God Matters: Theology Applied in Three Parts
Part 3: God Is Love, and Why It Matters
In my three decades of preaching, I cannot recall ever being more challenged and intimidated by any subject in sermon preparation than this one. Its glory and grandeur, infinity and incomprehensibility, sweetness and delight, is far beyond the ability of the best preachers in the world to convey adequately, even with the Lord’s help. You cannot possibly think too highly of the subject of God’s love, but you could have unrealistic expectations for a sermon about it.
My aim in this one is modest. I only wish to proclaim something of what the assertion means when the Bible says, “God is love,” and then to suggest a few of the important practical applications to our lives. And whatever blessing the Lord may give to my ministry, it is just a fraction of how much you might be edified in studying these things.
Even my stated subject is far too broad to cover in one message. My narrower aim is to state a few things about the text, “God is love,” which are usually missed or misunderstood, things which were more generally known when the church had a firmer grasp upon orthodox theology proper. I also want to show how those tried and true points of sound teaching about God and His love tie directly to our daily thinking and relating to God. Our Lord Jesus Christ said that when a faithful Christian teaches others, he “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt 13.52). I present old things to you today, and paradoxically, things that may be new to you.
In this message we will use the same two-part outline you have heard twice before: truth revealed and truth applied.
Truth Revealed
We must keep in mind everything we already know from Scripture and traditional orthodoxy as we think further about this statement that “God is love.” I remind you of things we heard in our first two messages, namely, that “God is,” and that “God is light.” The apostle John’s statement that God is love is not only compatible, but is one truth with those other statements. These are just different ways of apprehending the God we worship.
God’s love and His being
One of the first things I preached to you in the sermon entitled, “God Is,” about His being, is that we seriously err when we think of God as somewhat creaturely and as somewhat human. He is neither.
Divine and creaturely love. Any comparisons between God and His creatures in Scripture are examples of His gracious condescension for our understanding. For our benefit, He employs the figurative language of analogies. God is wholly other from His creatures. He and they are not in the same category of existence. God is being itself, and, therefore, necessary being. It is impossible that the true God could not exist. All other existing things only exist by virtue of His creating them in the beginning and sustaining them in perpetual existence through time, itself creaturely.
All of this has pressing relevance to love as it exists in God and in His creatures. Any and all love in the creation streams from God Himself as the source, and that same love is continually supplied by Him wherever it is found. Love is not inherent in us. We are utterly dependent upon God for love to be in us and to operate through us, just as we are dependent upon Him for all things we are and have and do. He is the vine and we are the branches. Without Him we can do nothing. We must abide in Him to bring forth much fruit, chiefly love. You will recognize this language from Jesus who claims this very same thing for Himself in His relationship with His disciples (John 15.5). He is God to them, the Fount of life and love. This is clearly Christ’s meaning.
And just as God’s being is absolute, so is His love. In creatures, love, where it exists, is an attribute of the one who has it, distinct from the essence of that one, and therefore not absolutely indispensable to the being of that creature. It is an “incidental property, . . . a reality which is conjoined to a thing and which can be withdrawn from the thing without substantial alteration” of the thing (Richard Muller, DLGTT, “accidens,” 19). Love in creatures is only a “part” of their complex beings. Love might be added to them, increased or diminished in them, and taken away altogether from them, and their essential identity would not change.
Not so with God. The apostle John, led by the Spirit to write infallibly on this subject, stated that “God is love”—not “God has love,” as if love were something outside of Him which He acquired within His being, or as if divine love were something other than God Himself. The orthodox tradition of Christianity has long insisted upon what is called “the simplicity of God,” the idea that He is radically and ontologically one without parts in any sense whatsoever. All creatures are composed of parts, materially or otherwise. Our parts exist before we do, and not all our parts are necessary to our essential being. We are “formed” and come together into our present state of being, and likewise we may fall to pieces, disintegrate, and degenerate. But all this is impossible with God and highlights one of His most important distinctions from His creatures. A memorable axiom to help us remember this profound reality goes like this, “All that is in God is God.” No less than this is implied in the holy name by which God has revealed Himself, “I am.”
