Some Different Ways the Bible Speak of the Love of God

From The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God [2000], by D.A. Carson, pp. 16-21:

(1) The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father. John’s Gospel is especially rich in this theme. Twice we are told that the Father loves the Son, once with the verb ἀγαπάω (John 3:35), and once with φιλέω (John 5:20). Yet the evangelist also insists that the world must learn that Jesus loves the Father (John 14:31). This intra-Trinitarian love of God not only marks off Christian monotheism from all other monotheisms, but is bound up in surprising ways with revelation and redemption. I shall return to this theme in the next chapter.

(2) God’s providential love over all that he has made. By and large the Bible veers away from using the word love in this connection, but the theme is not hard to find. God creates everything, and before there is a whiff of sin, he pronounces all that he has made to be “good” (Gen. 1). This is the product of a loving Creator. The Lord Jesus depicts a world in which God clothes the grass of the fields with the glory of wildflowers seen by no human being, perhaps, but seen by God. The lion roars and hauls down its prey, but it is God who feeds the animal. The birds of the air find food, but that is the result of God’s loving providence, and not a sparrow falls from the sky apart from the sanction of the Almighty (Matt. 6). 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.

(3) God’s salvific stance toward his fallen world. God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). I know that some try to take κόσμος (“world”) here to refer to the elect. But that really will not do. All the evidence of the usage of the word in John’s Gospel is against the suggestion. True, world in John does not so much refer to bigness as to badness. In John’s vocabulary, world is primarily the moral order in willful and culpable rebellion against God. In John 3:16 God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, as to such wicked people. Nevertheless elsewhere John can speak of “the whole world” (1 John 2:2), thus bringing bigness and badness together. More importantly, in Johannine theology the disciples themselves once belonged to the world but were drawn out of it (e.g., John 15:19). On this axis, God’s love for the world cannot be collapsed into his love for the elect.

The same lesson is learned from many passages and themes in Scripture. However much God stands in judgment over the world, he also presents himself as the God who invites and commands all human beings to repent. He orders his people to carry the Gospel to the farthest corner of the world, proclaiming it to men and women everywhere. To rebels the sovereign Lord calls out, “As surely as I live . . . I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11).

(4) God’s particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect. The elect may be the entire nation of Israel or the church as a body or individuals. In each case, God sets his affection on his chosen ones in a way in which he does not set his affection on others. The people of Israel are told, “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7-8; cf. 4:37). Again: “To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today” (10:14-15).

The striking thing about these passages is that when Israel is contrasted with the universe or with other nations, the distinguishing feature has nothing of personal or national merit; it is nothing other than the love of God. In the very nature of the case, then, God’s love is directed toward Israel in these passages in a way in which it is not directed toward other nations.

Obviously, this way of speaking of the love of God is unlike the other three ways of speaking of God’s love that we have looked at so far. This discriminating feature of God’s love surfaces frequently. “I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated” (Mal. 1:2-3), God declares. Allow all the room you like for the Semitic nature of this contrast, observing that the absolute form can be a way of articulating absolute preference; yet the fact is that God’s love in such passages is peculiarly directed toward the elect.

Similarly in the New Testament: Christ “loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). Repeatedly the New Testament texts tell us that the love of God or the love of Christ is directed toward those who constitute the church. To this subject I will return in the fourth chapter.

(5) Finally, God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way—conditioned, that is, on obedience. It is part of the relational structure of knowing God; it does not have to do with how we become true followers of the living God, but with our relationship with him once we do know him. “Keep yourselves in God’s love,” Jude exhorts his readers (v. 21), leaving the unmistakable impression that someone might not keep himself or herself in the love of God. Clearly this is not God’s providential love; it is pretty difficult to escape that.

Nor is this God’s yearning love, reflecting his salvific stance toward our fallen race. Nor is it his eternal, elective love. If words mean anything, one does not, as we shall see, walk away from that love either.

