In Matthew 12:48-50 Jesus tells his disciples they are his Father’s children because they obeyed his Father’s will. Everyone who say they are child of God must know God and obey his will by being a disciple of Jesus, a student of his word.
A disciple who obeys God’s word are holy to God because they remain in his will and believe in what his word really is in these 2 Scripture passages.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it
judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
2 Timothy 3: 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
God’s word will judge if your heart’s thoughts and attitude is spiritually for Jesus or for our flesh. Scripture is God breathed meaning it is the very word of God which you must put your sole trust to learn, rebuke, correct and train in to be God’s righteous and to know how to do fruitful labor for him.
God’s word is the only means to fully know God spiritually and you should not hold on to your personal life experiences or that of other people’s experience to know God and his truth because they appeal to your human senses it does not appeal to your spiritual sense which comes from only God’s word. We can trust that God has vetted everyone who were written in the Bible and not those outside of the Bible to be his example. You only can measure the spiritual fruit that someone bears is true to Scripture.
Jesus said his words are spirit and not of the flesh.
John 6:63, Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”
Jesus is saying to understand his words requires the Holy Spirit and not your human sense. So, to understand Jesus’ teachings and his Father’s will for you it comes through the Holy Spirit recalling to you God’s words from Scripture.
The Holy Spirit is teaching you when you hear someone’s teaching, and you recall their words from your spiritual knowledge of God’s words and examples from the Bible.
That is why Jesus said no one will understand his parables unless they are one of his disciples because his teaching was not for those who see things from a worldly perspective.
Matthew 13:10 The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" 11 He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: " 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. To understand the spiritual teaching of Jesus is to define it from God’s perspective. So, how would you spiritually describe the love of God? Describing it from a worldly perspective can never justify the true love of God. God’s love can only be defined by his word.
This is how Paul describes God’s love.
Romans 8: 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Being finite human beings, we can only imagine what these things are that can never separate us from God’s love.
If you never experience any of these things that Paul spoke of, then how can we truly describe or compare God’s love from anything we see or experience from our finite life on this earth.
When someone compare God’s love to something they love here on earth that is what they will want in heaven. I heard someone say Disney World is like being in heaven. But a disciple of God’s word will know what heaven will be like from Jesus’ words in Revelations.
What we should understand about God’s love it is indescribable to anything here that we will experience in our lifetime on earth or anything in all of God’s creation. We will only know God’s love when we are in it in heaven because God is love. You can only imagine what it will be like in heaven from Jesus’ perspective.
Be safe in Jesus
Ps. Glenn