God’s Love for Sinful Man
Please attend to the following definition across which I have come in recent days:
“The gospel is the good news of God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ. This includes his incarnation in which he took to himself full (yet sinless) human nature; his sinless life which fulfilled the perfect law of God; his substitutionary death which paid the penalty for man’s sin and satisfied the righteous wrath of God; his resurrection demonstrating God’s satisfaction with his sacrifice; and his glorification and ascension to the right hand of the Father where he now reigns and intercedes for the church.
“Such news is specific: there is a defined ‘thatness’ to the gospel which sets forth the content of both our saving faith and our proclamation. It is objective, and not to be confused with our response. It is sufficient: we can add nothing to what Christ has accomplished for us – it falls to us simply to believe this news, turning from our sins and receiving by faith all that God has done for us in Christ.”
Well, thank you for that; still, the truth is that everything that is articulated in the definition is correct, yet it is skewed because it ignores or otherwise fails to incorporate the most important thing pertaining to the Gospel.
The definition speaks of things such as Incarnation, the fulfillment of the “perfect law of God,” substitutionary death, God’s righteous wrath, etc. It even incorporates the language of philosophy, i.e. “thatness” to describe what and how we know. It speaks of the objective and sufficient nature of the Gospel.
The question, “What is the Gospel?” must be complemented by the very pertinent question of, “Why is there a Gospel?” There is a Gospel because God loves us, that’s why! And it is driving me absolutely batty that the aforementioned definition is so woefully and wantonly deficient when its author no doubt knows better.
The definition is given a crystal-clear articulation by the Apostle John: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). THAT IS THE GOSPEL!
All the other is helpful commentary, but none of it takes the place of John 3:16. It is interpretative commentary in terms of some of the fine points that arise in reflection upon the actual substance of the Gospel. But there is no Gospel without God’s love.
The aforementioned definition is the product of pronounced intellectual firepower as applied to theological thought. Simone Weil, the young Jewish convert to Catholicism during the war era observed that “Faith is experience that intelligence is enlightened by love.” I heard the power of intellection, not of love.
Why is it so difficult? What theological agenda would minimize or deny God’s love? It is a travesty.
It does happen. There is always a theological system, an ecclesiastical institution and a spiritual experience that would promote itself over and above the inestimable love of Jesus. The answer to the human dilemma is replaced by cheap substitutes masquerading as impressive edifices of intellect, achievement or giftedness.
Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon commented on the effect upon doctrine when love is lacking: “When love dies orthodox doctrine becomes a corpse, a powerless formalism. Adherence to the truth sours into bigotry when the sweetness and light of love to Jesus depart … Lose love, lose all!”
Thank you. We have lost the “thatness” of the Gospel when we omit the love of Jesus. We can’t say it enough: The love of Jesus … the love of Jesus … the love of Jesus. Anything else is, frankly, another Gospel, which is no Gospel at all.
The apostle John knew His love. Mary Magdalene knew His love. Peter knew His love afresh that morning on the beach when Jesus re-commissioned him into His ministry. Lazarus and his two sisters knew this love. The young girl who was restored to life by Jesus knew His love. Even Judas knew this love of Christ!
All Christians know the love of Jesus. Didn’t He Himself comment that “Greater love has no one than this than that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)? He was incarnated, paid the price in a substitutionary capacity and satisfied the righteous wrath of God because He loved us!
The Apostle Paul wanted nothing more, and prayed accordingly, that Christians would be “rooted and established in love, [that we] may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
The biblical aspiration is that God’s people be well-grounded in, intimately familiar with, and have the capacity to know, the love of God. The biblical perspective is that such love is better than knowledge. And the biblical prerequisite for maturity in the things of God is love – specifically, the love of Jesus.
Renowned philosopher and spirituality writer Dallas Willard notes that “In general, knowledge tends to be destructive when held by anything less than a mature personality thoroughly permeated by love and humility.” This is especially true of theological knowledge, as Paul clearly attested in his letter to the church at Ephesus.
Theologians transform doctrine into dangerous dogma when they dwell in a world of abstraction. Christian witness plays out in the world of reality, where love is desperately needed, and where the reality of God’s love was provided by Jesus.
Some argue that God is motivated by His own glory. Others believe that He is motivated by His love. These twin propositions are not mutually exclusive.
Remember: God is one. Is the perhaps the most profound fact of divine revelation, if only because of the human proclivity to categorize, to separate and to prioritize. One can’t do this with God because of the simple and unitary nature of His person.
His love and His holiness are of the same essence. His power and His truth are one in nature. His love and His wrath are issuance of the same character.
So when the Bible says quite categorically that “God is love” (1 John 4), it in no way lessens any of His other characteristics. But let no one ever attempt to lessen the primary importance of God’s love, insofar as His character or will are concerned.
Whatever else is emphasized of God’s Person, nothing else can lessen the presence of divine love as found in the Bible or, correspondingly, in Christian experience. Pastor and devotional writer A.W. Tozer offers this heightening observation:
“A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation.”
