1 John 4:8
God is LOVE
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Matthew 22:36-40
The Greatest Commandment
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Believers in God and Jesus are always referring to the Bible for many things about life, and when they have problems in life, as well as good times...Imagine if there was a book that non-believers could read and go to that would take God and Jesus out of the picture and explain the beginning of life, a good and moral life, and the meaning of life...A book they could go to for problems...Let us call this the Handbook for Non-Believers, or for short Handbook...To my knowledge, there is no other book like this...The Bible is unique, because of this...And its Two Man Characters are God and Jesus...And They are about LOVE...
The Bible explains many things...Jesus says the whole Bible hangs on and about LOVE...We are to love God, and we are to love our neighbor...The Handbook and this book without God and His Son would offer maybe an interesting read, but where would man come from without God...God and Jesus make the Good Book personal...I would have to believe that this Handbook would have probably have us believing that evolution is their Genesis chapter...I would have to suspect that such a Handbook would offer as much science and evolution until the first man came along as a neanderthal, or a cro-magnon man, or a cave man...And its beginning to its end would probably evolve man from a warm ocean or pond and into apes and chimpanzees billions of years later and then billions of years later into homo-sapiens...
Somewhere in the Handbook, it would have to give us information on not only the value of being good morally, but also where morals come and came from...And after this interesting explanation of where morals came from, it would need to tell us (or at least me) where love, faith, hope, mercy, and forgiveness come from -where could the Handbook go from there?...And why is there sin in this world?...Why is suffering in this world?...What is next for man?...Does and would an afterlife await man in the Handbook?...Would such a Handbook offer hope?...
The Bible gives us a Grand Explanation...Genesis gives us an account of creation and the creation of the first man and woman...The first man and woman would sin, and sin would enter our world...Sin would never leave man...Genesis also gives us the story of Babel, the story of the Great Flood and Noah...The Good Book gives us an account of a land promised through a covenant by God through a man named Abram...Later he would be called Abraham...The land God promised Abraham and his descendants would be called the Promised Land...Abraham would have a son Isaac...Isaac would have a son named Jacob...These three men Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be called the Three Patriarchs and would follow God and this covenant...Their descendants would be a group and a nation of Hebrews...They also would be called Jews..Jacob's family and his descendants and one of his son's named Joseph, who would be befriended by his older brothers and be sold as a slave to someone in Egypt...The Jewish people would be called God's chosen people...And the Promised Land would later become Israel...And before the Promised Land could be dwelt in by the Jews, a famine would take place...Then the Jewish people would have to settle in Egypt...And that group would be helped by Joseph, whom God had sent there for a reason...And then over many years in Egypt the Jewish people would become slaves to the Egyptians...And they would be in bondage for over four hundred years...God,in His Plan, would contact a man named Moses (who was raised by Pharaoh's sister and educated in Egyptian ways) to lead the Jewish out of Egypt and into this Promised Land...It would take many miracles from God to convince the Egyptian leader named Pharaoh and his lieutenants to believe that God was God, and that He would have Moses lead His people out of Egypt...They Egyptian people would have no choice in this...God makes that very clear through His miracles...Moses leads the Jewish people to the Promised Land...And although the Israelis make it to the Promised Land the sin of the first man and woman has never left us...God's people still kept sinning, after reaching the Promised Land...But God would not forget us or our sinful ways...But He would send us help...
This above is an account of the Old Testament...
In the New Testament, God sends His Son named Jesus to Israel and be a Jew, and come to teach us about God, how to live, what the Bible means in context to living, and to save us from the original sins of the first man and woman...Jesus was born in a manger, grew up poor, and became a Traveling Teacher -and a Good One...He is the help we would receive from God...Jesus taught about God and how we should love our neighbors constantly...He taught about the great importance of forgiveness...Yet, for some reason this Man send from God would get arrested...He would be arrested for blasphemy, because He strangely went around forgiving others of their sins...The religious leaders of His time, said Jesus thought He acted like He was God...He was blaspheming God...Little did they know or believe that He was actually was the Son of God and came from God...He tried to convince them with His great moral teachings plus His miracles, where He came from...Yet, they could not see the Light...Yes, this Man could do miracles...He did many miracles...But, what He did not convince the Sanhedrin and most of the Pharisees and the Teachers of the law that He came from heaven and from God...So they had Him arrested and crucified on a cross...And when He was on the cross, He died...On this cross, He died for our sins...This was part of God's Plan, either though we had Him hang from that cross...
His Son would rise from His death three days later, which would be called the Resurrection...It is the Grandest Miracle of all...It shows us that there is an afterlife...It shows us that there is eternity...It shows that there is meaning in this life, and also maybe, just maybe more meaning in a resurrected life...It proves He is from God, and that Jesus is Divine...
The Bible is a story...Sometimes the story seems a little fragmented, because it is written by over forty authors, and over many many years...But it indeed is a story...It is a story of forgiving, and a Story of LOVE...God is LOVE...A Handbook and even a good Handbook could not come close to this story, because God and His Son are omitted...