Jude is not the only one who speaks in such terms. The Lord Jesus commands his disciples to remain in his love (John 15:9), and adds, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (John 15:10). To draw a feeble analogy: Although there is a sense in which my love for my children is immutable, so help me God, regardless of what they do, there is another sense in which they know well enough that they must remain in my love. If for no good reason my teenagers do not get home by the time I have prescribed, the least they will experience is a bawling out, and they may come under some restrictive sanctions. There is no use reminding them that I am doing this because I love them. That is true, but the manifestation of my love for them when I ground them and when I take them out for a meal or attend one of their concerts or take my son fishing or my daughter on an excursion of some sort is rather different in the two cases. Only the latter will feel much more like remaining in my love than falling under my wrath. Nor is this a phenomenon of the new covenant alone. The Decalogue declares God to be the one who shows his love “to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exod. 20:6). Yes, “[t]he LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (Ps. 103:8). In this context, his love is set over against his wrath. Unlike some other texts we shall examine, his people live under his love or under his wrath, in function of their covenantal faithfulness: “He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. . . . As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him. . . . But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s loveis with those who fear him . . . with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts” (Ps. 103:9-11, 13, 17-18). This is the language of relationship between God and the covenant community.

Lord, Bless My Family With Your Music

Give my baby John your beat
A holy, holy, on repeat
A rap on your consuming power
An urgent message for the hour

Bless my Lydia with your dance
And strong refrain of sweet romance
Of faithfulness and security
A pas de deux in purity

Preserve my wife with your grand piano
And a sanctifying sweet soprano
A host of angels on each side
Of the aisle for the chosen bride

Restore my life with your violin
Of forgiveness of my deepest sins
To evermore on you depend
And sing a song that never ends

“God is the ultimate musician. His music transforms your life. The notes of redemption rearrange your heart and restore your life. His songs of forgiveness, grace, reconciliation, truth, hope, sovereignty, and love give you back your humanity and restore your identity.” - Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More (Greensboro, NC; New Growth Press, 2007), 145.

John Caleb is a Big Boy

John loves his pre-school backpack

Three-year birthdays mean fun balloons
Eating cereal with colored spoons
And drinking milk without a straw
You are a big boy now

You wake up early by yourself
And sneak off goldfish from the shelf
And turn on Barney with a shout
You are a big boy now

At the end of songs you shout “hooray!”
You say, “rejoice!”, this is the day
The Lord made it, let us be glad
You are a big boy now

Sometimes you disobey your dad
Correcting you, it makes me sad
But I’m proud of you
You are a big boy now

You taught your sister to hit a ball
You show concern when someone falls
Your heart is tender-sweet
You are a big boy now

So much you do now on your own
Our favorite shirts you’ve all outgrown
It’s time to buy new shoes
You are a big boy now

In the morning you begin pre-school
Tonight I’m feeling like a fool
For letting time go by so fast
You are a big boy now

Priceless Moments from Memorial Day Weekend

Joy overflows

Entrance fee into Zion National Park? 25 dollars.

Camping fee? 16 dollars x 2 nights.

Rocks for John at the local rock store? 7 dollars.

Shower at Bike Zion? 5 dollars.

Priceless:

• Listening to John and Lydia play and laugh together in the back of the car.
• Listening to John and Lydia tantalize each other in the back of the car.
• Hiking with Stacia and Lydia as they were wrapped together.
  

  Lydia and Stacia

• Waking up in the middle of the night next to my wife on a matress that had deflated.
• Watching Lydia crawl with a small object clutched in her hand, on all fours to avoid getting dirt on her knees.
• Watching John throw rocks into various rivers and shriek with joy.
• Cooking my own sausage at our campfire.
• Watching foreign tourists try to maintain their polite composure in the shuttle bus as our tired children were crying and whining.
• Eating my wife’s chili dogs.
• Alternating the reading of Augustine’s Confessions aloud in the car with my wife as the children slept.
• Waking up to Lydia smilng at me from her Pack ‘n Play.
• Marveling at flowers that grew upside-down.
  

  Flowers growing upside-down

• Bustling about the camp site as my wife peacefully sat and knitted.
• Drinking the park’s natural spring water.
• Cheating by adding coals to the fire.
• Being in a town where there were no fast food franchises.
• Carrying John on my shoulders.
• Basking in the beauty of order in God’s creation.

