‘Behold, the Lamb of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
38th teaching
5.20.2013
“God’s Love: the Characteristics”
Introductions.
Announce: No study next Monday!
Project
Scriptura:
Because of the scope of our topic, next study we
will continue to study God’s Love. You won’t need to look up any Project
Scriptura verses.
Review:
What was our topic last week? What does Necessity
mean in reference to God? What does contingent mean? What’s a good Christmas
movie that illustrates contingent existence? What does the Greek word cosmos mean? What is the cosmological
argument? In light of God’s Necessity, how should we preach the gospel?
End Review
Well, tonight we make the transition. In our course through
Systematic Theology, we have covered each of God’s metaphysical attributes. And
in reflection upon these things we’ve learned, I feel awe. The phrase “God is
great” is truly an understatement.
Next, we enter a new section on God’s moral attributes.
As a refresher, remember that God has three kinds of
attributes or qualities: metaphysical (which describe what He is in His
essence), moral (which describe His moral characteristics and tendencies) and
non-moral (which do not fit into either of the above categories [ex:
sovereignty, immanence, etc.]).
Metaphysical attributes describe what God is. We can simplify moral attributes by saying they
describe who God is. So we’ve seen
thus far what God’s essence is made of. Next, we shall see what God’s character
is made of, more or less who God is,
what kind of a person He is.
To begin, turn to I
John 4:7-16.
The apostle John, sometimes known as the Apostle of Love,
says twice in this passage “God is love”. Just like the statement “God is
light”, there is a statement here about the essential nature of God. We covered
how God is metaphysically “light”. In a very similar statement by the apostle,
it appears that God is not only morally Love but metaphysically Love.
That means that Love is somehow related both to who God is and to what God is, that Love has to do not only with God’s character but
with God’s essence and Being. The statement “God is Love” indicates not that
God is some abstract moral concept, but that Love is part of His divine
essence. Love describes what God is
just as much as infinity, immateriality, actuality or any of the other
attributes we’ve covered in the past.
Therefore, if Love is both a metaphysical and a moral attribute, it forms the
perfect bridge between the section we’ve just come out of and the new section
we’re just entering: from the metaphysical to the moral. God’s Love, it seems,
is both.
*I must confess that I feel a huge sense of inadequacy in
exploring this attribute of Divine Love. It’s a teaching of Scripture that is
so central and so grand and so touching in so many millions of lives that I
feel like what can I say? How can I explain this giant topic?
It’s not like I’m just talking about God being a spirit or
God being light anymore. Love is so much more personal and, in that respect,
more profound much of what we’ve covered so far. And what’s more! Because God’s
Love is such a widely-known attribute, there is perhaps more confusion and
false-teaching surrounding God’s Love than any other attribute. Some stress
God’s Love to the point of denying His holiness and justice. Some fail to
balance God’s Love with His other attributes. Some limit God’s Love by saying
it is only for the elect.
Man, I feel like this is such a daunting task, to study
God’s love. Actually, I woke up this morning with a lot of anxiety about it.
But, I think then, we really just need focus. We need to
know what we’re talking about, piece by piece. I was encouraged to think about
Systematic Theology as a whole: imagine the difficulty of studying all of God.
But that difficulty is made easier by studying the different descriptions, the
attributes, of God, piece by piece in a way.
So to give us focus, we’re going to look tonight at the
Scriptural data, what the Bible tells us about the characteristics of God’s
Love. In fact, let’s use that as the title of tonight’s study: “God’s Love: the
Characteristics”.
In looking at the following characteristics in tonight’s
study, we are aiming to answer the age-old question: “What is Love?”
More importantly, what is God’s Love? That’s our aim for
tonight. What is God’s Love as explained by Scripture.
So, let’s have our Project Scriptura verses from the get go
and experience some of what these passages say about God’s Love. One of the
greatest descriptions of love comes to us from I Corinthians 13 (read together).
Next, we shall do that by examining 8 characteristics of
Divine Love.
1.
God’s Love is the Source of
love
Recall our opening passage. I John 4:7-8.
Where does love come from? Though many religions have held
some kind of embodiment of the concept of love, the ultimate and final source
of Love is in the essential nature of God, in God’s own essence.
Make no mistake: love is not a human invention. Love is not
merely some warm but distracted feeling you sometimes get. Love is not an
abstract emotion. Love is not something you simply fall into or out of. Love is
not physical attraction, aesthetic appreciation or fondness for someone or
something.
No, Love is a description of the Divine essence. God is the
source of Love. Before time began, the Father loved the Son and the Son the
Father. Before Adam had the breath of life, God was the source of Love.
I John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”
God initiated.
2.
God’s Love is giving
One reason why I love my wife is because she is thoughtful.
This book, the Four Loves by C.S.
Lewis, is one which I had previously remarked that I’d like to read, so she
bought it for me out of the blue. And what better time for me to begin reading
such a book than when I’m teaching on the subject of Divine love itself!