This raises the matter of God’s attributes. To imagine that God is composed of His many attributes is a gross misconception. Do not for one moment entertain the thought that love is one part of God, like one section of an orange, along with other parts like justice, goodness, truth, holiness, and so forth, so that all His attributes put together make up a complex being called God. Not at all! The plurality of attributes revealed in Scripture are not so many parts of God, but another example of divine condescension so that we may begin to grasp something of His glory. He breaks the truth down in pieces for our understanding, but the divine reality is perfectly simple, with no parts whatsoever. God cannot be disassembled because He is one.
Divine and human love. This same exalted contrast between God and His creatures must also be appreciated more narrowly in the comparisons of God with human beings, and that, specifically, in the case of love. We do both scripturally and reasonably infer that the love of God is, like God Himself, categorically different than human love. In God, love is a perfection; in us, it is a passion.
Our love, such as it is or may be, is limited and changing. It begins in us and grows; it wanes and dies. As we pass through time, we love in ever-changing ways, with varying degrees. We love more and then less. We are fickle, loving first this person, then that one. Feelings of love may even be related to the volatile state of our bodies. It is more difficult for us to exercise love when we are in great pain, than otherwise. When provoked by injury or insult our tempers flare, endangering the relationship with one we had loved, perhaps for a long time, even in the case of married couples. We are creatures of ever-fluctuating passions, desires, and affections that come and go, subject to forces outside of us that act upon us most effectively, changing our internal state of mind and our disposition toward others.
John’s grand statement of praise that “God is love” is saying something which is true of Him alone. It would be blasphemy if applied to any mere creature. God’s love is so different from human love that it is barely comparable at all, and really far beyond our comprehension. Our love is passionate, and the tradition of orthodox theology rightly states that God is “without passions” (e.g., 2LCF II.1).
I know there are many biblical passages which speak of God as if He does have human passions, but these must not be read as literal statements of ontology, any more than the passages that speak of God’s changing His mind, or as having bodily members like hands and a face and bowels. Human traits predicated of God in the Bible are all examples of figurative language. They are true as they are intended, figuratively but not literally. This is no less true of human passions attributed to God than of any other human trait. The Puritan Stephen Charnock explains and summarizes so helpfully:
By [God’s] eyes, and ears, we understand his omniscience; by his face, the manifestation of his favor; by his mouth, the revelation of his will; by his nostrils, the acceptation of our prayers; by his bowels, the tenderness of his compassion; by his heart, the sincerity of his affections; by his hand, the strength of his power; by his feet, the ubiquity [everywhere-ness] of his presence (The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, I.269).
But whatever is existentially perfect about human love does indeed pertain to God. This justifies the analogy with human love. Human love only provides us with the faintest glimmer of divine love, and yet is useful for us to form some conception of it in our minds. God uses the language of creation in revealing to us Himself the Creator. How else could it be done?
It is most important for us to receive the exalted truth about divine love. To quote again our confession of faith, it is, like God Himself, “immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute” (2LCF II.1). God’s love does not wax and wane. It is set upon the very same objects eternally and infinitely. It is absolutely pure, powerful, and sovereign. God’s love is all that God is, because God is love!
But what of the biblical representations of God showing love at one time and not another, or toward some creatures and not others? What are we to make of biblical expressions that God was provoked to anger by the sin of His creatures (e.g., 2 Chron 28.25), and that we must be careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4.30)? The sound answer, in short, is that all these are describing changes in the creation and not in God Himself, who is eternal, perfect, and immutable (unchanging and incapable of any change whatsoever). The relations of creatures to God change, but not God Himself. Again, Charnock is helpful, though perhaps a bit challenging for us to follow, when he writes,
God is not changed, when of loving to any creatures he becomes angry with them, or of angry he becomes appeased. The change in these cases is in the creature; according to the alteration in the creature, it stands in a various relation to God; an innocent creature is the object of his kindness, an offending creature is the object of his anger; there is a change in the dispensation of God, as there is a change in the creature, making himself capable of such dispensations. God always acts according to the immutable nature of his holiness, and can no more change in his affections to good and evil, than he can in his essence. When the devils now fallen stood as glorious angels, they were the objects of God’s love, because holy. When they fell, they were the objects of God’s hatred, because impure; the same reason which made him love them while they were pure, made him hate them when they were criminal. The reason of his various dispensations to them was the same in both, as considered in God, his immutable holiness, but as respecting the creature different; the nature of the creature was changed, but the divine holy nature of God remained the same (ibid., I.404).