Shaf Runs Cross Country

In my cross country garb

I was on the cross country team in high school. I forget why I even joined, but I’m glad I did. My brother was the athletic and popular one. He was more social and friendly. And the gals loved him because he was strong and good-looking. I was the sharp-edged, skinny, asthmatic nerd.

I remember the practices, especially the first few practices. That was some tough sledding. I tried to make up for how weak and slow I was by using humor. But it didn’t work. Phil C., Phil my brother, Mark, Nick, Ryan, and the others were fast and serious about putting in a good practice. Me? I was desperate for it to end. And if I forgot my asthma puff that day it was hellish.

Mom and Dad showed up to some of my races, and I remember the tears on my father’s face. Here was their son who had been admitted who-knows-how-many-times to the emergency room for asthma attacks, who had been on medication his entire youth. Who was taken to the Children’s Hospital in a helicopter after the doctors learned I had pneumothorax. Here I was running a 5K, and they stared in wonder and swelled with pride.

I could have finished a race in 35 minutes and it wouldn’t have mattered. My dad was proud and it felt good. Before my Dad, I felt loved and cherished. Before the team I was embarrassed for being so slow. But they were nice about it.

It was the only school sport I ever did. My best time was around 21:30. The only other sport I did in my teens, if you count it as as sport, was roller hockey. My real game of choice was StarCraft.

Listening to Mark, a teammate, make trouble and banter during our practices and trips alone made it worth it. Once in the team’s van he mooned a car behind us. The driver of that car was so angry he drove in front of us and slammed on his breaks. Hilarious and scary at the same time. Another time he ate a huge Whopper minutes before a race, ran like a horse, and then threw it up immediately afterward, enjoying every minute of it. The coach as upset but we were rolling with laughter. Mark was beloved in the school. He had a jolly personality. I socially looked up to him. He made me feel special by giving me a good new nickname, “Shaf”. “What’s up, Shaf?” Around my fellow computer nerds and armchair philosophers I was Aaron. Around the cross country team I was Shaf. To this day it feels good to be called Shaf by a friend.

But Mark’s troublemaking crossed the line and ended his running revelry. On one trip, a few on the team (including Mark) had some wine in a hotel room (don’t worry, my brother wasn’t involved and never would have been). Someone snitched on them and they got booted. That meant two things to me: Mark was no longer going to be on the team, and I was going to make varsity.

I missed Mark, and I didn’t have a real interest in making the varsity team. But I felt proud for getting the varsity letter (for the jacket I never purchased). And I think my whole family enjoyed the irony of God’s goodness. Their asthmatic son/brother making varsity in cross country? Only when pigs flew. Well, the pigs grew wings that year.

“Faith is full of inventions”

The words of Spurgeon:

“And when they could not come nigh unto Him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.” –Mark 2:4

Faith is full of inventions. The house was full, a crowd blocked up the door, but faith found a way of getting at the Lord and placing the palsied man before Him. If we cannot get sinners where Jesus is by ordinary methods we must use extraordinary ones. It seems, according to Luke 5:19, that a tiling had to be removed, which would make dust and cause a measure of danger to those below, but where the case is very urgent we must not mind running some risks and shocking some proprieties. Jesus was there to heal, and therefore fall what might, faith ventured all so that her poor paralyzed charge might have his sins forgiven. O that we had more daring faith among us! Cannot we, dear reader, seek it this morning for ourselves and for our fellow-workers, and will we not try to-day to perform some gallant act for the love of souls and the glory of the Lord.

The world is constantly inventing; genius serves all the purposes of human desire: cannot faith invent too, and reach by some new means the outcasts who lie perishing around us? It was the presence of Jesus which excited victorious courage in the four bearers of the palsied man: is not the Lord among us now? Have we seen His face for ourselves this morning? Have we felt His healing power in our own souls? If so, then through door, through window, or through roof, let us, breaking through all impediments, labour to bring poor souls to Jesus. All means are good and decorous when faith and love are truly set on winning souls. If hunger for bread can break through stone walls, surely hunger for souls is not to be hindered in its efforts. O Lord, make us quick to suggest methods of reaching Thy poor sin-sick ones, and bold to carry them out at all hazards.