In the opening chapter, Lewis describes two distinctions of
love. He says “The first distinction I made was therefore between what I called
Gift-love and Need-love. The typical example of Gift-love would be that love
which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his
family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which
sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother’s arms. There was no doubt
which was more like Love Himself. Divine Love is Gift-love.”
That is precisely true. John 3:16, “For God so loved
the world that He GAVE…”
I John 3:1, “Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed (the word there can mean lavished)
on us, that we should be called children
of God!”
Remember this book, the
Giving Tree? In it, the relationship is told between a boy and a tree that
gives that boy anything he wants and needs. As the boy grows into a man and
then grows old, the tree gives him everything, until it has nothing left to
give. And the boy is never seen to be really thankful.
Isn’t that what our relationship with God is like? God is
the great-Giver. God gives spiritual gifts. God gives His Holy Spirit to be our
Comforter. God gives rain to give us food at harvest. God gives life, physical,
spiritual and abundant life. God gives and gives and we, like the boy in the
story, take and take.
James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no
variation or shadow of turning.”
God’s love is selfless because it is a Gift-love. It’s not
like the typical romance. It’s not like God needs you. He doesn’t. No, He wants
you and wants to give to you everything He can. But make no mistake, God gives
but He never needs. He gives without needing.
God lavishes His love on us. Only, God’s giving is never
exhausted. Which shows us the next characteristic:
3.
God’s Love is everlasting
Jeremiah 31:3, “Yes,
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have
drawn you.”
God gives and gives without ever being exhausted
because His love is everlasting. Do you see how His Love is affected by what He
is?
God’s Love, as we’ve seen, is based on His essence. So if
God Himself is in His essence everlasting, then so is the Love related to that
essence. If God is infinite, then His Love is infinite. If God is immense, then
His Love is immense. If God is eternal, then His Love is eternal. If God is
immortal, then His Love is immortal.
Now read this with me: Romans
8:35. In light of God’s Love being based upon His essence, how do you
answer that question. If God’s Love is as great as God Himself metaphysically
is, then the answer is v.38-39.
No height can separate because God is the Most High. No
depth can separate because God is infinite in depth. Not death or life can
separate because God is life and has the keys of death and Hades. No powers of
man or spiritual beings can separate, because God has made all of those powers
Himself. Neither things present nor things to come can separate, because God has
Eternality, He is already beyond the present and the future.
Because God Himself is perfect and everlasting, so is His
love. The strength of His Love lies in the unlimited power of His own Being.
The only thing that could break God’s love is something greater than God or
outside of His control. And nothing is greater than God, by definition.
4.
God’s Love is corrective
As we heard out of the Book of Proverbs on Sunday, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the
LORD, nor detest His correction; for whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a
father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs
3:11-12). In fact, the same book also says in Proverbs 13:24, “He who
spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”
And so we have the phrase: Spare the rod, spoil the child.
That’s biblical.
Look at Hebrews
12:5-11. This is not violence. This is not cruelty. This is not child
abuse. This is discipline and loving training for a purpose: the goal of
holiness and righteousness.
It is interesting to me that God is called the Father and
not the Grandfather. A grandparent, stereotypically, is not concerned with the
raising of the child. More often than not, grandparents spoil their
grandchildren, hype them up with candy and tv and then set them loose back home
for their parents to deal with.
God is not your heavenly Grandfather, thank God. He will
not spoil you, but He will spank you from time to time for your own good. And
believe it or not, the unpleasantness of life is sometimes the loving training
of your Father in disguise. Do not despise, then, the correction of the Divine
Love.
5.
God’s Love is consistent
Isaiah 61:8, “For I, the LORD, love justice…”
Psalm 147:11, “The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear
Him, in those who hope in His mercy.”
Proverbs 8:17, “I love those who love me…”
God loves justice and those who fear Him and love Him. Will
God ever not love justice? Will God
ever despise those who love Him? Certainly not. Because God’s Love is
consistent, the statements of Scripture can be made at all. God always loves
good and always hates evil.
Proverbs 6:16-19,
“These six things the LORD hates, yes,
seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed
innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in
running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord
among brethren.”
Will the LORD ever not
hate these things? No. See the language of the verses? The LORD hates, present tense. These are an abomination, present tense. God
will always hate the evil and love the good. God will always love justice and
despise lying.
You will never find God taking pleasure in wickedness or
badness, whereas God always delights in the good and the just and the pure.
This is a major description of what God is like. A holy life pleases God. A
life of rebellion will not and cannot.
Listen to the words of Augustine: “There is, accordingly, a
good which alone is simple and, therefore, which alone is unchangeable—and this
is God.”
That takes us back to metaphysical ideas such as
impassibility and immutability. If God’s Love does not change because He
consistently loves the good and not the evil, then God’s Love like His own
nature is unchangeable. His Love does not change and it cannot change.
God’s Love doesn’t fluctuate. He doesn’t have bad streaks.
He will never take pleasure in the evil. So don’t imagine that He can. God does
not wink at sin. He is longsuffering, but He does not love evil.
God can no more accept something bad than a rock can fly,
it is against both of their natures.
6.
