Several weeks ago, I preached through Luke 15:11-32 on the two lost sons.  We talked about the failed approached to life and love of both the younger brother (the prodigal) and the older brother (the religious type).  We talked about the way to life and love found in The Third Way: The way of the gospel.  It assaults our hearts through the passionate and pursuing love of the Father and it conquers us through the willing sacrifice of our true Elder Brother, Jesus. 
    But as beautiful as that reality is and as much as it is the way of life, it is still difficult to grasp and live!  If we’re honest, we have questions.  Questions arise in our minds even from our study of the Scriptures and the varied, perhaps contradictory, descriptions of the love of God.  We also have questions that simply arise from our own experience (or lack thereof) of the love of God.  We’re going to examine these briefly, and we’re going to find that our experiential challenges are very much due to our misunderstanding of the Scriptures over the love of God.  Faith begins with knowing the truth- its value is found in the object of our trust.  So if we have failed to grasp truly the nature of God’s love, then it is no wonder that our hearts will be struggling to live by faith in the daily battle of sin, suffering, and brokenness. 

Picture This…

    Imagine that the love of God is like a beautiful diamond.  As you turn the stone in your hand and gaze at it in the light, it’s different sides flash and gleam in such a way that its appearance shifts and changes.  God’s love is like that diamond- there are different facets to it depending upon the way we look at it.  One key mistake is to take only one of those facets and force all the rest of Scripture through that one lens.  Rather, we need to take each facet of God’s love as the Scriptures present them and learn from each in turn. 

1st Facet- God’s Inter-Trinitarian Love…

    God’s love begins and flows from the love each person of the Trinity has for each other.  John 3:35 is representative of many such passages: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.”  This is the eternal love of the Godhead for one another and is the foundation and goal of all love.  Jesus prays in John 17:3 that the ultimate goal of life is to know/glory/delight/etc. in the Triune God.  We are to love as they love.

2nd Facet- God’s Providential Love…

    The Bible is unequivocal: God’s love is over all and for all creation including sinners!  In Matthew 6:25-33 Jesus uses an argument from the lesser to the greater.  He recites how God’s love for the creatures of creation (including unbelieving gentiles- v. 31-32) is demonstrated through His providential care and provision.  He goes on to conclude in v. 33 that if God could love the lesser in such a fashion, then we can be confident of His love as the greater (more valued, etc.).    If this is not a loving providence for all (even gentiles), then Jesus’ point is worthless- that God can be trusted to provide for His people (since He lovingly provides for all creation).

3rd Facet- God’s dispositional love towards the fallen world…

    This describes the desires of God’s heart.  Modern Reformed theology has often wrongly emptied God of emotion under the doctrine of impassibility.  While God is impassable in His being, classic Reformed theology understood the Bible better here: God is not without emotion or desire.  This love describes that disposition to love.  One might recall the timeless words of John 3:16 here:   “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  This shows us that the disposition of God’s heart is to desire the salvation of the world. 
Time (and your reading appetite) does not allow us to get into the details on this, but it is commonly accepted by Bible commentators/exegetes that the “world” in John refers especially to “badness” and not “bigness.”  Thus, God’s dispositional love is to be admired in that His love is extended to such a bad thing as the world.  This is exactly what other passages reinforce:

Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Even as God’s love will not relent from punishing evil, so He takes no pleasure in it and His desire/disposition is that they would repent. 
     We often ask, “If this is God’s desire, then why doesn’t He just do it?”  Good question.  One that the Bible doesn’t answer except to command us to keep in mind the larger and more important goal: God’s glory even over the comfort and benefit of humanity.  That’s the point of Paul’s discussion in Romans 9.  We don’t like it because we want to see ourselves as the center of the universe and have God explain things to our satisfaction.  God graciously and lovingly will not bow to such rebellious thinking, but calls us to humble faith in both His providential love and his dispositional love at the same time!

4th Facet- God’s electing Love…

    The Bible unflinchingly proclaims to all that out of rebellious humanity, God has chosen before time to save particular individuals to be redeemed and saved by the work of His Son.  It tells us that He did this because of His electing love: where He chooses to set His special redemptive love upon us not because of anything in ourselves or our future lives, but simply because His choice reflects His nature.  The Bible often uses the word “foreknew” to reflect this choice.  Its meaning is not one of future knowledge- like looking down through time and seeing our responses.  Rather, it is a word that is often used to describe marital love- where we choose to set our affection, loyalty, etc. upon a particular individual.  Listen to just a smidgeon of the Biblical teaching on this:

Romans 8:29-30 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Eph. 1:3-6   Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Deut. 7:6-8   “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

These and many, many others tell us that this love of God is unmerited/unearned by us- in fact, we have done everything imaginable to demerit or un-earn it!   It is an active, saving love that takes the initiative from start to finish that we inevitably respond to.  It establishes a union and a communion with God Himself that can never be broken as it rests on what God does in Christ and not what we do in life.

     Again we often ask, “Why does God have such a discriminating love if His dispositional love is that all should repent?”  And again, the answer of Romans 9 is all we receive: it is for the glory of God and is fully consistent with justice (since God owes only the eternal punishment of Hell to all- that is what our lives earn even on our best days…).  This answer may not satisfy our sinful demands that God should place humanity at the center of the universe and that all should therefore receive eternal life, but it is an answer that does not makes God’s unconditioned sovereignty, human responsibility, and God’s dispositional love contradict one another.  They can all be reconciled together: and that is exactly what the Bible does.

