10 Things We Get Wrong About the Love of God
1. God’s love is not something God owes us.
While it is true that God is love (1 John 4:16), this does not mean he is obligated to express that love to anyone, much less toward hell-deserving sinners like you and me. In other words, God is sovereign in his decision either to bestow his love or withhold it. Here is how John Murray put it:
Truly God is love. Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be. He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love. Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects. It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the ‘I am that I am.’1
Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say it is distinguishing. It is, by definition as saving love, bestowed upon and experienced by those only who are, in fact, saved (i.e., the elect). Although there is surely a sense in which God loves the non-elect, he does not love them redemptively. If he did, they would certainly be redeemed. God loves them, but not savingly, or else they would certainly be saved. All this is but to say that God’s eternal, electing love is not universal but particular.
2. God’s love is not uniform or monolithic.
God displays his love in various ways and degrees depending on his good pleasure, purpose, and the most effective way to bring honor and glory to his name. We see this in the difference between the love of God as manifest in common grace versus his love as seen in saving grace.
The love of God as manifested in common grace is his love as creator which consists of providential kindness, mercy, and longsuffering. It is an indiscriminate and universal love that constrains the bestowing of all physical and spiritual benefits short of salvation itself. It is received and experienced by the elect and non-elect alike (see Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:27–38).
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
Sam Storms
The Steadfast Love of the Lord explores Scripture to find a clear picture of what God’s steadfast, unfailing love looks like and how, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, believers experience his affection.
The love of God as manifested in special grace is the love of God as savior, which consists of redemption, the efficacy of regenerating grace, and the irrevocable possession of eternal life. A discriminate and particular love leads him to bestow the grace of eternal life in Christ. It is received and experienced by the elect only.
Helpful in this regard is the way D. A. Carson identifies five distinguishable ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God.2
First is the peculiar love of the Father for the Son (John 3:35; 5:20) and of the Son for the Father (John 14:31).
Second is God’s providential love over all of his creation. Although the word “love” is itself rarely used in this way, there is no escaping the fact that the world is the product of a loving Creator (see the declaration of “good” over what God has made in Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).
Third is God’s saving love toward the fallen world (John 3:16).
Fourth is God’s particular, effectual, selecting love for his elect. The elect may be the nation of Israel, the church, or specific individuals (Deut. 7:7–8; 10:14–15; Eph. 5:25).
Fifth is God’s love toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way. Often the experience of God’s love is portrayed as something that is conditioned upon obedience and the fear of God. This doesn’t have to do with that love by which we are brought into a saving relationship with God but rather with our capacity to feel and enjoy the affection of God. See Jude 21; John 15:9–10; Psalm 103:9–18.
3. God’s love does not mean that everyone will eventually be saved.
As already noted, the saving love of God is poured out only on the elect. They are not deserving of it any more than are the non-elect who remain in their sinful and fallen condition. God has the sovereign freedom to love some in saving power but not all. Those who depart this life unsaved are not treated unfairly but in accord with perfect justice.
Some have argued that for people to languish in eternal hell demonstrates that God has failed and that his love was ineffective. But that would only be true if his loving and saving intent was to secure the salvation of all. Clearly, though, it was not. And God would experience defeat only if evil and idolatrous unbelievers escaped divine judgment. But they will not. And when they are consigned to eternal damnation, none will raise an objection or protest that they are undeserving of such treatment and deserving of eternal life.
4. God’s love was not secured by the death of Jesus Christ.
Jesus didn’t die for sinners so that God would love them. God loved them and therefore sent his Son to die for them.
The love of God, then, is clearly the source or cause of the atoning work of Christ. God does not love people because Christ died for them; Christ died for them because God loved them. The death of the Savior is not to be conceived as restoring in people something on the basis of which we might then win God’s love. The sacrifice of Christ does not procure God’s affection, as if it were necessary, through his sufferings, to extract love from an otherwise stern, unwilling, reluctant Deity. On the contrary, God’s love constrains to the death of Christ and is supremely manifested therein. In a word, the saving love of God is giving:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16; see Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:1–2; 1 John 4:9–10).
This myth is utterly exploded by the apostle Paul in Romans 5:6, 8. There, he declares that “while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6, 8).
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5. God’s love was not the result of his foreknowledge of us loving him.
There was nothing in us or what we might choose to do or believe that constrained God to set his saving love upon us. It is to the saving love of God that we trace the cause of our predestination (see Rom. 8:29).
This same love of God is the reason for our adoption as sons. It was “in love” that God “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” [not according to our foreseen faith but in accordance] (Eph. 1:4–5). It is because God loved that he predestinated. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1)!
6. God’s love did not arise in his heart only after and upon observing the free will faith of men and women.
The saving love of God is eternal. It was “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4–5) that he chose us in Christ and predestined us unto adoption as sons (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13). Charles Spurgeon describes this eternal love:
In the very beginning, when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes awoke the solitudes; before the mountains were brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through the sky, God loved His chosen creatures. Before there was any created being; when the ether was not fanned by an angel’s wing, when space itself had not an existence, where there was nothing save God alone — even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved with love for His chosen. Their names were written on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul. Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the world—even from eternity! and when He called me by His grace, He said to me, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.’3
7. God’s love will never be revoked or overturned.
His love is not only eternal in its conception but also irrevocable in its purpose. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). Nothing, Paul insists and assures, shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ.
