Love

The Love of God

The Love of God, is what the gospel is all about and one of the most important concepts in scripture.

An immediate question that arises is whether this is God’s love for us or our love for Him.

Which is the most decisive?

What is the nature of this love? Is it like a mommy and a baby, or like a boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife? Or all of it together?

What does the bible say about the Love of God?

The Father Loves nothing but the Son

Unconditional Love

The unscriptural concept of unconditional love has crept into the western church over the last 50 years. We understand as fallen humans, that that we cannot earn the love of God, but the love of God, as we find it in scripture is not unconditional, neither is it sentimental affection for the sons of Adam.

The Love of God transforms

1. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.2. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.3. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

4. Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.5. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.6. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.7. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.8. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.9. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

10. In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.

1 John 3:1-10

The Fathers Love for Jesus is highly conditional

17. “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.18. “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”

John 10:17-18

This is a very classic description of male bonding and masculine love. No man wants to be loved despite being a failure. Men want to be loved for being successful and powerful. Boys need unearned love and affection and this good to establish us in our infant years, but it is not how adult males typically operate. Praise God that in Christ Jesus we can be successful, and be loved because we please the Father.

The Shma

This most famous of Jewish prayers clearly speaks of us loving God in a very distinctive manner. Three categories are described here.

4. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!5. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5

The Fruit of Love is holiness and obedience

15. “If you love Me, keep My commandments.16. “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—17. “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.18. “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19. “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also.20. “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.21. “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”22. Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?”23. Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.24. “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.

John 14:15-24

What about John 3 16?

click below

John 3:16

Rebellion

Proclaiming unconditional affection for the disobedient is humanistic rebellion.

Humanist inside and outside the church resent the fact that God has a higher plan than blessing or saving their current Adamic existence.

Scripture is clear that the cross of Christ ends the Adamic line as far as God is concerned and only allows the line of Christ to go forward. This act of love which John 3 16 speak of is scary and confusing to mankind.

Al manner of fantasies, imaginations and delusions have been promulgated to try to explain the cross in humanistic terms and the church has been infected by this.

The idea that God loves humans more than God loves Christ is strange but obviously appealing to many humanists, inside and outside the church. The idea that the Father killed the Son in order to keep defiled rebellious people out of hell flows form this thinking.

The Cross is misinterpreted

The cross is universally understood to be profound and an all-important action, but to consider that God died in order to rid Himself of the disobedient and cursed line of Adam and resurrect only the elect into the new line of Christ does not sit well with humanists. Eternal "second death" for those who do not follow Christ onto that cross doesn't appeal to humanistic sensitivities either.

The cross is scary, violent, confusing and above all spiritual. Adam's descendants don't like spiritual things. They cannot comprehend it, and cannot control it. Spiritual things come purely on God's terms. Spiritual things threaten Adam's offspring.

The Cross ends Adam

The Cross ends Adam

A God who is so committed to gaining a virgin for Himself, on His terms, that He is prepared to die on the cross in order to save His own people from among all the others, is scary an outright offensive to humanistic thinking.

One obvious strategy to dumb the cross down to a humanists level, is to proclaim unconditional passionate affections to all humans, even those who totally fail God’s standard under the cross. Please understand the cross is a filter and very few actually make it, as they often say "terms & conditions apply".

Proclaiming the love of God to be unconditional is rebellion

It really just is lame rebellion. Just like a little baby gets angry when the breast is pulled from it’s mouth too early, so the modern humanistic Christians get angry and scared and demand unconditional sentimental love when God has something very different in mind with the cross. God expects us to believe into Christ Crucified, take up our cross daily and cease from sin. This does not suit modern comfortable Christians at all. Neither does it make sense to them.

God has called the elect to a new, regenerated life, in Christ, and will discard all the other people in a rubbish dump called Gehenna. The fear and anger this creates has caused the majority of humans to just shut down emotionally and intellectually in denial.

Humans redefining the cross on humanistic terms now abounds.

Just like in the movie “the god’s must be crazy” people try to interpret God’s action in dumbed down and comforting ways to avoid facing the incredibly realities and responsibilities actually involved here.

Did the early church teach or preach “unconditional love”?

Nope!

In fact, the book of Acts, which is the record of the evangelism, growth and action of the early church does not contain the word “love” once. Image that! What were they preaching if they weren’t telling people how deeply and passionately God loved them all?

They preached sin, righteousness, judgment and repentance. They preached crucifixion and resurrection.

Those who were drawn by the Holy Spirit and convicted came forward in repentance while the rest were left confused, angry and scared.

Love leads to righteousness and obedience

The love of God is indeed wide and high and deep but it always fills us with power to be holy and to transformed, to confront the sin and the world and to be completely separate from them. Confronting the perverted and the disobedient will lead to persecution. Preaching un-biblical love leads to some sniggers but not much more.

Faith, Hope and Love

Love is indeed the greatest of these, but make sure it is the Biblical “Love of God” you are talking about, everything else is rebellion and will lead to plenty of deception and death.

The cross is the Love of God, and nothing else

As John 3 16 so clearly shows the Love of God is the Cross. The love of God is not emotions, sentimentally or mindless loyalty and affection.

We must understand and stand under the cross, that really is it!