Love of God
A.
God is love: 1 John 4.8-10
a.
God, not culture, defines what love is
I do not think that what the Bible
says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if
it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of
God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few
nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity.
The result, of course, is that the
love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds
uncomfortable. The love of God has
been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.[1] –D. A. Carson
b.
Love defined by God’s giving of his Son to be
the propitiation for sins
i. Propitiation
presupposes God’s wrath against sin
ii. “[P]ropitiation
is not a turning of the wrath of God into love… It is one thing to say that the
wrathful God is made loving. This
would be entirely false. It is
another thing to say the wrathful God is loving. That is profoundly true.”[2]
B.
God’s love for sinners
a.
John 3.16
b.
Romans 5.8
c.
Galatians 2.20
C.
Exodus 34.6-7: “the John 3:16 of the Old Testament” (VTS: Vacation Torah School)
Then
the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God,
compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and
truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity,
transgression and sin; yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished,
visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to
the third and fourth generations.
a.
Placement in Exodus à Ex 32-34: Golden Calf episode
i. Exodus
25-31: instructions for building tabernacle
ii. Exodus
35-40: people build tabernacle per instructions
It is easy to overlook the profound theological significance of its place
in the literary structure.[3]
The emphasis to this point in Exodus has been on the holiness of God
and the demand for the holiness of God’s people. But here terms of love and grace are piled one on the other
to reassure Israel that God will dwell among his people as a gracious, loving,
compassionate, patient, faithful, and forgiving God. The name Yahweh is now associated with his covenant love (hesed). This term is “normally translated as
‘steadfast love,’ ‘covenant fidelity,’ or the like. This becomes the word which from this point onwards
summarizes the divine commitment to the relationship.” God binds himself to Israel in love.[4]
b.
Passages where this complex of attributes
appears
i. Numbers
14.18
ii. 2
Chronicles 30.9
iii. Nehemiah
9.17, 31
iv. Psalms
86.15; 103.8; 145.8[5]
v. Jeremiah
32.18
vi. Joel
2.13
vii. Jonah
4.2
viii.
Nahum 1.3
D.
D. A. Carson’s list of different ways the Bible
speaks about the love of God[6]
a.
The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and
of the Son for the Father
i. John
17.24
ii. John
3.35
iii. John
14.31
b.
God’s providential love over all the he has
made.
i. Genesis
1—everything is “good”
ii. Matthew
6.25-30—birds and flowers: “common grace”
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.[7]
iii. Acts
14.17—“he did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons,
satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
c.
God’s salvific stance toward his fallen world
i. John
3.16
ii. 1
Timothy 2.4
iii. 2
Peter 3.9
·
We will look at this more closely when we look
at election. Does God love all
people or just the elect?
d.
God’s particular, effective, selecting love
toward his elect.
i. Deuteronomy
7.7-8: God’s election of Israel
ii. Ephesians
5.25: “loved the church”
iii. Romans
8.35-39
e.
God’s love is sometimes said to be directed
toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way—conditioned, that is,
on obedience.
i. Jude
21: “keep yourselves in
the love of God”
ii. John
15.9-10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love”
iii. This
is a common notion in Reformed/Calvinistic theology but not in Lutheran
theology.
iv. “The distinction
between amor benevolentiæ and amor complacentiæ,
used by almost all of the Reformed orthodox, explains how God loves us
unconditionally in Christ, apart from works, and conditionally in Christ, in
light of our obedience or lack thereof (see Jn. 14:21). In other words, God
loves us, despite our unworthiness with the love of benevolence; but he also
loves us because of our close communion and obedience with him with the love of
complacency. He delights in certain graces (e.g., acts of faith).”[8]
v. “Behind
this emphasis lies a distinction with which we are not too familiar, that
between the love of God’s benevolence or mercy, and his love of complacence
or delight. Why is this distinction unfamiliar to us? Is it because we think of
God’s mercy, and the life of faith, of sanctification, as solely motivated by
gratitude for what that mercy has procured? But there is more to it than this.
God delights in his people. (Ps. 147.11, 149.4) How so? When there is evidence
of their Christ-like renewal. So Christians are to ‘walk worthy of the Lord, fully
pleasing to him,’ following Christ who pleased his Father (2 Pet. 1.17, Col.
1.10; 3.20, I Thess. 2.4, 2 Thess. 1.11). God does not delight in his
people 'just as they are' but insofar as they come, fitfully and imperfectly,
to take on a Christian character. Are there conditions required to qualify
people in coming to the Cross? Certainly not. The Lord receives us just as we
are. Are there conditions for divine delight in his people? Most certainly. Is
the pleasing of God the ambition of Christians today?”[9]
[1] D. A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God
(Crossway, 2000), 11.
[2] John Murray,
Redemption: Accomplished and Applied
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 31.
[3] Michael W.
Goheen A Light to the Nations: The Missional
Church and the Biblical Story (Baker, 2011), 44.
[4] Michael W.
Goheen A Light to the Nations: The
Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Baker, 2011), 45. Goheen is quoting Dumbrell Covenant and Creation.
[5] The word
“lovingkindness” appears 125 times in Psalms in NASB.
[6] D. A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God
(Crossway, 2000), 16-21. Available
online: http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/2000_difficult_doctrine_of_the_love_of_God.pdf
[7] D. A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God
(Crossway, 2000), 17.
[8] Mark Jones
in his review of the work of Tullian Tchividjian’s Jesus + Nothing = Everything.
See online: http://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2014/03/tullian-tchividjians-jesus-nothing.html.
[9] Paul Helm,
“Mark Jones’ New Book.” Available
online: http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2014/03/mark-joness-new-book.html. Helm is reviewing Antinomianism: Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest? (P&R,
2013). Also see Wayne Grudem’s
essay “Pleasing God by Our Obedience: A Neglected New Testament Teaching.” Available online: http://www.waynegrudem.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Pleasing-God-by-Our-Obedience.pdf.
