more, than a powerful Supreme Being ruling over the universe with authority. God is the epicenter and origin of all true and tender and trustworthy friendship. “God is love”—Father, Son and Spirit—and the essence of their desire is that each of us would come to know them and become partakers and reflectors of their love.

PARTICIPATE

God is beautiful beyond my thoughts and imagination. I can believe in such a God, and I want to know more about Him.

From the moment we are born, we are hungry for connection with others. We live our lives craving friendship, loyalty, affection and trust. We are, at heart, relational creatures because we were made in the image of a relational God. All of our good and loving and beautiful human relationships are whispering to us of the relationship God is inviting us into with Himself.

In His Image

If we were created merely as animals, then all we could hope for is a fulfillment of primal urges and ultimately death. However, God created us in His image, gifting us with a life of purpose and eventually, eternal life with Him.

These studies were largely inspired by the [truth]LINK series of Bible studies.

Before beginning this study, pause to pray for God’s guidance. 

TWO TALES

The Bible asks a question that we all may have wondered at one point, in some variation:

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, _______ is __________ that you are _____________ of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).

This passage was written by King David, as he stands in awe of the enormity of the universe and is humbled, feeling miniscule in comparison. He also recognizes that in God’s sight, he is incredibly significant. Although David’s question seems simple, it is actually quite profound: what is our identity and why is God interested in us, miniscule as we are?

One popular tale about human identity goes something like this: A long time ago, there was nothing. Then, about 13.9 billion years ago, the nothingness exploded, and from that explosion came everything, including human life. It was a biological fluke that evolved over time, without any deeper meaning or purpose. Survival of the fittest is the law of life--whoever is stronger and faster lives, and the weaker ones die. Eventually, life forms will become extinct and that will be the end of this biological fluke. Not such a happy tale, is it?

However, the Bible tells a vastly different, and perhaps you will find, a more believable story. This tale confirms our instinctive feeling that we are more than simply animals. We sense that we are conflicted creatures who have fallen from some elevated position of moral dignity, and that we are fraught with immense potential for relational bliss. So what is this tale according to the Bible?

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

That’s how the story begins. Chapter one opens with the intentional creative act of a personal God. As the creation account of Genesis unfolds over the course of six days, a beautiful, harmonized earth is formed, building to this climax: 

“God [Elohim] created man in His own_______ ; in the ________ of God He created him; ______ and ___________ He created _________. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply’” (Genesis 1:27-28).

Here we see that the image of God includes both the man and the woman as a relational unit with the ability to procreate a third person, a child. This makes sense because, as we have previously learned, God is a relational circle rather than a solitary self. In other words, “God is love” (1 John 4:16), which means that God is self-giving and other-centered. So when the Bible says that human beings are creatures in God’s divine image, it means that we can love like God loves.

Think of it this way: as God created the earth and us, he had three options. He could create (1) machines, (2) slaves, or (3) free moral agents. But in order to be consistent with His loving nature, only the third option was possible. So he created humans in His image, as free moral agents who can make choices with effects that can continue for generations. We are individuals, endowed with the freedom of choice. 

Compare Psalm 139:1-13, Psalm 56:8, Jeremiah 31:3, Matthew 10:29-31, and Acts 17:26-28 to discover how truly significant each of us is to God. Discuss what it means for God to be paying attention to our every thought and action with interest, for God to notice all our tears, for God to have every hair on our heads numbered, and for God to providentially orchestrate key events of our lives with the hope that we would seek Him and find Him.

Each person’s life carries what Paul calls “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17)—a weight of moral and relational significance that only eternity itself can measure. The influence exerted by each of us in our lives will never reach final calculation, but rather will ripple forever with effect. It lies within our power as human beings made in God’s image to actualize events and relationships of everlasting beauty that cannot come to pass apart from our individual choices.

Every act of love you perform, no matter how small, makes a difference to the course of history and, therefore, to the eternal scheme of reality itself. If you speak a word of encouragement to a heavy heart, it matters on an infinite scale. If you visit a sick person and treat them with compassion, that deed is of staggering eternal worth. If you feed a hungry child, doing so is a crucial experience of generosity in that child’s existence, as well as in God’s existence as the One who loves that child as Himself. It is an incredible privilege and also a weighty responsibility to be created in the image of God.  

MORE THAN JUST ANIMALS

Atheism and scientific naturalism are becoming increasingly popular due to the scientific telling of evolution. But does it make sense to deny the existence of God? And what are the implications of doing so?

If God does not exist, then human beings are nothing more than biological animals, mere material creatures governed by primal instincts, here today and gone tomorrow. To accept this view of human identity would be to accept that life has no ultimate meaning, that the moral categories of good and evil do not actually exist, that all our notions of compassion, justice and goodwill are false constructs we’ve made up, and that love is merely a powerful illusion. But we sense in our inmost hearts that this is not true. 

Consider this challenging insight from the Bible regarding atheism: “The ___________ has said in his heart, there is no ________” (Psalm 14:1).

