A relationship with Christ just like the Father's

            

“and I know (my own)” - ginosko - ‘to know,’ but it means to know from the experience of observation, study, and also to know from the experience of falling in love with someone.

 

Ginosko here is a love knowing all the facts. He loves us with an infinite love, knowing every mistake that we would ever make, knowing every failure. His love depends on who and what He is, not who and what we are.

 

Christ loves the believer while fully knowing everything about the believer and that love never grows or diminishes. The believer loves Christ more and more as he learns more doctrine.

 

This means that not every believer loves Christ even though Christ loves every believer. Reciprocal love to Christ depends on accumulation of doctrine in the soul.

 

In other words, if you don’t know Bible doctrine you don’t love God.

 

1. A sheep cannot guide himself. Our Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, provides guidance for us. We have no clue as to what is the divine viewpoint or the divine will as we go through time, so He has provided us with Bible doctrine.

 

2. A sheep cannot cleanse himself. Our Shepherd provides for us rebound. He has provided cleansing from sin, the basis for getting back into fellowship.

 

3. A sheep is helpless when injured. A shepherd has to provide for every problem, for every pressure, for every disaster for the sheep. Our Shepherd provides for us, again through Bible doctrine, the basis whereby we can meet any disaster in life.

           

4. A sheep is defenceless, apart from the shepherd. Our Shepherd has provided a wall of fire for us - Zechariah 2:5.

           

5. A sheep cannot find water. Our Shepherd has provided for us water, the water of life; and He has provided for us food.

           

6. A sheep is easily frightened. Our Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, provides Bible doctrine for us in time of disaster.

           

7. A sheep’s production does not belong to the sheep. By this is meant that a sheep has wool. The sheep grows wool but is doesn’t belong to it. The sheep’s wool is analogous to divine good.

 

Yesterday’s victories are shorn off like the wool of the sheep and will not be seen again until the Bema Seat Judgement. Focus on today’s victories.

 

 

Every believer does not love God. They are the recipients of His love but they don’t love Him. The only way that we can love God is to know Him, and you have to know Bible doctrine.

 

In other words, if you don’t know Bible doctrine you don’t love God. He always loves us but whether we love God or not depends on Bible doctrine.

 

God the Father and God the Son loved one another in EP based upon what they knew about each other - they both possessed perfect righteousness and shared perfect happiness.

 

The love relationship between the believer and Christ truly is a dream come true because this is the only relationship anywhere that nurtures sharing the happiness of God.

 

If God is going to share His happiness with people in time there must be a way He can share it through love. God cannot share His happiness without love.

 

 “I put on the line this soul of mine as a substitute for the sheep.”