5th Facet- God’s love of communion with His redeemed people…

This is a relational love that we can enjoy by faith driven obedience or miss out on by faithlessness and disobedience.  As our faith drives us to obey God, we enjoy communion.  As faithlessness drives us to disobey God, then we miss out on the blessings and even face the loving discipline of the God who’s electing love of us never changes or waivers.  This is an area we often don’t like to talk about or reckon with in our thinking, so read these passages carefully:

Jude 20-21: But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

John 15:9-11: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

    Whereas God’s electing love establishes a union between us and Christ and can never be broken, changed, improved, or decreased by anything in us or in our lives that we do our fail to do…  This love of communion can and is affected by our obedience and disobedience.  When we respond to God’s loving embrace, we will do so by faith driven obedience.  We then enter into promised blessings (cf. fullness of joy- Jn 15:11).  But because the shape and experience of God’s love is always conditioned by His other attributes (a holy love, a righteous love, a just love, etc.), it is this communing love that will withhold blessings or bring loving discipline when we disobey- cf. Hebrews 12:7-11.  Thus, while God’s electing love guaruntee’s the unchanging, unwavering love and affection of God upon us (an unchangeable identity as “family”), yet our actions and choices matter.  They either allow us to enjoy the communion and blessing our loving heavenly Father wants to shed upon us, or they keep us from entering into those blessings.  Instead, God lovingly blesses us with correction rather than to knowingly allow us to continue down paths that are destructive and deadly.

How to see the diamond of God’s love more clearly…

    With the outlines of the diamond of God’s love before us, we might have questions from our practical experience.  As we learn to see these questions through the different facets of God’s love, then we can both begin to faithfully understand the whole range of Biblical teaching as well as make sense of our experience and struggles.  Let’s look at a couple big ones.

Question 1- As a Christian, does God get angry with me when I sin? 

God’s electing love emphatically shouts to our hearts,  “No!”  You see, this is really an identity question: who am I to God.  God’s electing, saving love in Christ tells us that we are saints, righteous and whole in Christ and perfectly loved…

Question 2- Does God delight in sin or love even unbelievers?

     As we consider God’s providential love, we must conclude that God does graciously do good even to sinners and unbelievers- in this sense showing them love.  When we consider this question through the lens of God’s dispositional love, then we get a slightly different answer.  Consider this multiple choice question: God’s will is that all sinners should A) Continue sinning and not worry about it, or B) Give up their sin and repent and come to Christ?!?  Obviously from Scripture, the answer is B.  Why?  Because the Bible universally and unequivocally tells us that God hates sin (which is a an ethical question).  His dispositional love desires to free this sinful world from it through Christ, and His love motivates Him even to punish it in unbelievers, and purge it in believers over the course of this life into the next.  So no, God doesn’t delight in sin nor in sinners!  Yet, there is at least some Biblical sense in which God does show beneficent love even to unbelieving evil doers.

Question 3- Does my sin affect my relationship with God?

     This is an important one that is different from #1 above- but we often think we’ve answered it when we’re done answering #1 above.  Big mistake…. 
We start with God’s electing love telling us that there is nothing you do or fail to do that can break your union with Christ that is founded upon the radical and free Divinely-initiated and accomplished grace.  This is important to root deeply in our hearts lest we become driven by (and consequently despondent over) our performance before God.
But God also wants us to understand from His Love of Communion with us that “YES!!”  our actions of obedience or disobedience does help or hinder our experience of communion with God!  When we grow comfortable with sin, it will reduce our experience of intimacy and blessing from God precisely because He loves us and not because He’s angry with us (He can’t because of our Union with Jesus). 

     Think of it this way.  It is because I love them that I would not let fighting amongst my children go unpunished- precisely because I love them and so would be fearful and would care about the harm that they would inflict on themselves by that continued pattern of behavior.  In the same way, God knows better than us all the ways our sin destroys our humanity and enjoyment of everything He is and gives that is truly good!

This seems complicated, can’t we just say God is love and leave it at that?

    I can almost hear some of the thoughts out there:  we want simple and this seems complicated.  We don’t really need to understand this.  It might be nice, but not necessary…
If your driving your car, all you need to know is how to operate it.  But if you’re the mechanic trying to fix it, you need to know from the manufacturer a whole lot more about how it fits together, what drives what, etc..  Fact is, you and I are broken, and God is stepping us through a life-long process the Bible calls sanctification to fix us so we’ll be able run right and smooth and true.  So the answer is NO, we can’t do that- we can’t just ignore this stuff!  For many reasons we may not want to face.  For instance…

• Our instinctive view of love is not a true one: its shaped more by hallmark than holiness… by postmodernism than the propitiating sacrifice of Jesus!
• Our demand for simplicity often comes from a laziness over spiritual things that we would never demonstrate in other areas of our lives…  See Prov 2:1-5… Heb 5:11-14…

Brothers and Sisters, these answers aren’t easy, but they are powerful and satisfying because they are true: they are from the truth of God’s word and they truly explain our experiences in life.  We can either wisely listen, learn, and believe, or choose to remain as infants and fools and continue to be tossed too and fro.  We will end up finding that the Third Way of the Gospel is far from us, for we will constantly end up being tricked by the world, the flesh, and the devil into living like we’re still in the far country or outside the feast, when all the while Jesus has shed His blood to seat us at the table- but we are like a petulant child refusing the delights of His table and love.  Please, let’s not make such a mistake.