Kenneth Copeland - Believing and Accepting the Love of God
Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. Let's have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank You today for Your Word. We come before it. We humble ourselves before You and before this holy Word. And in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we open our hearts. We open our minds to receive revelation from heaven. And we thank You for it, and we give You praise and honor for it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Let's open our Bibles to the 3rd chapter of John's Gospel. And let's begin reading in the 16th verse, John 3:16. Extremely, very precious, very familiar, I started to say, extremely familiar and very precious verse of Scripture. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved".
Now, let's look in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 11, and let's begin reading with the 9th verse. "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asks receives; he that seeks finds; to him that knocks it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that's a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent"? God gives someone a snake? No way. "Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him," or give him, "a scorpion"? No, no, no. God forbid that, no way. And Jesus referred to the old serpent, the devil, and he referred to scorpions as devils. Amen. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to him that ask him"?
Now, think about this a minute. Let me ask you this question: Is he talking about a gift here? Of course. That's what he said. "Everyone that asks receiveth; he that seeketh finds; to him that knocks shall be opened". Now notice, "If a son shall ask bread of you a father, will he give him a stone"? No. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give" Now, let's put a couple of those verses together there if you'll allow me to do this. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the good gift of the Holy Spirit to them that ask it"? "Ask, and you shall receive". What'd He say? "Everyone that asks receives; he that seeks finds; to him that knocks it shall be opened". What did He say in the 9th verse? "Ask, it shall be given you; seek, you shall find; knock, it shall be opened unto you".
Let's go back over there now to John 3:16. "For God so loved the world". Now, you and I were part of that world. Amen? Before we knew Jesus, of course we were. "For God so loved the world, that he gave". What does love do? Love's first act is to give, and true love, God is love. You know, understand this: God doesn't have love, He is love. Glory to God. Hallelujah. "God," "giving," "love", ha-ha, all the same word. Isn't that good? Let's read it again. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life". Whosoever. Hallelujah. You and I were part of that world. God gave Jesus. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth, shall not perish, but have everlasting life".
Now, go with me over to the book of Romans. And let's look at the 5th chapter of Romans, amen, the 17th verse. "For if by one man's offense death reigned", that was Adam "much more they which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ". One translation says, "shall reign in life as kings". Hallelujah. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Now, Jesus, the heavenly gift; the Holy Spirit, the heavenly gift; righteousness, right standing, complete righteousness.
Now, let's look at this now. In II Corinthians, and in the 5th chapter. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: and old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to know, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and not holding against them their trespasses; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, you be reconciled to God".
Now, what does that mean? God has already given you Jesus. God has already given you the Holy Spirit. God has already given you the gift of righteousness. All there is left is receiving. Here it is again. "We pray you in Christ's stead, be you reconciled to God," or "We pray you in Christ's stead, receive the gift he's given you". The King James says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin". Let's unravel that just a little bit. "For he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him". Glory to God. A new creation, a new righteous-with-God creation. Hallelujah.
Your spirit man, your spirit being, the real you, the moment you received the gift. The moment you said, "Jesus come into my heart". You was a whosoever. I was a whosoever. Boy, I'm a whosoever that you talk about somebody, one of my favorite of all the Scriptures, it said, "Christ died for the ungodly". Yeah. And I qualified and so did you. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Amen. But you notice there is not any limit on that? It just said, "ungodly". What does that mean? Anybody without God.
I mean, you know, ha-ha-ha, I baptized a serial killer in the county jail of San Antonio, Texas, who had been born again. A young women that he had kidnapped, and Margie just refused to let him, she just said, "No, you ain't going to kill me. You ain't going to kill the only person that ever loved you". And he just got so mad at her. He said, "If you don't shut up, I am going to kill you". She said, "Can I listen to my tape? He said, "I don't care what you do as long as you keep your mouth shut".
And she had one of my tapes in the cassette deck in her car. She put that in. He's listening to that. He heard the audible voice of God say to him, "Steven, this is your last chance, son". He said, "Who said that"? Stopped the car and tried to find who's in the car with him. Well, of course, Margie led him to the Lord, and then all kinds of great things happened after that, and so forth and so on. But I wanted you to see, serial killer or no serial killer, there wasn't any limit to "whosoever". There wasn't any limit to "God died for the ungodly". I mean, ungodly is ungodly. What that simply means is "not connected to God, separated from God".
