10 Things We Get Wrong About the Love of God

1. God’s love isn’t one thing God owes us.

Whereas it’s true that God is love (1 John 4:16), this doesn’t imply he’s obligated to precise that like to anybody, a lot much less towards hell-deserving sinners such as you and me. In different phrases, God is sovereign in his resolution both to bestow his love or withhold it. Right here is how John Murray put it:

Actually God is love. Love isn’t one thing adventitious; it isn’t one thing that God could select to be or select to not be. He’s love, and that essentially, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he’s mild, so he’s love. But it belongs to the very essence of electing love to acknowledge that it isn’t inherently essential to that love which God essentially and eternally is that he ought to set such love as points in redemption and adoption upon completely undesirable and hell-deserving objects. It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a very good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his personal goodness, that he selected a individuals to be heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The explanation resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations which are peculiarly his because the ‘I’m that I’m.’¹

Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say it’s distinguishing. It’s, by definition as saving love, bestowed upon and skilled by these solely who’re, in reality, saved (i.e., the elect). Though there may be absolutely a way during which God loves the non-elect, he doesn’t love them redemptively. If he did, they will surely be redeemed. God loves them, however not savingly, or else they will surely be saved. All that is however to say that God’s everlasting, electing love isn’t common however specific.

2. God’s love isn’t uniform or monolithic.

God shows his love in varied methods and levels relying on his good pleasure, function, and the best strategy to convey honor and glory to his identify. We see this within the distinction between the love of God as manifest in frequent grace versus his love as seen in saving grace.

The love of God as manifested in frequent grace is his love as creator which consists of providential kindness, mercy, and longsuffering. It’s an indiscriminate and common love that constrains the bestowing of all bodily and non secular advantages in need of salvation itself. It’s acquired and skilled by the elect and non-elect alike (see Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:27–38).

The love of God as manifested in particular grace is the love of God as savior, which consists of redemption, the efficacy of regenerating grace, and the irrevocable possession of everlasting life. A discriminate and specific love leads him to bestow the grace of everlasting life in Christ. It’s acquired and skilled by the elect solely.

Useful on this regard is the way in which D. A. Carson identifies 5 distinguishable methods during which the Bible speaks of the love of God.²

First is the peculiar love of the Father for the Son (John 3:35; 5:20) and of the Son for the Father (John 14:31).

Second is God’s providential love over all of his creation. Though the phrase “love” is itself hardly ever used on this manner, there is no such thing as a escaping the truth that the world is the product of a loving Creator (see the declaration of “good” over what God has made in Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).

Third is God’s saving love towards the fallen world (John 3:16).

Fourth is God’s specific, effectual, choosing love for his elect. The elect could be the nation of Israel, the church, or particular people (Deut. 7:7–8; 10:14–15; Eph. 5:25).

Fifth is God’s love towards his personal individuals in a provisional or conditional manner. Typically the expertise of God’s love is portrayed as one thing that’s conditioned upon obedience and the concern of God. This doesn’t need to do with that love by which we’re introduced right into a saving relationship with God however reasonably with our capability to really feel and luxuriate in the love of God. See Jude 21; John 15:9–10; Psalm 103:9–18.

3. God’s love doesn’t imply that everybody will ultimately be saved.

As already famous, the saving love of God is poured out solely on the elect. They don’t seem to be deserving of it any greater than are the non-elect who stay of their sinful and fallen situation. God has the sovereign freedom to like some in saving energy however not all. Those that depart this life unsaved should not handled unfairly however in accord with excellent justice.

Some have argued that for individuals to languish in everlasting hell demonstrates that God has failed and that his love was ineffective. However that may solely be true if his loving and saving intent was to safe the salvation of all. Clearly, although, it was not. And God would expertise defeat provided that evil and idolatrous unbelievers escaped divine judgment. However they won’t. And when they’re consigned to everlasting damnation, none will elevate an objection or protest that they’re undeserving of such remedy and deserving of everlasting life.

4. God’s love was not secured by the loss of life of Jesus Christ.

Jesus didn’t die for sinners in order that God would love them. God cherished them and subsequently despatched his Son to die for them.