Even if someone isn’t doing outreach the same way we are, may he bless each and every creative endeavor done in faith.

Conflict, Contextualization, and Spiritual Gifts – All Important in Evangelism

There seems to be three themes in discussions over evangelism:

1. Contextualization for the sake of Christ. This refers to our attempt as Christians to appropriately accommodate and adapt to culture so that we can best communicate the grace and truth of Christ, especially the gospel. It often involves a kind of humbling and discomfort on our part, of doing things in ways that aren’t familiar to us.

2. Conflict for the sake of Christ. This refers to our struggle with the world system around us which tries to silence or neutralize our message. It involves our countercultural endeavor to help people see the other-worldliness of the kingdom of God. I regard this as a subtheme of contextualization, because thoughtful consideration of a culture can be the very thing that helps us understand the need for a countercultural method.

3. Using spiritual gifts for the sake of Christ. This refers to our calling as Christians to use our talents and desires which God has given us. God wants each one of us to be good stewards of the special graces he has equipped us with.

We have to somehow integrate all three of these themes and not let any one take over in a way that justifies our own passions or selfish ambitions. It isn’t easy. Our flesh inclines us to contextualization as a worldly way to avoid suffering and feel good about relationships, to conflict as a worldly way of avoiding gentleness and patience, and to the abuse of our gifts as a way to justify bringing glory and attention to ourselves.

Even when we don’t agree with our Christian brothers, I think we need to cut them a lot of slack, particularly when it is evident their philosophy of ministry is centered around a thoughtful love that endures at least a meaningful degree of suffering and practices patience with very difficult people.

The longer I live, the dumber I feel on this whole matter. And I have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to people who think they are experts on being “missional”. It too often is just a highbrow way of letting sociology or individual preferences or cowardice or personal ambition dominate. To those who read part of that and think, “boy, that sounds like Aaron when he…”, I am sorry.

May God grant me a deeper love for everyone.

The Very Act of Reading is Philosophical

Behind the various theories and practices of textual interpretation lurk larger philosophical issues. Indeed, implicit in the question of meaning are questions about the nature of reality, the possibility of knowledge, and the criteria for morality. It may not be at all obvious that one is taking a position on these issues when one picks up a book and begins to read, but I will argue that that is indeed the case. Whether there is something really “there” in the text is a question of the “metaphysics” of meaning. Similarly, reading implies some beliefs about whether it is possible to understand a text, and if so, how. Whether there is something to be known in texts is a question of the “epistemology” of meaning. Lastly, reading raises questions about what obligations, if any, impinge on the reader of Scripture or any other text. What readers do with what is in the text gives rise to questions concerning the “ethics” of meaning. Together, these three issues give rise to a related question, “What is it to be human, an agent of meaning?”

Vanhoozer, Kevin. Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 19. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Assorted Thoughts

Ironically, those who reject justification of the ungodly by faith alone often end up relying on ordinances and sacraments as chief measures of their standing before God. The kind of evidential works genuine believers look for to authenticate their faith, which alone justifies, are much more intense and heart-revealing and radical than the kind of works those who deny sola fide lean on. The Protestant Puritans were far more interested in spiritual self-examination than the merit-centered Catholics and worthiness-centered Mormons are.

At final judgment, I will be both embarrassed and proud. My saved family and friends will be horrified and overjoyed. Embarrassed and overjoyed over things brought to light, and proud and overjoyed over things brought to light. Thank God for the superabounding joy that will swallow up embarrassment.

The swine not only trample pearls, but waste the time of the pearl-caster.

God condescends when he reveals himself to humanity. He accommodates humanity by working through assumptions that we have about reality, many of which are wrong. If we praise fellow humans for being able to communicate well in spite of the weakness of human language and worldview assumptions, then how much more should God be praised for being an effective communicator? That he effectively reveals divine truths through weak human language and weak human worldviews is a testimony not to his weakness, but to his power.