That's spiritual death. Both, you and I, we're both spiritually dead in our sins until we made Jesus Christ the Lord of our life. And Jesus wiped out his horrible sins the way he wiped out our sins. Amen. He's a gift. Amen. Righteousness is a gift. Glory to God. The Holy Spirit is a gift. Now, I got into that in order to help you realize this: Healing, deliverance from fear, all kinds of horrible, hard, mean sicknesses, diseases, pains, all sickness, all disease, all human suffering, all poverty is the result of the horrible, terrible, satanic all poverty is the result of the horrible, terrible, satanic hatred for the human race.
I'm going to say it again. All sin, all sickness, all poverty, all suffering, all of it, none of it is at the hand of God. All of it is because of the satanic, terrible hatred for the human race. But all redemption is the result of the great love of God for all people. He never intended for anybody to be sick, lonely, hurting. He never intended for anybody to be broke and poor. He intended for everyone to be blessed, fully provided, beyond-your-imagination provided. Amen. That's His will and He never changes His will. Glory to God. He's still the same today. He was the same yesterday, today, and will continue to be forever. And His name is Jesus. Isn't that wonderful? Glory to God.
Now, then, I particularly, how can I say this, Lord? The thing that needs most to be emphasized, and I want to emphasize it on this broadcast today, that healing is a gift. It's all part of the glory package. It's all part of Jesus. Amen. And we want to look at Scriptures of that because, you see, faith begins where the will of God is known and where the will of God is believed. I'm reminded of a Scripture right now. In fact, let's turn over there. I want you to look at this in I John. We've talked about this on this broadcast a lot. And we will continue to talk about it a lot more.
You know, I John, the apostle John himself, called the Apostle of Love, had an outstanding revelation and insight into the love of God even before Jesus went to the cross. And in I John, in the 4th chapter, he begins to talk about and reveals the fact that God is love. And if you don't mind here, let's just really consider these verses of Scripture here. Verse 8, "He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God", In what? This revelation that God is love. "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him". Amen. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins". This great marvelous gift.
I've had people say this to me I heard people say it to Brother Hagin, or heard him tell of it, and people said it to Brother Roberts. Oh, people got so upset about it. I had people gripe about it to me. Come to me and said, "You know, Brother Roberts, man", I mean, over and over. And he would say, "Something good is going to happen to you! Something good is happening to you today! God is a good God"! And he would say, "Satan is a bad devil, and God is a good God"! Now, I had one preacher come to me and say, "I wish he wouldn't say that". And I said, "What"? "Ah, you know," he says, "Something good is going to happen to you". And I said, "Why"? He said, "Because it may not be anything good going to happen to you, and that God is a good God". And I said, "Well, really, is God good"? "Well, yes". "Then it's wrong to say that He's good"? "Well, now, you know, Brother Copeland," and he'd start into all this, all this whining about, well, you just make it too easy".
I didn't do that. Ha-ha-ha. God is the one who made it easy. I had another fellow, thank You, Lord, for reminding me of that. He said, "You just raised yourself up to God's level". I said, "No, no. I didn't do that". I said, "He lifted me up when I got born again. And He raised me up, made me to sit with Him in heavenly places". "Oh. Well, I know this: You just pulled God down to your own size and your own level". I said, "Well, no. No, I'm not guilty of that either because, you see, He came down here on my level of His own free will". Ha-ha-ha-ha. Hallelujah! Dance around the room, sweetheart, because that just got hold of me right there. He came down here of His own free will. I didn't drag Him down here. Well, you and I, together did because it's our sins that did it. Amen.
And He said, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved". Listen to this. Or "beloved," the one who God loves, "if God so loved us, we ought to also love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit". There it is again, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God, amen, has been given to us. He is a gift. "Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. And whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us".
Now, there's a major problem right there. "We have known". That word translated "known" literally means intimate relationship. We have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. We know Him. We accept Him as Lord and Savior. And we're born again, born of His Spirit, born of the Word of God, the seed of His Word. Hallelujah. We've known Him, but that doesn't stop there. "We've known and believed the love". Now, the moment we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we knew God. We became one with Him. That's literally what that means. We became one with Him in the Spirit. We became one with Him, born of His Spirit. Hallelujah. But it says, "known and believed the love". Now, a lot of people do not believe the love. They know the love. They really don't believe how much God truly loves them. That's why I want you healed. That's why I want you to prosper. That's why He's given Himself to us.