(the picture in the video is from Tim Challies)
E.
Love (moral)
1. Definition
a. God’s love is an affection that moves Him to
provide for the well-being of humans, regardless of their personal merit,
worth, or spiritual state. (Floyd H. Barackman, Practical Christian Theology, pg. 56)
b. God’s love means that God eternally gives of
himself to others. (Wayne Grudem, Systematic
Theology, pg. 199)
2. Scriptural Data
a. God’s
nature is loving
i. Love is grounded in the nature of God. The supreme
utterance of the New Testament regarding God’s love is that in 1 John 4:8: “God
is love.” In Matthew 6:1–8 and 25–32 God’s love is described in terms of
Fatherhood. In Matthew 11:25ff. God’s peculiar relation as Father to Jesus the
Son is set forth. In John 17:24 Jesus declares that the Father loved him before
the foundation of the world. This is the immanent love of God which finds its
object in the Godhead itself. God is eternally love because there is an eternal
object of love. His love is not conditioned upon the temporal and finite,
although in these objects his love finds a sphere for its exercise. (Edgar
Young Mullins, The Christian Religion in
Its Doctrinal Expression, pg. 236)
b. God’s
love is unconditional
i. Deuteronomy 7:7-8: It was not because you were more
in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose
you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves
you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought
you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the
hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
ii. Romans 5:8: but God shows his love for us in that
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
iii. Ephesians 2:4-5: But God, being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved
iv. Titus 3:3-5: For we ourselves were once foolish,
disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our
days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of
God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in
righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewal of the Holy Spirit
c. God’s
love is immutable
i. Jeremiah 31:3: the Lord appeared to him from far
away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my
faithfulness to you.
3.
Consideration and Reflection
a. “Some Different Ways the Bible Speaks of the Love
of God” (D. A. Carson, The Difficult
Doctrine of the Love of God, pdf, pg. 16-21)
i. The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of
the Son for the Father
-John 3:35: The Father loves the Son and has given all
things into his hand.
-John 5:20: For the Father loves the Son and shows him
all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so
that you may marvel.
-John 14:31: but I do as the Father has commanded me,
so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.
ii.
God’s providential love over all that He has made
-By and large the Bible veers away from using the word
love in this connection, but the theme is not hard to find. God creates
everything, and before there is a whiff of sin, he pronounces all that he has
made to be “good” (Gen. 1). This is the product of a loving Creator. The Lord
Jesus depicts a world in which God clothes the grass of the fields with the
glory of wildflowers seen by no human being, perhaps, but seen by God. The lion
roars and hauls down its prey, but it is God who feeds the animal. The birds of
the air find food, but that is the result of God’s loving providence, and not a
sparrow falls from the sky apart from the sanction of the Almighty (Matt. 6).
If this were not a benevolent providence, a loving providence, then the moral
lesson that Jesus drives home, viz. that this God can be trusted to provide for
his own people, would be incoherent.
iii.
God’s salvific stance toward His fallen world
-John 3:16, 19-20: “For God so loved the world, that
he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life…And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and
people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For
everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light,
lest his works should be exposed.” (badness of the world)
-1 John 2:2: He is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (bigness)
-1 Timothy 2:4: who desires all people to be saved and
to come to the knowledge of the truth.
-Acts 17:30: The times of ignorance God overlooked,
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent
iv.
God’s particular, effective, selecting love towards His elect
-This
could be Israel or the Church
-Deuteronomy 10:14-15: Behold, to the Lord your God
belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your
fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are
this day.
-Ephesians 5:25: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her
v. God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward
his own people in a provisional or conditional way
-This
is dealing with sanctification, not justification
-Jude 21: keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting
for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
-Psalm 103:9-11, 13, 17-18: He will not always chide, nor
will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above
the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him…As a father
shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who
fear him…But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those
who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
b. A problem
for Judaism, Islam, and Unitarians
i.
All agree that God is loving
ii. If God is one, whom did God love before creation?
iii. Christianity doesn’t have this problem because Trinitarian
theology says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equally self-existent
and eternal because they are all of the same essence and have loved each other
for all eternity
4.
Practical Application
a. We should
bathe in the sunshine of God’s love for us
i. Romans 8:35-39: Who shall separate us from the love
of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is
written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded
as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life,
nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
ii. Ephesians 3:14-19: For this reason I bow my knees
before the Father, from whom every
family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his
glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your
inner being, so that Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the
saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God.
iii. 1 John 4:18: There is no fear in love, but
perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever
fears has not been perfected in love.
b. God’s
love becomes the basis for our self-love
i. God knows everything about us (omniscience) and He
still loves us so we should love ourselves as well
c. God’s
love is the basis for our love of others in turn
i. Luke 6:27-36: “But I say to you who hear, Love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for
those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,
and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give
to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not
demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. “If
you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love
those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what
benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those
from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend
to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good,
and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you
will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be
merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
ii. 1 John 4:19-21: We love because he first loved
us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and
hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he
has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have
from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
iii. John 13:34-35: A new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one
another. By this all people will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
d. God’s
love aims for our highest good including affection and correction
i. Proverbs 3:12: for the Lord reproves him whom he
loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
ii. Hebrews 12:6-9: For the Lord disciplines the one
he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that
you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his
father does not discipline? If you are
left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are
illegitimate children and not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we
respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and
live?
iii. Revelation 3:19: Those whom I love, I reprove and
discipline, so be zealous and repent.
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