God loves the unlovely
Notice that while God consistently loves good and
consistently hates evil, the Bible is clear that God loves sinners. God hates
lies and injustice, but He loves liars and the unjust. As the old phrase goes
“Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” This is not to say that He isn’t angry with
them, as the Scripture also makes clear (Psalm
7:11).
But though God is angered by the immorality of the human
condition, He is enamored with the human soul. And God’s love is one which
loves the unlovable.
Perfect example in the Book of Hosea. In it, the prophet
was commanded by God to take a prostitute for a wife. The frustrations and
heartbrokenness involved with Hosea marrying and loving a woman who would
commit adultery provided the perfect example of what the LORD’s relationship
was like with Israel.
Hosea 3:1 says “Then the LORD said to me, ‘Go again, love a
woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of
the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods…”
The prophet was instructed to love a woman that was
unlovable, a harlot. But it shows just how much God loves His own unlovable
people.
I Corinthians
1:26-29. We need look no further for an example of God’s loving the
unlovely than in the example of ourselves. We’re not the wisest or the
mightiest or the noblest. We aren’t the most fashionable or charismatic or
beautiful or cheerful or anything. But God chose us, in the depths of the
mysteries of His love.
So while it is clear that God’s Love does not fluctuate and
is consistent, it is also true that God loves the unlovable. That leads us to
the next characteristic:
7.
God’s Love is unconditional
If God loves even the sinner and if God loves the unlovable,
then it follows that there is no condition upon God’s love. God loves because
He is love. If there is no merit or earning of God’s love, but if God simply
loves because He is, then God’s love is unconditional. There is no condition
for earning God’s love.
Take the biblical saints as examples of the subjects of
God’s unconditional love. Solomon was a womanizer. Abram was a pagan. Noah was
a drunk. Adam was a blame-shifter. Moses was a murderer. Job was prideful.
Jacob was a liar and a thief. Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of the church.
John tried to worship angels. And Peter was an idiot.
And yet we read Deuteronomy
10:15, “The LORD delighted only in
your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you
above all peoples, as it is this day.” God chose the Jewish people to be
His own, though He Himself described them as a stiff-necked and contrary
people, a stubborn group. Yet He chose them and loved them.
Look at Deuteronomy
7:7-8.
All of the saints of the Bible were chosen and loved by
God, despite themselves.
We love because this
or that. But this is what sets apart unconditional love: it is love despite this or that.
Why does God’s Love not inspect its subject before it loves
that subject? Why does God’s Love not have conditions? Look at the very nature
of love:
Proverbs 10:12,
“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers
all sins.”
I Peter 4:8, “And above all things have fervent love for
one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins’.”
It is in the nature of love to overlook faults, to forgive
sins, to put the worst in someone out of mind and to believe the best in them
and wish the best for them. And that is totally revolutionary love. We aren’t
geared to love like that. We automatically love others if they’re lovely and if
they earn our affection.
When anyone goes about looking for a future husband or
wife, they look for the best. Nobody goes out looking to love the worst instead
of the best. We all look for things in others that are attractive and alluring
and beautiful.
But God loves without condition. And one of the clearest
and plainest statements that God overlooks your faults in loving you, comes
from Romans 5:8 wherein you see that
God did not just love you at your best, no He loved you at your worst.
Romans 5:8 says
“But God demonstrates His own love toward
us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
That takes us to our next characteristic: God
demonstrating…
8.
God’s Love is demonstrated
Love is a verb. Love is an action. What kind of a man says
he loves his wife and does absolutely nothing for her? What kind of a god would
say he loves His children and yet do nothing for them? How would it be if god
told you he loved you, but did nothing for you, nothing for your life, nothing
for your happiness? That would be a pretty shallow love.
In order for God’s Love to be love, by definition, it must
be a love that takes action. And as we just read, God demonstrated the action
of His Love through the action of the Cross.
This is not a casual love that makes passing remarks about
how good we look. This is not an indifferent love that buys you flowers just
because it is a holiday. No, this is the greatest kind of love. The cross not
only demonstrates love. It demonstrates the best love.
John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to
lay down one’s life for his friends.”
I John 3:16, “By this we know love, because He laid down
His life for us.”
The cross is lent its depth because it is the exhibition of
God’s Love. The cross is the clearest writing of the words of the Divine heart,
the purest expression of God saying to the world “I love you”.
Let me share this quote with you from this book the Four Loves:
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly
superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates
the universe, already foreseeing… the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross,
the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the
mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the
repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake,
hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who
deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and
"take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love
Himself, the inventor of all loves.” —C.S. Lewis
In summary, God is the source of all love. His Divine Love
is giving, consistent, everlasting, corrective, unconditional. His Love is so
capable that He even loves the least lovely, the least lovable. He needs
nothing and gives all. And He demonstrated His Divine Love by suffering an
excruciating torment and death on a garish wooden cross, all for the Love of
our sinful souls, we who so often spite Him and neglect.
This is the central teaching of Christianity, the cross of
Christ, and it finds its basis in this incredible attribute of God: His Love.
It is such a topic that I believe will require an eternity
of awe-inspiring study.
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