The love of God, then, is clearly the supply or reason for the atoning work of Christ. God doesn’t love individuals as a result of Christ died for them; Christ died for them as a result of God cherished them. The loss of life of the Savior is to not be conceived as restoring in individuals one thing on the premise of which we’d then win God’s love. The sacrifice of Christ doesn’t procure God’s affection, as if it had been essential, by way of his sufferings, to extract love from an in any other case stern, unwilling, reluctant Deity. Quite the opposite, God’s love constrains to the loss of life of Christ and is supremely manifested therein. In a phrase, the saving love of God is giving:

For God so cherished the world, that he gave his solely Son, that whoever believes in him mustn’t perish however have everlasting life (John 3:16; see Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:1–2; 1 John 4:9–10).

This delusion is completely exploded by the apostle Paul in Romans 5:6, 8. There, he declares that “whereas we had been nonetheless weak, on the proper time, Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God exhibits his love for us in that whereas we had been nonetheless sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6, 8).

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5. God’s love was not the results of his foreknowledge of us loving him.

There was nothing in us or what we’d select to do or imagine that constrained God to set his saving love upon us. It’s to the saving love of God that we hint the reason for our predestination (see Rom. 8:29).

This identical love of God is the rationale for our adoption as sons. It was “in love” that God “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons by way of Jesus Christ, in line with the aim of his will” [not according to our foreseen faith but in accordance] (Eph. 1:4–5). It’s as a result of God cherished that he predestinated. “See what sort of love the Father has given to us, that we ought to be known as kids of God” (1 John 3:1)!

6. God’s love didn’t come up in his coronary heart solely after and upon observing the free will religion of women and men.

The saving love of God is everlasting. It was “earlier than the muse of the world” (Eph. 1:4–5) that he selected us in Christ and predestined us unto adoption as sons (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13). Charles Spurgeon describes this everlasting love:

Within the very starting, when this nice universe lay within the thoughts of God, like unborn forests within the acorn cup; lengthy ere the echoes awoke the solitudes; earlier than the mountains had been introduced forth; and lengthy ere the sunshine flashed by way of the sky, God cherished His chosen creatures. Earlier than there was any created being; when the ether was not fanned by an angel’s wing, when house itself had not an existence, the place there was nothing save God alone — even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved with love for His chosen. Their names had been written on His coronary heart, after which had been they expensive to His soul. Jesus cherished His individuals earlier than the muse of the world—even from eternity! and when He known as me by His grace, He mentioned to me, ‘I’ve cherished thee with an eternal love: subsequently with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.’³

7. God’s love won’t ever be revoked or overturned.

His love isn’t solely everlasting in its conception but additionally irrevocable in its function. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or misery, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or hazard, or sword? bother or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or hazard or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). Nothing, Paul insists and assures, shall be capable of separate us from the love of Christ.

Once more, in Romans 5, Paul can converse of a assured hope on no different floor than that God has cherished us in Christ. It’s as a result of he cherished us after we had been but his enemies, a love demonstrated by the sending of his Son, that his love for us now that we’re his associates is unshakeable. This “rather more” argument of Romans 5:8–11 is encouragement certainly. Paul says, in impact, that if, after we had been alienated from God, he, however, reconciled us to himself by way of his Son, how rather more, now that we’ve been graciously instated in his favor and the alienation eliminated, shall the exalted and eternal lifetime of Christ guarantee our being saved to the uttermost! Murray feedback: “It could be a violation of the knowledge, goodness, and faithfulness of God to suppose that he would have completed the better [love his enemies] and fail within the lesser [love his friends].”⁴

God doesn’t love individuals as a result of Christ died for them; Christ died for them as a result of God cherished them.

8. God’s love doesn’t imply he’ll at all times spare us from struggling and by no means impose painful self-discipline after we sin.

Scripture is obvious that self-discipline, at least life, is a product of divine love: “My son, don’t regard evenly the self-discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises each son he receives” (Heb. 12:5–6).