This text isn’t meant to be demean atheists, but rather to state an observation regarding the logical incoherence of atheism. Of course, many intelligent people refuse to believe in God because in their experience, religion has made God appear ugly and not loving, only worthy of unbelief. But here in Psalm 14:1 the Bible is offers an analytical observation regarding the general foolishness of denying God’s existence. It is foolish to say, “there is no God,” because if He didn’t exist, it would never occur to us to wonder if He does. The fact is, only that which exists in some form occurs to human awareness and things that do not exist can never occur to our awareness. It is impossible for the human mind to conceive of anything that has absolutely no basis in reality. No negation statement is ever absolutely true. We cannot complete the sentence, “There is no . . . ,” without reference to existing realities. Even when we construct our wildest fictions, we have simply reassembled pieces of things that do exist. The fact that we conceive of God at all is evidence that a God of some sort does exist.

It also doesn’t make sense to deny the existence of God for the reason that we all know life does have meaning, that good and evil do exist, and that we long for a quality of love that finds no perfectly satisfying match in our broken world. Atheism is, therefore, counterintuitive and requires an intellectual and emotional leap away from what we know instinctively. 

We all have a nagging suspicion, implanted by God, that we are meant for divine nobility and that evil, suffering, and death are unnatural intruders. We can’t help but wonder if the reason we so persistently long for something more is because there is something more.

God “has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT).

There resides within us a sense of something more that is very difficult to brush off. Because we were made in the image of God, we can never be truly satisfied until we return to God. Only God can fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts.

RELATE

In Jesus Christ we see what we as humans were created to be.

The key word in this study is “image.” We’ve seen that “God made mankind in His own image.” In reading the New Testament, we encounter the word again, this time pertaining to Jesus Christ as a new and restored manifestation of what it means to be human. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul tells us that Jesus “is the image of God.” Hebrew 1:3 states that Jesus is “the brightness of His [God’s] glory and the express image of His person.” Jesus now carries the descriptive title, “the image of God,” because He is, in His humanity, the new pattern for man. He is, as it were, a fresh enactment of the human experience, living once again in God’s love as originally intended.

Now, through identification with Jesus, “as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man [Jesus]” (1 Corinthians 15:49). The image of God can be restored in us by coming into a relationship with Christ. As we “behold” Him, Paul explains, we will be “transformed into the same image, from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

PARTICIPATE

I want to commit to “beholding” Jesus and I look forward to being changed into His image.

To “behold” Jesus simply means to learn more about His character and teachings. As we commit our hearts and minds to the transformative task of beholding Him, the Bible promises that God’s image will take on new and living form in our lives.

Cosmic Conflict

The Earth is at the center of a cosmic conflict between good and evil that originated with angels in heaven. The topic of dispute is God’s character.

These studies were largely inspired by the [truth]LINK series of Bible studies.

Before beginning this study, pause to pray for God’s guidance. 

THE BEGINNING OF EVIL

According to the Bible, humans are not the only rational creatures with powers of freewill. From Genesis to Revelation we encounter an order of beings called angels. Scriptures tell us that angels existed before the creation of man, (Job 38:4-7; Revelation 1:20), that they are numerous (Hebrews 12:22), powerful and intelligent (Psalm 103:20; Daniel 4:17), that they have a system of governing with appointed leaders (Ephesians 3:10; Daniel 7:9 -10), that they actively operate within our world, mostly unseen, but sometimes in visible form (Hebrews 1:14; 13:2), and that sin and evil originated from them (Revelation 12:7, 12).

One of these angels was named “Lucifer”—bearer of light—a name given by his Creator to signify his character and mission. Lucifer was to occupy a position of closeness with God and thus to be a teacher, to share God’s character with his fellow angels. Lucifer was “perfect in all” his “ways” (his patterns of thought, feeling and behavior), “until iniquity was found in” him. Then he was given the name “Satan,” which means adversary. While the image of Satan has been fictionalized into a cartoonish red man with horns and a pitchfork, the Bible shows us a powerful, highly intelligent, and magnificently beautiful fallen angel who is the originator of the evil that exists in our world.

Read and discuss Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:12-19. On a separate sheet of paper compose a character profile of Lucifer.

Lucifer chose to nurture thoughts of self-exaltation, causing him to desire to take God’s place as the ruler and gain the loyalty of angels to himself. As Lucifer dwelt on these selfish thoughts, he stopped reflecting God’s character and began to accuse God of the selfish motives that were dwelling in his own heart. By denying the goodness of God’s character, Lucifer’s trust in God was eroded and he wished to rebel against Him and take over God’s throne.

Thus the Bible says “_______ broke out in ____________…” (Revelation 12:7).

The word used here for “war” is polemos in the Greek, which is related to words like polemic and politics. This indicates the precise nature of the “war” Satan launched against God. It was not a war of physical fighting or strength, but a war of politics and propaganda, with God’s character as the victim. Satan waged his war by spreading lies about who God is at heart. This is why Satan is described as the one who “deceives the whole world” and as “a liar and the father of it” (Revelation 12:9 and John 8:44).