God’s love and His light
Our second message in this series is entitled, “God is light,” and this is extremely important to keep in mind as we think about His love. The metaphor of light with respect to God has many connotations, but perhaps the most important pertains to His holiness. Holiness is the dominant thought in John’s statement, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1.5).
God’s love is holy love. It is not sentimentality like human love often is. God’s love is not ontologically different from His ineffable holiness and perfect righteousness. God’s love is not of such a nature that it could possibly compromise His holy nature or countenance any violation of His holy law.
David Wells writes very perceptibly about this in his book, God in the Whirlwind. First John 4.10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The word “propitiation” means a sacrifice that turns away wrath, that appeases God’s righteous anger. Dr. Wells comments on this verse, saying,
John’s sentence defining love would have been completed quite differently in the West today. In this is love, many would say, that God is there for us when we need him. He is there for what we need from him. He is love in that he gives us inward comfort and makes us feel better about ourselves. He is love in that he makes us happy, that he gives us a sense of the fulfillment, that he gives us stuff, that he heals us, that he does everything to encourage us each and every day. That is the prevailing view of God today. The Bible’s view, by contrast, is quite different because its world is moral. . . . The Bible’s world is defined by God’s character of holiness (Kindle location 529).
The good theologian then tells us he will be writing about God’s “holy-love” to distinguish it from the psycho-therapeutic counterfeit so popular in Western culture.
God’s Trinitarian love
I must say something briefly about the fact that God’s love is Trinitarian. The Bible is consistently monotheistic, teaching that there is only one true and living God. This is the God who is love. Yet it also teaches that the Father is love, the Son is love, and the Spirit is love. These are the three Persons, not parts, of the simple divine Being. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God the Son, said, “my Father loves me” (John 10.17), and also, “I love the Father” (Jn 14.31). The Father spoke from heaven and said of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3.17; 17.5). John’s gospel says twice, “The Father loveth the Son” (Jn 3.35; 5.20). The Holy Spirit, who is both personal and divine, is also love, exercising love towards the Father and the Son, and being loved by them both. Scripture speaks about “the love of the Spirit” (Rom 15.30) and of love as the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5.22). God Himself is the very essence of love, a love that is eternal and intra-Trinitarian. Another scholar observes,
Thus in John’s Gospel there is a profound sense in which the intra-Trinitarian love of God is not only temporally and logically prior to his love for his creatures, but is . . . the nature of God. Moreover, the cross-work of Jesus is first of all motivated by this intra-Trinitarian love of God, for the cross comes about, in John’s theology, precisely because the Father determines that all will honor the Son, and because the Son obeys so perfectly that he accomplishes his Father’s commission and goes to the cross (New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “Love,” 648).
Only by the divine revelation of God as Trinity can we account for a love which is both personal and eternal, a love that is quite impossible for any monadic false god in Unitarianism and various cults, as well as in all non-Christian religions. Only the Triune God of Holy Scripture and Christian orthodoxy exercises eternal love within Himself without dependence upon creatures for a loving relationship.
Augustine even argued for the Trinity from the reality of eternal love in God. I am paraphrasing and quoting Herman Bavinck here, and he is relaying Augustine’s thought.
Starting with the biblical declaration that “God is love,” Augustine demonstrated that there is always a trinity present in love: one who loves, that which is loved, and love itself. In love there is always a subject, an object, and a bond between the two (Reformed Dogmatics, II.327, citing Of the Trinity, VIII, 8; IX 1, 2).
Why is this absolutely crucial to our doctrine of God’s love? Because some within the church today are arguing persistently for God’s love as a passion, denying what I have been asserting that it is perfect and infinite, unchanging and unchangeable. They allege that such a view of God makes Him inert and impersonal, and more like a force than our Father. But they are wrong. They do not have the support of Scripture, or of reason, or of orthodox tradition on their side. That human love is passionate, limited, and changeable only exhibits its gross inferiority to God’s love. One reason God’s love never changes is that it is perfectly, infinitely, and eternally active. He cannot love any more or any less than He does because “God is love.”
