Concerning Love; Concerning Imagination

What follows are my thoughts on two topics. Note the lack of Scripture references, thus anyone who reads it is advised to discernment. I confess, however, that it was my intention to put the issues as Biblically as possible, according to my extremely limited knowledge of the Bible's system of truth.


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MEDITATIONS ON LOVE AND FORGIVENESS

These are thoughts I had particularly after reading the Bible books of Exodus, Leviticus, Mark, and Luke, R.C. Sproul's God's Love, and Jonathan Edwards's A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and after listening to Paul Washer's sermon excerpt titled by the video uploader as "Your Weakness Should Drive You to Christ".

An excellent test for examining how much we hold onto God's promises of justification in Christ is how much we love people, especially our enemies.

By "love", I do not primarily mean a warm, fond feeling that we have because we like some people for who they are. In the Bible, love is used as a verb so many times more than it is used as a noun.

I mean love as a visible graciousness to everyone regardless of what we felt about them, knowing the profound fact that we were also enemies in God's eyes when He saved us in Christ.

Thus, if we find our hearts unwilling to give up on all of our own dignities and benefits for the sake of others, it means we have yet to hold on to God's forgiveness even more, because evidently there is some disbelief that God has forgiven us.
 
The problem that keeps us from understanding forgiveness is twofold:
1) We do not understand the Law. (antinomianism)
In other words, we do not truly know and feel our sins to be heinous toward God, because we do not really believe that God's standard is that high. Thus, we don't deeply understand the need for forgiveness and don't run to Christ.
2) We do not understand grace. (legalism)
We don't believe that God is merciful enough to forgive sins that are that great. This is because we think that God is like us, sinfully vengeful. We express this ignorance in two ways: we try to earn God's forgiveness, or we find ways to deny and hide that our sins are so great.

This realization has only become so clear to me recently. It is at once a high standard and a door of mercy. It is a high standard because it's hard to love selflessly. But it is a door of mercy because now I know I don't understand God's justification deeply enough, and I can pursue it.
 
The remedy to the problem, obviously, is to learn of God's Law and His grace. The ways are various, but Scripture is exceptionally effective in teaching us both. And, perceiving our lack of love should constantly drive us to Christ, praying to the Father; otherwise, we may become self-satisfied with our disproportionate works that appear godly and forget this wonderful thing of God, which is salvation.


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MEDITATIONS ON IMAGINATION

This was a seriously bothersome issue in my life, and I wanted it fixed. I misuse my imagination so badly I needed to sit down and write about how to deal with it.

The definition, for the purpose of this exercise, will be "the mental activity in which a person visualizes scenarios and material things that are not empirically perceived in that moment."

God's purpose:
- Closely related to the human quality of creativity, imagination seems to belong to the conception stage of the creative process. Thus, imagination glorifies God as a part of human creativity.
- Imagination is a response to the hidden mysteries of God; imagination is possible because there are things that are not revealed to us. Imagination expresses our wonder and desires, probing into the possibilities of what God has in store, based on what we already know. If we know everything there is to know about everything (which God does), imagination would be impossible, because there would be no reasoning process. God gladly uses our imagination for worship (types, foreshadows, parables, images).

Problems after the Fall:
- Plotting sin.
- Twisted and blasphemous visualizations of God.
- Addiction to indulging in fantasies, which in essence expresses dissatisfaction with the reality God gives to us.

While still in this fallen world, it is good to:
- Envision, to the utmost of our Biblical knowledge, the life and glory of heaven.
- Abstain from any imaginings that do not point to the Celestial City, and that settle comfortably in itself or in this temporal age.