The Bible offers some other pieces of information about the core issue of Satan’s rebellion:

Ezekiel says that Lucifer was cast out of heaven because he “sinned” (Ezekiel 28:16).

John defines sin as “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).

And Paul defines God’s law as “love” (Romans 13:10).

This indicates that Lucifer rebelled against God’s law and, therefore, against God’s love. He raised charges against God and against God’s law that governs the universe. We see that the Bible claims that “God is love” and that His law is, therefore, a law that governs by the principle of love (1 John 4:8; Matthew 22:37-40), Satan desired to live without love and portray God’s law as a list of arbitrary rules imposed only for purposes of control, and unnecessary as a way of life.

WHY EVIL AND SUFFERING?

At some point, we’ve all asked one of the most pressing and significant of all questions: “Why do evil and suffering exist?” From what we’ve discovered about Satan’s rebellion, we have a starting place to answer this question. Now let’s go a little deeper by considering the four basic explanations for the existence of evil that are offered in today’s logic and philosophy:

1. Naturalism (the atheist worldview) says that there is no such thing as evil as a moral category. There is only a natural process. Suffering is part of that process and is necessary for the evolution of the strong and the elimination of the weak.
2. Pantheism (the god-in-all-as-all worldview) says that there is no personal God, but rather that nature itself and the natural processes of life constitute an impersonal divine force. Evil is viewed as a balancing force in nature and suffering as the inevitable process of the wheel of life. As in naturalism, there is nothing other than the natural process.
3. Deterministic Theism (the control worldview) says that God’s main characteristic is power and His main objective is control. God predetermines all events, and human beings are merely the victims of His predetermination. Evil and suffering are therefore ordained by God according to His sovereign will.
4. Benevolent Theism (the relational worldview) says that God’s main characteristic is love and His main objective is that we would be voluntary reciprocators of His love. Evil and suffering are ultimately the result of the misuse of freewill for chosen anti-love purposes.

The Bible teaches the fourth option by claiming that love is the fundamental essence of God’s identity. It logically follows from the premise that “God is love,” that God is a relational being whose  existence is defined by a dynamic flow of giving and receiving. It further follows that if love is the essence of God’s character, then love must be God’s objective for us, which means that freewill must be granted to us, in order that true love may occur. So we can see that in seeking to answer the question of evil’s existence, a basic three-part equation logically emerges:

The risk that comes with the freedom of love is that with freewill and choice, we might choose selfishness instead of God’s law of love. God chose to take that risk, hoping for the glorious possibilities, despite the horrific dangers. 

In biblical thought, evil is not part of God’s plan or His will. Rather, evil is the result of free will gone bad, first with Lucifer, and then with human beings. In regards to the evil in our world, Jesus said, “An enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28). In other words, God is not the source of the bad things in our world. Rather, Satan is, with human consent and cooperation. Thus Satan’s anti-love mode of existence was implemented in our world: “God made people good, but they have found all kinds of ways to be bad” (Ecclesiastes 7:29, NCV).

Read and discuss Isaiah 14:15-17, Revelation 12:12, 1 Peter 5:8, and Romans 1:28-32 to discover that all evil, oppression, enslavement, prejudice, hatred, violence, abuse and everything else contrary to love, has its origin in the principles of Satan’s kingdom.

Then read and discuss James 1:17 and Galatians 5:22-23 to discover that everything pure, lovely, liberating, noble, healing, peaceful, joyous, and beautiful has its origin in the principles of God’s kingdom.

This brings us to the final point of the Bible’s logic regarding evil: because evil is fundamentally contrary to the loving character of God, it will ultimately be eliminated.

“For evildoers shall be ___________ ______________ ; but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth” (Psalm 37:9).

“They shall not _________ nor __________ in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

As we continue our study of Scripture, truth by truth, point by point, we will discover God’s plan for eliminating evil and restoring love as the principle of our existence.

RELATE

Jesus fought against Satan on our behalf and demonstrated the superiority of love over evil.

There are two kingdoms contending for the mastery of our world and every human heart. Jesus leads the kingdom of truth and love. Satan, our adversary, leads the kingdom of deception and selfishness.

A comparative illustration was offered by Christ: “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils” (Luke 11:21-22). The “strong man” represents Satan, but Jesus claims to be “stronger than he.” Satan’s kingdom is based on deception, self-exaltation, and violence. Jesus’ kingdom is based on truth, selflessness, and non-coercive love. When Jesus suffered the murderous rage of humans and demons at the cross without responding in kind—responding, in fact, with only self-giving love—Satan’s kingdom was conquered and his accusations against the character of God were proven false. By voluntarily dying on the cross with unyielding love for His enemies, Jesus defeated evil in principle and set in motion a course of redemption that ensures its ultimate defeat.

PARTICIPATE

I recognize that we on earth are involved in a cosmic conflict between good and evil and that Jesus is our Savior sent to rescue us.

Jesus came to Earth to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). If we choose, we can be empowered by Him to break free from the chains of sin. By His life and death Jesus completed a work that will ultimately defeat evil and sin. It lies with each of us to allow Jesus access to our lives so that the devil’s deceptive power may lose its hold on us.