The Love Of God

Feature 4 – February 2017 – Grace & Truth Magazine

The Love Of God

“Love is from God ... God is love.” —1 John 4:7-8 ESV

The Experience Of The Love Of God
“And now abide faith, hope, love; these three things; and the greater of these is love.” —1 Corinthians 13:13 JND

Christians where I live have an expression about the love of God: “It’s betta felt, than tellt!” Every believer on the Lord Jesus will agree with this sentiment, for the reality of God’s love is the very essence of Christianity! Therefore I am very conscious that God’s love is way beyond any human language, either spoken or written, but I trust that this short meditation of such an infinite subject will cause every reader to respond to God with thanksgiving, praise and worship. Also, it may be that some readers have never experienced God’s love for themselves. My prayer is that they may come to desire it, and that their hearts might be opened to receive and enjoy it.

The Expression Of The Love Of God
God has loved man, whom He created, from the very beginning of creation. The Old Testament teaches that His love was especially directed towards Israel, His chosen nation. We can now say that His love has been fully expressed by and in His Son, whom He sent into the world to make it known. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16 ESV). The measure of His love is seen in this act: He gave His Son over to death on the cross for sinful mankind. In Romans 8:32 Paul stated that God did not spare His Son. Rather, He surrendered, or handed over, His Son to suffer for our sins. But Paul also used the same idea of “delivering up” (JND, KJV) when he wrote of his deep appreciation of the Son’s love:

• “The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20 ESV).
• “Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:24-25).
• “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).
• “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (v.2).

Paul echoed Isaiah 53:12: “He poured out His soul to death.” This phrase is rendered “his soul was delivered to death” in the Septuagint.

“God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Love is known by the action it takes towards its recipient(s). God’s love tells us He knew all about us and our dire situation. He loved us when we were rebellious and undeserving sinners, choosing to express His love for us at the cross. Now He commends it, or holds it out, as worthy to be received by all people. There is no assignable cause for God’s love other than His desire for our blessing and His Son’s glory! He purposefully loved/loves us – it is a deliberate act of His will.

The Extent Of The Love Of God
In addition to the fact that we were without any relationship with a holy God, Romans 5:6–10 lists other things that were against us:

• We were powerless – without any strength to help ourselves.
• We were ungodly – without any desire either to live for God or to ask for His help.
• We were, worst of all, enemies of God – actively rebellious against Him!

God’s love is so great that He reached out to us in our lost and hopeless condition. We have been reconciled to God (v.10) – brought back from the distance of rebellion, enmity and spiritual death.

Other New Testament passages also describe the extent to which God’s love reached out to us. For example, Ephesians 1-2 shows that God acted out of His great love for us. He took us from a position of spiritual death, where we were dead in trespasses and in sins, and placed us in intimate nearness to Himself. Spiritually, we are now holy and blameless before Him in love. We are accepted in the Beloved and seated with Christ Jesus in heavenly places.

What kind of love is this that can reach down to those in the depravity of sin and raise them up to the highest place of holiness and love? It is God’s agape, the unique Greek word used by the Spirit of God to describe God’s love. Each Person in the Godhead exhibits this love (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 15:30; Jn. 16:27).

The Lord Jesus illustrated the agape in Luke 15 with the parables of the lost sheep, coin and son. These parables show the lengths that each Person of the Godhead goes to seek and to save lost sinners. Perhaps the story of the lost son best demonstrates the extent to which the love of God goes. “While he was still a long* way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (v.20). Paul describes this action of God in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21: God was in Christ providing the means of reconciliation of sinners to Himself through the cross.

The Enjoyment And Eternity Of The Love Of God
Reconciliation is the climax of Romans 5: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice [boast, jnd] in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (vv.10-11). While Luke 15 tells us that God rejoices over repentant sinners, Romans 5:11 says that we rejoice, or boast, in the God who has saved and justified us. We worship because the Spirit has deluged God’s love into our hearts (v.5). The Spirit is that spring of water within us which wells up to eternal life (see Jn. 4:14).

Eternal life is the life we already experience and enjoy within the family of God, but we will come into all its fullness within the Father’s house. As God’s children we experience and enjoy the love that is the essence of eternal life – His Son having made that love known to us. “Hereby we perceive the love of God, because [Christ] laid down His life for us” (1 Jn. 3:16 nkjv). More exactly, through His death we know what love really is (jnd, esv). We exclaim, “Is that the length God would go for me?” And we worship the Giver, “The Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world” (4:14).

But there is another aspect of eternal life. Love is the very nature of God for “God is love” (v.8), and “the Father loves the Son” (Jn. 3:35, 5:20) is a truth of eternal reality. Divine love is that which is proper to the eternal Father/Son relationship. The Son has introduced us into that love: “Father ... I know You, and these know that You have sent Me. I made known to them Your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (17:25-26).

Moreover, the significance of God’s love for us is that we have been given to the Son as a love-gift from the Father: “They were Yours, You gave them to Me” (v.6 NKJV). He calls the Christian company “My own” because they are the measure of the Father’s love for Him! That is why the Lord Jesus, in obedience to the commandment of His Father, laid down His life for us; and His action gave the Father a new reason for loving Him (10:14-18). His own are therefore very precious to Him and to the Father (vv.27-30).

The Everything Of The Love Of God
In Romans 8:28-31 Paul reached a climax about where the “all things” (ESV) of the love of God has brought us and rhetorically asked, “What shall we say to these things?” He immediately responded in verse 32 with another rhetorical question: “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” Then Paul asked in verse 35, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

John 13:1 states that the Lord Jesus “loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” Darby’s footnote points out that “the end” does not have a meaning restricted to time and he thinks that it implies “going through with everything.” Perhaps this is captured by Paul in his “everything” answers of Romans 8:33-39: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died – more than that, who was raised – who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 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.” Amen and Amen!

ENDNOTE
* Same word used for “far” in “the far country” of verse 13.

By David Anderson