As we continue in studying the attributes of God, we come to one that I dare say most people think themselves familiar with…the love of God. It seems that this is about the only attribute of God that has been preached over the last 40 years in our churches. Folks are well versed in the love of God and yet their concept of God’s love is one that dangerously looks like their own.
Many have created an image of God in their mind that is too much like themselves.
Psalm 50:21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
God is not like man. God’s love is not like man’s love. Just as His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, His love is higher than ours. Yet, because all men have heard from those professing faith in Christ is that God loves them, many continue to live in sin. They think that on some future day, when they have sinned all they want and are ready to “come to Christ,” God will over look their sins because, after all, God is love.
I remember when I was in grade school the phrase “Smile, God loves you!” became popular. It was printed on signs, shirts, pencils, etc. This is a most heart-warming phrase, but is this Biblically correct? Would this modern day phrase have applied had someone spoke it to Esau? “…Smile, Esau, God loves you!”
Romans 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
Because of what I believe to be a misinterpretation of John 3:16, many will enter into hell thinking that God loves them. Many a well-intending Christian has given lost men a false hope because they don’t understand the love of God. They view God’s love the same as their own. God’s love is not the same as our love. Many scriptures in the word of God shed light on the love of God, but in my opinion, none show the true love of God as well as 1 Corinthians 13.
The love of God, known in this passage as “charity,” is defined in verses 4 through 8.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth:
Consider the difference between God’s love and our own… God’s love is patient. We love our children and our spouse, but we are not always patient with them. God’s love is kind. We love our family, but do not always treat them kindly. God’s love does not envy what other’s have. We love our brothers and sisters in Christ, yet we often envy them for some talent or gift God has given them, but not us. God’s love is not boastful. Because of our sin nature, we can tend to be boastful in regards to our love.
God’s love is not full of pride…ours can be. God’s love does not act unbecomingly. We can tend to act unbecomingly toward our spouse because of our sinfulness. God’s love does not seek its own good. Look at Christ on the cross…He did not seek His own. We often times seek our own when dealing with those we love. God’s love is not easily irritated. I love my children with every fiber of my being, and yet I can become irritated by them. God’s love does not think evil of the one upon whom it is set. I watch my children and often they accuse one another of doing things on purpose to aggravate them.
God’s love never rejoices in iniquity. It only rejoices in the truth. Have you ever rejoiced with a brother or sister in Christ who gave his or her boss a piece of his or her mind? …or who speaks evil government officials? God’s love beareth all things…that word “beareth” means hides or keeps secret all things. God’s love does not go around revealing your sin to others. How many of us have told everything we know about a brother in Christ to others? True love concealeth a matter. God’s love believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. God’s love never ends.
Our love doesn’t always believe what the object of our love tells us. We are often times suspicious. We don’t always hope the best for those we love especially if we have been hurt by them. And if you wonder about the endurance of human love just look at the number of divorces that take place around the world, or the number of children who “divorce” their parents. It is possible for human love to end. God’s love never ends.
God’s love is not something that even a Christian can manufacture within. God’s love is a fruit of the Spirit. As a matter of fact it heads the list of the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Man will never have the love of God until by His Sovereign grace, God saves him and fills him with the Holy Spirit. God’s love is what is exhibited when an individual is filled with the Spirit of God. A Christian man or woman who lives in the will of God will never stop loving their spouse or children. Divorce is a result of sin.
Our Sovereign God is not just a God who loves. He is love… Love is His very nature.
1 John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Many, many people today talk about the love of God, yet they are total strangers to the God of love. A few years ago during the course of a conversation, a co-worker who was unfamiliar with her Bible (to say the least), angrily threw John 3:16 in my face when I made the statement that God does not love everybody.
As I said earlier, so many people view the love of God as a patterned after their own love. They think God is like them. The Word of God is to be the Christian’s final authority of what we believe and how we live. Our understanding or view of the love of God must come from the Scriptures or it is simply man made.
The need to open the word of God and study it concerning the love of God (as well as other topics) is so apparent because of the ignorance of the truth that is seen throughout the world, not to mention our own nation. Just look at the low state of spirituality among professing Christians. Why should this be so when we have access to the very word of God? The reason professing Christendom is in a low state of spirituality is because too many are entangled with the affairs of this life and are no longer occupied with His wondrous love for His people…that’s right…His people. His love is set on His people…not all people everywhere.
The better acquainted we are with God’s love, the more our hearts will be drawn out in love to Him. Seven is the number of completeness or perfection and there are seven aspects to God’s love. These aspects of God’s love were brought to my attention in A.W. Pink’s book, The Attributes of God.