Religious academics and those who interact with them pride themselves in a pompous version of “civility”. They boast in how they are able to talk over deeply significant issues in a merely calm and dispassionate manner. They speak condescendingly of outsiders who still speak with vigor and passion, who exult over beauty and glory and grimace with moral outrage over evil and deception. To these academics I say: be wary of lying. If you speak true propositions, do not lie with your tone and attitude. Let your tone and attitude speak more to the truth you communicate than to the position you occupy in your elitist community of academia. When you speak of significant matters insignificantly, you lie. When you speak of insignificant minutiae with fervor, you lie. Tell the whole story, and tell it holistically. Help a man not only think appropriately, but also feel appropriately.

Righteous Sinners

From Ron Julian’s “Righteous Sinners: The believer’s struggle with faith, grace, and works“:

Our salvation is pure mercy; we do not deserve God’s kindness. However, who in this life is destined to receive God’s mercy? Not those who hate God. Not those two can’t admit their own sin. Not those who refuse to trust God. Not the “wicked” of Psalm 32. The hearts of such people are marked. Something is fatally wrong with them: They are spiritually blind. Mercy comes to those who loves God, those who know how sinful they are, those who believe God’s promises, those who seek God’s instruction. Their hearts are also marked. Although much is wrong with them, something is also very right: They are children of the light who have been given “eyes to see.” The Bible sometimes calls them “righteous”:

And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him. (Luke 2:25)

These “righteous” ones are not hypothetical, sinless people; they are flesh and blood believers. In spite of their own sinfulness, God has blessed these righteous ones with spirits alive to Him. Their hearts are rightly oriented toward God. They believe His promises and admire His goodness and lament over their own evil. Abraham’s nephew Lot is a particularly interesting example of such a “righteous sinner”:

…righteous Lot oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds)….(2 Peter 2:7-8)

Peter calls Lot “righteous”; yet it is hard to read the story of Lot and conclude that he was an example of sinless perfection. He was a timid man with small faith. Although he believed the angels, they had to drag him out of Sodom. His daughters twice got him so drunk that he had sex with both of them and never knew it. But for all his faults, Lot was a believer in Yahweh. He cared about what was right, and he mourned over the eagerness with which Sodom gave itself over to sin.

The children of God in this life are righteous people. They are not sinless people; they do not have the righteousness of moral character that would earn them salvation. But their faith is a flag marking a certain righteousness in their hearts. Unlike those in the world around them, their eyes see and their ears hear. In a blind world, such sight deserves to be called “good.” …

All human beings live according to a dishonest double standard. When others sin against us, we can think of little else but the wrong and hurt and evil of what they did. On the other hand, when we sin against others, we find it easy to excuse, to defend, and to downplay our offenses. We are self-centered people. When justice is in our favor, we want justice; when mercy is in our favor, we want mercy. This tendency shows itself in the most trivial and the most serious aspects of life. I have seen this in my own life so often it has taken on a tragicomic flavor. I have lost count of how many times I catch myself benig irritated by another person’s actions, only to realize I do exactly the same things myself. When I mess up, I want you to be tolerant; when you mess up, I want you to stop it.

The gospel demands that we abandon the double standard. If we take the gospel seriously, it will not let us downplay our own guilt; we are so morally unworthy that it took the death of Christ Himself to pay the penalty. When we face the choice to forgive others, we are confronting that double standard directly. If I condemn the one who has sinned against me, how can I expect to escape condemnation myself? When struggling with whether to forgive others, it is as if God is speaking to us like this:

Look at the evil this man has done to you. You are right to be upset. This man has been unloving; this man has shown contempt for Me. This man has done evil and deserves to be condemned. But what do you deserve? Will you call down the lightning from heaven on his head? If you do, what will keep it from striking you at the same time? Has he been unloving? You cannot begin to count the times you have been unloving in your life. Did he show contempt for a holy God? Think of all the times you have ignored and distrusted and disobeyed Me. Is he evil? Are you trying to tell Me that you are not? When you look into the eyes of your enemy, you are looking into your own eyes. There is no difference; you are both guilty. Are you willing to see your own sins in the light of his? I have no double standard. Do you demand justice? You will receive justice, and you won’t like it. Do you want mercy? You are as guilty as your enemy; if sins like yours can be forgiven, then so can sins like his.