THOUGHTS ON THE DIFFICULT DOCTRINE OF THE LOVE OF GOD

I have recently read D.A Carson’s profound little book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. The title might surprise you because almost everyone believes in God that God is a loving God. He says that what makes it difficult is that when a bible believing Christians speaks of the love of God, they mean something very different than what is meant in our surrounding culture. They may believe in a God of love but not in justice, sovereignty, holiness, wrath, or providence. In short, the love of God is purged of anything that seems uncomfortable. It has been sanitized, democratized, and sentimentalized.

Sometimes the love of God is reduced in Christian circles to something that is less and easier and simpler than it really is. Christian culture makes statements that misrepresent or reduce God’s love with declarations that are only half or partially true or true in a particular context such as “God’s love is totally unconditional” or “God loves everybody the same”. I have found that some Christians can get really upset when these particular platitudes are challenged.

But the fact is that the bible speaks of the love of God in several distinguishable ways. John Piper says, “It is so important that we let the Bible define what it means by love in any given passage. We should not bring all our assumptions about love and make the Bible mean what we think love must be.”

1. The Peculiar Love of God the father for His Son
First, there is God’s love for his Son and the Son’s love for the Father. John 3:35: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.” In John 14:31, Jesus says, “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.”
God’s love for the other members of the Trinity is different from his love for us because there is no sin to be overcome. If God loves us, he loves us in spite of our sin. God the Father does not love the Son in spite of anything. Everything about the Son is infinitely worthy of love.

2. God’s Providential Love for His Creation
Second, God loves his creation and sustains it with his care, even for the use of his enemies. For example, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Psalms 145:9). Or in Matthew 5:44-45 Jesus commands us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” So God’s love moves him to provide rain and sunshine where it is not deserved. Jesus calls it an example of love for his enemies, and an example of how we should love our enemies.

3. God’s Love in His Saving Stance to the Whole World The apostle John writes, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God loves the world by sending his Son and opening the door of eternal life to anyone who believes on him. So, we can say to every human being “God loves you. And this is how he loves you: He gave his Son to die, so that if you would believe, your sins would be forgiven and you would have eternal life.”

John Piper says, “There are no limits to this offer: It goes out to all people of every ethnic group and every age and every socio-economic category and, best of all, to every degree of sinner—from the bad to the worst. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever”—indiscriminate and universal—“believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

But this is where the love of God becomes difficult. When we try to use this expression of God’s love to cancel or negate another expression of the love God—which is what many people do with this verse. This is a great sadness and robs the church of one of her great treasures.

4. God’s Particular, Effective, Selecting Love for His Chosen, Covenant People
But the most precious experience of the love of God has not yet been described. This is the love of God that moves him to go beyond the free offer of the gospel and choose a people for himself, bring them to himself in faith, and make with them personal everlasting covenant. In each case, God loves his chosen ones in a way that He does not love others. You could call this God’s electing love, or God’s regenerating love, or God’s covenant love. With this love, God does more than offer. He overcomes rebellion and resistance so that these loved ones receive the offer. This can be seen in several ways.

A. God’s Love Shown in Choosing of Israel
“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.” (Deuteronomy 10:14-15).
The point here is that God did not just offer to be Israel’s covenant God; he chose Israel. He took them from all the people. He didn’t negotiate. He freely and sovereignly and unconditionally chose Israel.

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 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. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8)

The amazing point here is that when Israel is contrasted with other nations, they are not distinguished because of any merit or loveliness in themselves, but simply on the basis that God loves them! God’s love is directed towards other nations. Obviously, this way of speaking of God’s love is different than the other ways that God’s love is spoken of. They did not choose him. He chose them. And he calls this love. It is a love that goes beyond an offer. In a similar fashion, the apostle Paul says that “Christ loves the church.” (Ephesians 5:25).

B. God’s Love Through the Gift of New Birth
We see this kind of love in God’s raising us from spiritual death and causing us to be born again. In John 3:8, Jesus says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” In other words, being born again happens to us at the Spirit’s will. We don’t control the wind, and we don’t control the Spirit. He comes and goes with his regenerating power as he pleases.
John 1:12-13 puts it this way, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

This is called love—great love—in Ephesians 2:4-5: “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” (cf. “great mercy” in 1 Peter 1:3). This is “great love” that goes way beyond offering to spiritually dead people that if they will believe, they will be saved. This love conquers our deadness. It gives new life, and brings us to faith, and unites us to Christ—all in one sovereign instant.


C. Jesus’ Particular Love for His Chosen Sheep
This is clear in John 10:25-26. Jesus says, “The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock.” So we don’t first believe in order to be a part of Jesus’ flock; God makes us part of Jesus’ flock in order that we may believe. This means that when Jesus says in John 10:11, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” In John 10:16, Jesus looks beyond the present fold of believers and says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also.” And John 11:51-52 says he died to gather them. He died in order to bring his chosen sheep to faith. John 10:27-28: “My sheep hear my voice [that’s how you can tell they are sheep] and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Why do they come? They come because the Father has chosen them and gives to Jesus. John 6:37: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” They come because God draws them. John 6:44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” John 6:65: “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Piper asks the question, Why doesn’t everybody believe the good news of John 3:16, “Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life”? Why don’t people come? Jesus answers in John 3:19-20, “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.”
The more amazing question is: Why do any of us come? Why do any of us receive Christ as the supreme Treasure of our lives? And the answer is: There is a greater love than the love of John 3:16. It goes beyond offering eternal life and actually creates it in your heart.

Finally John Piper says, “Those of you who believe on Christ, God wants you to know yourself loved, not only with universal love of John 3:16, but also with his death-conquering, hardness-removing, rebellion-eradicating, sight-imparting, faith-creating, personal, individual, invincible covenant love of which we are absolutely undeserving.

Oh may we become biblical in our understanding of God’s love. More than that, may we savor this Trinitarian love, this providential love, this salvation offering love, and this sovereign, electing, covenant love. It is to be received, absorbed, and felt. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:14-21, “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. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”.

To be continued…

Pastor Bill