• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Sermo Humilis

Humble Speech

  • Home
  • Topics
    • Just a Thought
    • Who we Are Instead
    • Life in Christendom
  • Series
    • Topical
      • Words that Matter
      • Jesus Through all of Life
      • 8 Weeks Before Marriage
      • Life and Times of Jesus
      • Rock of Ages
      • The Ten Commandments
    • Bible Book
      • Proverbs
      • The Book of Ezra
      • 1 Corinthians
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Life in Christendom / Because His Love is True

Because His Love is True

25 January 2020 By David Trounce

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Tokens for Those he Loves - Sermo Humilis

God loves the material world, for He made it. He loves us material beings, for He made us, and placed on us the highest honour by making us as those who bear His image.

There is a tendency to reject the material world in favour of some idea of a super-spiritual Christianity. But this is not the way of God. God has bound Himself to His people by means of a Covenant. But He does not just promise to save us and then oversee the process. He also enters into the process to save us.

We know this because when it came to saving this world, rather than wave a wand and spiritualise it, He entered into it as a man and not a ghost.

As if this were not enough, God, throughout history, has provided us with material tokens of His promise to save us.

In Eden, He promised to slay the dragon and cover our shame through victory. He then made stitched clothes of animal skin as a token of His promise to cover our shame.

In the days of Noah, God didn’t just promise to never flood the world again, He supplies a rainbow as a token of His promise.

And in the Gospel, Jesus is lifted up on the cross for the forgiveness of our sin. He then rises from the dead—a physical, material token—to reassure our hearts of His power to save to the utmost all who cry out to Him.

He then adds and reaffirms the promise of His love through the ongoing, visible tokens of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

This is one of the things faith and love do. Faith looks for tokens and love provides them.

In Genesis 15, God makes a tremendous promise to Abraham; that He would possess the land of Canaan. Abraham then responds by asking,

Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it? (Genesis 15:8)

We know that this question was not the overflow of a shakey faith because only two verses earlier we are told that, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness”.

God responded to Abraham’s request for assurance with two tokens to confirm His promise; a fantastic vision and circumcision.

Such tokens are not material props for a shaky spiritual faith; they are the natural language of faith.

As one writer put it, it is as though God spoke a kind word to us, saying that He would bring us to heaven, and we, in child-like faith responded with, “Cross Your heart?”

And instead of blasting us for our impudence, He smiled on us and said, “Cross My heart.”

God does not give us tokens of His love because our faith is false. He gives them because His love is true. And those who love always exchange tokens.

This is how God is with us, and this is how He wants us to be with one another.

It is why we make promises and keep them and it is why we obey the commandments of God.

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:12-14)

Jesus gave up His life for His friends in humble obedience to God. Not because His love needed proof, but because His love was true. Likewise, our obedience is offered to Him, not because our love needs proof but as a confirmation that our love is true.

Credit: Thanks to Peter Leithart (A Great Mystery), Doug Wilson (Bone of My Bones) and C. S Lewis (Surprised By Joy) for much of the above insights.

Related...

Gut Punch Worship

Heroes

A Simple Faith

Righteousness

Filed Under: Life in Christendom Tagged With: Faith, Love, Tokens


Writing Ideas on Sermo HumilisWhat do You Want to Read About?

 

Nothing like real-world issues to focus the mind. If you have something you would like me to write about, send me a message and let me know.

 

Primary Sidebar

Sermo Humilis

For the love of all things true, beautiful and good.


Welcome to Sermo Humilis, a digital home for biblical discipleship and cultural Christianity. A few new thoughts every week.

Please remember to like, subscribe and share. It really helps me out.

Categories

  • Life in Christendom
  • Just a Thought
  • Who we Are Instead

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Series

Sidebar Series - 1 Corinthians Sidebar - Words that Matter Sidebar - Jesus Through all of Life Series Sidebar Series - The Book of Ezra

The Most Popular Guff

Shoulder to Shoulder

So, you're a minister and you're up to you're neck in Corinthian

#6 Jesus and the Table

As lovely as the marriage bed is, eventually you will have to climb

Jesus Through all of Life – An Introduction

The Gospel, as the saying goes, is more than a steak on your plate

What we Call, a Victory

In scripture, the reality always exceeds the metaphor. Satan is

Beautiful Specimens of Human Loveliness

The more things change, the more things stay the same. The world of

Meditate on These Things

Meditation is an ancient practice and an inescapable one. We all

Delighting in the Good

Knowing the wrong thing to do, or the wrong kind of person to follow,

See and Hear

On the move? Weekly content can also be seen and heard via Youtube.

Topics

Beauty Charity Children Covenant Creation Death Discipleship Evangelism Faith Faithfulness Fear Forgiveness Gospel Grace Grief Guilt Holiness Hope Jesus Joy Judgement Kingdom Law Liberty Life Love Marriage Mercy Money Obedience Power Prayer Redemption Rest Resurrection Sacrifice Salvation Service Sin Suffering Truth Victory Weakness Wisdom Worship

Footer

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe to Sermo Humilis

Find us on Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support Sermo Humilis

If you enjoy Sermo Humilis and want to say thanks you can support me here.

Support

Copyright © 2025 · Sermo Humilis

Thor's Oak

Around 723 AD, a missionary named Boniface entered Hesse in Germany. Upon finding a sacred tree named Thor’s Oak, he took an axe to it, cut it down and built a church. Many in the town, believing that the God of Boniface must be greater than Thor, left their paganism behind converted to Christianity.