{"id":499,"date":"2023-12-21T09:33:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T09:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/?p=499"},"modified":"2025-04-04T07:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T07:18:11","slug":"o-what-great-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/2023\/12\/21\/o-what-great-love\/","title":{"rendered":"O WHAT GREAT LOVE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

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\/Rev. Dr. Chong Siaw\u00a0 Fung<\/p>\n

\u201cYet to all who did receive him, to those who believed\u00a0in his name,\u00a0he gave the right to become children of God.\u201d (John 1:12)<\/p>\n

\u201cSee what great love\u00a0the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!\u201d\u00a0(1 John 3:1)<\/p>\n

Referring to himself as \u201cthe disciple whom Jesus loved\u201d in his gospel, John must have had the most intimate and heart-moving experience of the love of Christ.\u00a0 He made it clear that our experience of God\u2019s love can be likened to children experiencing the love of their father\u2014free, gracious, and unconditional.\u00a0 Jesus brought that love to us.\u00a0 We became the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, as John stated (John 1:12).<\/p>\n

Paul described this in Ephesians 1:5 as \u201cadoption to sonship\u201d\u2014a reference to the process in which a male slave is legally received by his master with full right as a son and heir.\u00a0 This is how God accepted us\u2014who were slaves to sin, unworthy of His favour\u2014as children and heirs. \u00a0It is a demonstration of a <\/span>divine, gracious, and unconditional love.\u00a0 John could not find words to describe this manner of love.\u00a0 He could only exclaim: \u201cSee what great love\u201d (1 John 3:1)!<\/p>\n

How would you articulate God\u2019s love this Christmas?\u00a0 How would you appreciate the fact that God loved and accepted you freely, graciously, and unconditionally as His child because of the advent and sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \/Rev. Dr. Chong Siaw\u00a0 Fung \u201cYet to all who did receive him, to those who believed\u00a0in his name,\u00a0he gave the right to become children of God.\u201d (John 1:12) \u201cSee what great love\u00a0the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!\u201d\u00a0(1 John 3:1) Referring to himself as \u201cthe disciple whom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stm.edu.my\/beritastm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}