Again, in Romans 5, Paul can speak of a confident hope on no other ground than that God has loved us in Christ. It is because he loved us when we were yet his enemies, a love demonstrated by the sending of his Son, that his love for us now that we are his friends is unshakeable. This “much more” argument of Romans 5:8–11 is encouragement indeed. Paul says, in effect, that if, when we were alienated from God, he, notwithstanding, reconciled us to himself through his Son, how much more, now that we have been graciously instated in his favor and the alienation removed, shall the exalted and everlasting life of Christ ensure our being saved to the uttermost! Murray comments: “It would be a violation of the wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness of God to suppose that he would have done the greater [love his enemies] and fail in the lesser [love his friends].”4
God does not love people because Christ died for them; Christ died for them because God loved them.
8. God’s love does not mean he will always spare us from suffering and never impose painful discipline when we sin.
Scripture is clear that discipline, no less than life, is a product of divine love: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son he receives” (Heb. 12:5–6).
The Hebrew Christians to whom these words were addressed had mistakenly come to think that the absence of affliction was a sign of God’s special favor and, therefore, that suffering and oppression were an indication of his displeasure. On the contrary, so far from being a proof of God’s anger or rejection of us, afflictions are evidence of his fatherly love. Discipline, writes Philip Hughes, “is the mark not of a harsh and heartless father but of a father who is deeply and lovingly concerned for the well-being of his son.”5
9. God’s love is not restricted to the saving of sinners.
The eternal and irrevocable love which God has for his people also secures far more than merely the reconciliation of estranged sinners. This manifold design of God’s saving love is especially evident in John’s first epistle. For example, the love that God has for us is said to make possible our love for one another. Following his discussion of God’s love as witnessed in the atoning sacrifice of his Son (1 John 4:7–11), John writes: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one other, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
According to John Stott, the apostle John wishes to say that “the unseen God, who once revealed himself in his Son, now reveals himself in his people if and when they love one another. God’s love is seen in their love because their love is his love imparted to them by his Spirit.”6 The point is that although God cannot be seen in himself, he can be seen in those in whom he abides when they love others with that very love wherewith they were loved! The fullness of God’s redemptive love for us in Christ thus attains its intended goal in our love for one another.
This notion that God’s love has for its ultimate design more than the salvation of those on whom it is showered is seen yet again in 1 John 2:5. Here we read that “whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” That is to say, the love of God achieves its ordained purpose when we, as the recipients of it, in turn obey him from whom it has come forth.
Consider 1 John 4:17. “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in the world.” Once more, God’s love secures its end to the degree that we who are its objects cease to fear the day of judgment. The knowledge of God’s fatherly love should forever dispel any apprehension of standing in his presence. This is not presumption, but rather it is a Spirit-induced conviction that God’s love has efficaciously and eternally provided for us in Christ that righteousness on the basis of which we are delivered from all penal liability. God’s perfect love for us, when rightly perceived, does indeed cast out fear!
10. God’s love for himself is neither selfish nor inconsistent with his love for us.
Our glad-hearted passion for God is exceeded only by God’s glad-hearted passion for God. If the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever, the chief end of God is to glorify God and to enjoy himself forever!
The pre-eminent passion in God’s heart, his greatest pleasure and that in which he takes supreme delight, is his own glory. God is at the center of his own affections. The supreme love of God’s life is God. God is pre-eminently committed to the fame of his name. God is himself the end for which God created the world. Better still, God’s immediate goal in all he does is his own glory. God relentlessly and unceasingly creates, rules, orders, directs, speaks, judges, saves, destroys, and delivers in order to make known who he is and to secure from the whole of the universe the praise, honor, and glory of which he and he alone is ultimately and infinitely worthy.
But if God loves himself pre-eminently, how can he love me at all? How can we say that God is for us and that he desires our happiness if he is primarily for himself and his own glory? I want to argue that it is precisely because God loves himself that he loves you. Here’s how.
I assume you will agree that your greatest good consists of enjoying the most excellent Being in the universe. That Being, of course, is God. Therefore, the most loving and kind thing that God can do for you is to devote all his energy and effort to elicit from your heart praise of himself. Why? Because praise is the consummation of enjoyment. All enjoyment tends towards praise and adoration as its appointed end. In this way, God’s seeking his own glory and God’s seeking your good converge.
Your greatest good is in the enjoyment of God. God’s greatest glory is in being enjoyed. So, for God to seek his glory in your worship of him (that’s his love for himself) is the most loving thing he can do for you. Only by seeking his glory pre-eminently can God seek your good passionately, for God to work for your enjoyment of him (that’s his love for you) and for his glory in being enjoyed (that’s his love for himself) are not properly distinct.
Notes:
- John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 10
- D. A. Carson, “On Distorting the Love of God,” BibSac, 156 January-March 1999, No. 621, pp. 3-13); see also his book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 1999).
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography, Volume 1: The Early Years, 1834-1859 (The Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh, 1973), 167.
- John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), I:175
- Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 528.
- John Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 166-7.
Sam Storms is the author of The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God’s Unchanging Affection.
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