This is the God I have come to know. His love for me was made real one August day in the privacy of my bedroom in 1975. I have ever since known His love. There is nothing to compare with it; nothing!
He called me to Himself out of love for me. He provided for me at every turn out of love for me. He disciplined me because He loved me. He has borne patiently with me through spiritual adolescence and earlier ministerial ineptitude out of love for me. He is preparing me for His Kingdom feast in eternity because He loves me.
This is the Gospel, that God loved me, a sinner, and that God loves fallen man, his sins notwithstanding. Yes, we are under wrath because of our sin, but that is why Jesus went to the cross, so as to rescue us from wrath, which is consequential to our sin. Jesus loves me so much that He took the hit for me on the Cross at Calvary.
Tozer needs be quoted again: “It is a strange and beautiful eccentricity of the free God that He has allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love and will not be satisfied till He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart be bound to us forever.”
God often uses the language of marital intimacy or parental affection to describe His love for us, as well as to beckon us to Himself. The imagery is quite vivid and leaves little or nothing to the imagination. He wants us to know His love!
My best friend passed away suddenly in January 2009, a mere 46 years old. A few years prior he told me he finally knew that God loved him. He testifies to being enveloped by the reality of God’s love while lying in the hospital bed. He is now bound in love to God forever in eternity. My loss is my friend’s, and heaven’s, gain.
We should not be surprised. The psalmist declares that the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3). He revels in the fact that God’s love for those who fear Him is as great as the distance between heaven and earth (Psalm 103:11).
He also ponders the extraordinary fact of God’s concern for sinful man: “What is man that you are mindful of Him, the son of man that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:4, 5).
He is mindful of him in the sense that He loves him with a love that would be unimaginable, but for God’s self-disclosure as a God of love. It remains unwarranted, but for His character. It is to be experienced if it is to be grasped.
The late William F. Buckley wrote that “To ponder the glory of God is to worship a transcendence that gives us a measure of man, near infinitely small on the scale of things, but infinitely great, as the complement of divine love.”
It’s not as if God needs us. He is sufficient in-and-of-Himself. Aristotle thought that God was the Supreme Being who took the greatest satisfaction in contemplating Himself. I don’t quite know how he knew this, but that’s what he said.
I have no doubt that God has a perfectly clear and comprehensive understanding of Himself. The One who introduced Himself to Moses as “I am who I am” is undoubtedly not one who is lacking is self-knowledge. God has never had the need of “finding” Himself, let alone is He obligated to explain Himself to us.
But by nature He loves us and desires our love in return. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during the 2nd Word War, posed the following insight: “Although He had no need of us for the fullness of His being, He has need of us for the satisfaction of His love.”
He is love insofar as His character is concerned. He loves, insofar as His actions are concerned. And He loves us, notwithstanding the fact that we weren’t very loveable, which is precisely the point of the Gospel! God still loves us.
No self-respecting theologian can ignore what jumps off the page of Scripture and cries forth from the divine heart. It is unduly grievous to the Spirit of God, the very first fruit of whom is love (Galatians 5:22).
You know, the sterility and deficiency of that earlier definition is replaced by a biblical statement, the substance of which you will want to savor:
“This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9, 10).
I don’t know of any better news than this! Nor can I find any better exhortation that what follows: “Dear friends, since God loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:11, 12).
His people, though, are not always easy to love, are we? It is a lot like children: One’s own children are easier to love than the children of others. It is a natural reality. They are one’s own flesh-and-blood, the product (one trusts) of love’s fruition between a man and his wife. One sees one’s self or spouse in one’s own.
It is a similar thing concerning our love for God’s people. Do we see Jesus in them, if even by way of a mere glimpse or a smidgeon? Perhaps the problem with Christians is that we don’t know Jesus as well as we think.
Ah, Mr. Tozer has put it best (as so often he does!): “Perhaps the most serious charge that can be brought against modern Christians is that we are not sufficiently in love with Christ.” And yet to know Christ is to love Him, and one’s love for Christ will play out, in large measure, in terms of how we relate to His people.
The fellowship of His people is one of the great blessings afforded to the Church by our loving God. It is a milieu in which Christians may find a hospitable reception, a loving family and the opportunities and tools by which we can learn and grow and serve. It is a rather select community, culled from every nation and ethnicity, and bound by the love that Jesus bears for all of us.
His love within us also encompasses our relations with people all around us. We are not exempt from sharing and displaying Christ’s love before them. Our witness is always a testament to the love of Jesus, even if that love is rejected. His love is our motivation and our message.
The Apostle Paul got it right when he said that “[Because] we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men … For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:11, 14, 15).
I hope that my rant against an inadequate definition translated into a more than adequate blessing for anyone who has come this far. My love for Jesus compelled me to speak, just as Jesus took God’s wrath upon Himself out of love for us.
Bradley E. Lacey
August 6, 2010
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