Select An Article


Steve Tandy, Pulpit Minister

 

Mark Yeakley, Involvement Minister


Toby Levering, Youth Minister

 

Family Life
by Mark Yeakley

 

 

January 29, 20012

John, God’s 43rd Love Letter to You

In his book, 66 Love Letters, Dr. Larry Crabb explores each book of the Bible as a letter written from the Creator to you, presented as a dialogue between one man and God. As our adult classes begin a study of John on Sunday mornings, think about this imagined message from God, taken from the book’s chapter on John.

There are not four gospels. There is one fourfold gospel. My forty-third love letter completes (for now) the portrait I am painting of My Son, a portrait that makes it clear what it means to be fully alive as a human being.

No single artist could capture the beauty of life as it was meant to be lived. I commissioned four specially chosen artists–each selected for his temperament and because of his circumstances–to paint four portraits of the only Person who every fully lived. Together they sketched a beauty that is not in the eye of the beholder but is in the person of My Son, a beauty that a thousand portraits could never capture, a glory that though dimly visible now will one day fill the heavens and the earth. You will catch a glimpse of the compelling beauty of His life if you linger before each portrait as a preview of heaven’s soon coming attraction:

  • My Son, the Sovereign King of a kingdom long promised, whose citizens are instructed by the King Himself to live in a way that makes no sense to citizens of this world’s kingdom. Matthew, the tax collector turned saint, painted that picture.

  • My Son, the Suffering Servant, who by His unexpected example led His followers to sacrifice every comfort that gets in the way of serving others. Mark, that man who once failed to serve when things got rough, highlighted that facet of My Son’s beauty.

  • My Son, the Perfect Person, whose brothers and sisters are learning to wish forward as He did, the only Person whose ruling passion was never to suffer less or feel good but was always to advance My plan to get My people to the party. I enjoyed watching Him live as I’ve enjoyed watching no one else. The Greek physician Luke, who longed to see the human ideal and who found Him in My son, sketched the perfection he saw.

  • My Son, the Divine Life itself. Now John, the dreamer, the poet, a man to whom I revealed the deepest truth about My Son, a truth that no one without My Spirit’s prompting could imagine–I chose this man to present the One who fully revealed what it means to live as I live, who revealed My heart, My nature, My love.