The God I know is my heavenly Father. I know He created me and loves me as His child. I am now, also a parent. And as a parent, I have occasionally had to reprimand and discipline my own children. I love my children and always want the best for them. And I know my heavenly Father must want the same for all His children, including me.
I believe God as a father transcends God as a judge. Because He loves me with a pure love, and can always see the bigger picture, He is patient when I make mistakes through wrong decisions and actions.
As Jesus said, God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. This can appear to us, His children, as inconsistency. The reason for our confusion is the limited, self-centered nature of our understanding. It is up to each of us to grow in our level of understanding; to begin to grasp the bigger picture. And as we do this we will grow in our closeness to God. And realize that He loves us unconditionally. He is our Creator; He sees the beginning from the end. Literally, in Him we live, move and have our being! There could never be a possibility of me offending or injuring my heavenly Father. Therefore there could never be the need for retribution, atonement.
The sacrifice which our Creator Son, Michael (Jesus), made was to bestow himself as an actual creature (man) within His own creation. To live as a man, while slowly becoming cognizant of His own divinity. And, yet, accepting the full experience of life as one of his mortal creatures… He literally became one of his own creatures! He experienced the whole thing! That is at-onement. He literally became one of us!! That is the ultimate of love for us, the mirroring of His Father’s example as he had experienced it.
Offered by: Tommie Clendening