The Hebrew Christians to whom these phrases had been addressed had mistakenly come to assume that the absence of affliction was an indication of God’s particular favor and, subsequently, that struggling and oppression had been a sign of his displeasure. Quite the opposite, so removed from being a proof of God’s anger or rejection of us, afflictions are proof of his fatherly love. Self-discipline, writes Philip Hughes, “is the mark not of a harsh and heartless father however of a father who’s deeply and lovingly involved for the well-being of his son.”⁵

9. God’s love isn’t restricted to the saving of sinners.

The everlasting and irrevocable love which God has for his individuals additionally secures excess of merely the reconciliation of estranged sinners. This manifold design of God’s saving love is very evident in John’s first epistle. For instance, the love that God has for us is alleged to make doable our love for each other. Following his dialogue of God’s love as witnessed within the atoning sacrifice of his Son (1 John 4:7–11), John writes: “Nobody has ever seen God; if we love one different, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).

In response to John Stott, the apostle John needs to say that “the unseen God, who as soon as revealed himself in his Son, now reveals himself in his individuals if and after they love each other. God’s love is seen of their love as a result of their love is his love imparted to them by his Spirit.”⁶ The purpose is that though God can’t be seen in himself, he might be seen in these in whom he abides after they love others with that very love wherewith they had been cherished! The fullness of God’s redemptive love for us in Christ thus attains its supposed purpose in our love for each other.

This notion that God’s love has for its final design greater than the salvation of these on whom it’s showered is seen but once more in 1 John 2:5. Right here we learn that “whoever retains his phrase, in him really the love of God is perfected.” That’s to say, the love of God achieves its ordained function after we, because the recipients of it, in flip obey him from whom it has come forth.

Contemplate 1 John 4:17. “By that is love perfected with us, in order that we could have faith for the day of judgment, as a result of as he’s so are also we on the earth.” As soon as extra, God’s love secures its finish to the diploma that we who’re its objects stop to concern the day of judgment. The data of God’s fatherly love ought to without end dispel any apprehension of standing in his presence. This isn’t presumption, however reasonably it’s a Spirit-induced conviction that God’s love has efficaciously and eternally offered for us in Christ that righteousness on the premise of which we’re delivered from all penal legal responsibility. God’s excellent love for us, when rightly perceived, does certainly forged out concern!

10. God’s love for himself is neither egocentric nor inconsistent along with his love for us.

Our glad-hearted ardour for God is exceeded solely by God’s glad-hearted ardour for God. If the chief finish of man is to glorify God by having fun with him without end, the chief finish of God is to glorify God and to take pleasure in himself without end!

The pre-eminent ardour in God’s coronary heart, his biggest pleasure and that during which he takes supreme delight, is his personal glory. God is on the heart of his personal affections. The supreme love of God’s life is God. God is pre-eminently dedicated to the celebrity of his identify. God is himself the tip for which God created the world. Higher nonetheless, God’s instant purpose in all he does is his personal glory. God relentlessly and unceasingly creates, guidelines, orders, directs, speaks, judges, saves, destroys, and delivers with the intention to make recognized who he’s and to safe from the entire of the universe the reward, honor, and glory of which he and he alone is finally and infinitely worthy.

But when God loves himself pre-eminently, how can he love me in any respect? How can we are saying that God is for us and that he wishes our happiness if he’s primarily for himself and his personal glory? I need to argue that it’s exactly as a result of God loves himself that he loves you. Right here’s how.

I assume you’ll agree that your biggest good consists of having fun with probably the most wonderful Being within the universe. That Being, after all, is God. Subsequently, probably the most loving and type factor that God can do for you is to commit all his vitality and energy to elicit out of your coronary heart reward of himself. Why? As a result of reward is the consummation of enjoyment. All enjoyment tends in the direction of reward and adoration as its appointed finish. On this manner, God’s looking for his personal glory and God’s looking for your good converge.

Your biggest good is within the enjoyment of God. God’s biggest glory is in being loved. So, for God to hunt his glory in your worship of him (that’s his love for himself) is probably the most loving factor he can do for you. Solely by looking for his glory pre-eminently can God search your good passionately, for God to work to your enjoyment of him (that’s his love for you) and for his glory in being loved (that’s his love for himself) should not correctly distinct.

Sam Storms is the writer of The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God’s Unchanging Affection.

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