I hope you can see now that these perspectives on God’s love are not widely known and appreciated, even in the sounder churches, with relatively few exceptions.
Now for truth applied.
Truth Applied
My dear friends, in these three messages we have dipped into some of the most difficult and profound truths revealed in Scripture, inferred by reason, and prized in the tradition of Christ’s holy church. Deep sea divers recover the choicest treasures. These truths are important and practical. Scripture says, “The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (Dan 11.32). In fact, nothing is more practical for us than a true and personal knowledge of God as He has genuinely revealed Himself to us.
Whereas it is true that there is great benefit for us in countless ways to study theology for our spiritual enrichment and real sanctification of heart and conduct, the converse is also true. Some of the Lord’s precious saints have suffered all kinds of spiritual maladies and darkness from ignorance or error about these things. I am pastorally concerned to comfort God’s people by helping them to experience a more accurate and intimate knowledge of Him. I am convinced that knowing God better would get to the root of many problems that plague us. And so I have three simple exhortations: trust, obey, and worship the God of love.
Trust the God of love
There are two kinds of people who need to trust God—those who don’t and those who do.
The first kind are unbelievers who are lost in their sins. You don’t trust God because you don’t know Him as you should. To know Him in the highest sense is to love Him. If only God would graciously open your eyes to correct your unworthy thoughts of God and to show you that, in truth, “God is love,” your soul would be ravished with His beauty and glory! In love He made you, in love He sustains you, in love He sends gospel preachers to you, and calls you to repent of your sins and believe in His Son. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1.29)! There you have God’s holy-love on display, and how can you withhold your trust and love from such a Father, who so loved the world to give His only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3.16)?
The second kind of people who need to trust God are those who already trust Him. We need to keep trusting Him, and to trust Him more than we do. John was getting at this when he wrote, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God (1 Jn 5.13). That last part of the verse is often passed over without enough attention and appreciation. Believing on Christ is not a momentary decision but a lifelong calling. Assurance of our salvation comes by the further and greater exercise of faith, the same faith by which we came to Christ in the first place. You might be one who has thought that when you sin as a Christian, God’s love for you lessens, and He might even become so angry that your salvation is in jeopardy. You may be suffering from the misunderstanding that God is passionate like we are, and that you must behave well in order to solicit from God all the love you need to be saved at last. Well, then, no wonder you lack assurance! I say to you, “God is love”—perfect, infinite, immutable love. He loves you for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, and not as you are in yourself apart from Christ. Take refuge in this! He says now to His church, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal 3.6), and, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lam 3.22). Hear His word to us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8.35–39).
God is love. Trust Him, my dear Christian brother and sister! Trust Him more, and trust Him ever!
Obey the God of love
When we know the God of love truly and intimately, our character and conduct will be changed dramatically and permanently. The apostle John stresses this point in his first epistle, especially in 1 John 4:
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him (vv. 7–16).
And according to John, we practice love insofar as we keep God’s commandments, and no further. He wrote, “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (1 Jn 2.3–5). Because God is love, we must obey Him implicitly, for this leads us toward God and toward love.
Worship the God of love
That God is love makes it obvious that He is worthy of our whole-souled, completely unbridled adoration both now and forever! We should yearn for nothing more than to be one with Him and to praise Him in front of His throne all our days. Let us draw near to Him who is love under the sound of a closing poem.
Jesus, Thy boundless love to me / No thought can reach, no tongue declare; / Unite my thankful heart to Thee, / And reign without a rival there! / Thine wholly, Thine alone, I am; / Be Thou alone my constant flame.
Oh, grant that nothing in my soul / May dwell, but Thy pure love alone; / Oh, may Thy love possess me whole, / My joy, my treasure, and my crown! / All coldness from my heart remove; / My every act, word, thought, be love.
This love unwearied I pursue / And dauntlessly to Thee aspire. / Oh, may Thy love my hope renew, / Burn in my soul like heavenly fire! / And day and night, be all my care / To guard this sacred treasure there.
In suffering be Thy love my peace, / In weakness be Thy love my power; / And when the storms of life shall cease, / O Jesus, in that final hour, / Be Thou my rod and staff and guide / And draw me safely to Thy side!
–Paul Gerhardt [1607–76], The Lutheran Hymnal
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