1. God’s love is uninfluenced…unconditional.
I know many a Christian who believes that God set His love on certain people because He looked down through time and saw that they would seek Him and come to Christ. That is not scriptural in the light of Isaiah 64:7 “And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee:” Psalm 14:1-3 “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 10:4 “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek God: God is not in all his thoughts.” Psalm 80:18 “…quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. I don’t say that to be harsh or to blast my brothers and sisters in Christ who believe that God’s election was conditioned upon what He knew we would choose. I just want to be truthful. It is quite possible that those who believe in conditional election do so only because they have never been taught the truth.
God’s love is not conditioned upon anything. His love in uninfluenced. There was nothing in me or you or any Christian that caused God to love us. Nothing! The only reason God loves anyone is simply because it pleased Him to do so. His love being poured out on an individual is an act of His sovereign will and nothing else.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8
7 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:
8 But because the LORD loved you…
Before a single thing was created, God loved His people, the elect of the Jews and Gentiles. Why? …because it pleased Him to do so and for no other reason.
2 Timothy 1:9 Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
Why do those who are truly saved love God? The answer is found in 1 John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.” His love came first and was not influenced by anything in us. We must understand that if He is to be rightly honored and we are to be established in the faith.
2. God’s love is eternal
Have you ever heard the phrase, “putting two and two together?” Sure you have and when you do, you get four. That’s just the way it is. Consider God. He is eternal. He had no beginning and He has no end. We can’t begin to understand that and yet we know it to be true because He has revealed it to us through the Word of God. If God is eternal (2) and God is love (2), then when you add it up you get that His love has no beginning and no end(4). It has always been. It will always be.
Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
Let that soak in for a while. Christian, our Sovereign and Holy God loved you before He spoke one thing into existence! Years after Jeremiah penned those words, the Apostle Paul wrote similarly to the believers at Ephesus.
Ephesians 1:4-6
4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
Dear Christian, meditate on this… God’s love for you had no beginning and it can have no ending…it never faileth. Why does anything in this life upset or worry you? Will North Korea attack us and start another war? Will persecution of Christians come to America? Is the Amillennnial view of eschatology right and we will have to go through the Great Tribulation? When you start to fret, remember…He loves you endlessly.
3. God’s love is sovereign
Again we have another mathematical equation. Based on the Scriptures and all we have studied in the past we know that God is sovereign. He works all things after the counsel of His own will. No one or no law is above God governing Him and telling Him what to do. He is God! Since He is God and since we know He is love, then we must conclude that His love is sovereign, just as His grace is sovereign.
Being that His love is sovereign, He sets it whomsoever it pleases Him to set it on. We looked at that earlier in Romans 9:13.
Romans 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
There was absolutely nothing in Jacob that warranted God’s love. He was no different than his brother Esau. Both were wretched sinners and that before they were born. Yet, God set His affections on Jacob and His wrath upon Esau. Why? Only because it pleased Him to do so.
I know that it is here that many Christians disagree with me. Many, as I pointed out at the beginning of this, believe that God’s love is for all mankind and they use John 3:16 as their proof.
The Scripture in Romans 9:13 is clear that God hated Esau. If in John 3:16 Jesus Christ meant that God loved every single human that ever existed, then how could God hate Esau seeing as how God’s love never fails? There has to be a consistency and if the “world” in John 3:16 is referring to all mankind, we have a glaring inconsistency. Consider Psalm 5:5 “…thou hatest all workers of iniquity” or Psalm 7:11 “God is angry with the wicked every day” Psalm 146:8 “…the LORD loveth the righteous” John 17:9,20 “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me: for they are thine… Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.”
Scripture is clear! God hates the workers of iniquity and He loves the righteous. What make righteous people righteous seeing as how all people are born workers of iniquity? It is God who makes the difference. He set His love on some of Adam’s fallen race before the foundation of the world and in time made them vessels of honor. The rest were left to themselves and are vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. Why? Because that is what pleased God.
4. God’s love is infinite
God is an infinite God, therefore every attribute of God is infinite. His wisdom is infinite. He knows all things past, present and future. There is no limit to His power. Nothing is too hard for Him. Likewise, His love is infinite or without limit. In the song HOLY by Matt Redman it says, “What heart can hold the weight of Your love…or know the height of Your great worth? God’s love cannot be measured it is limitless. Consider the words of the Apostle Paul…
Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
O, Christian, His love to us is great! It cannot fully be understood by us. Part of Paul’s prayer for the Christians at Ephesus was that they could comprehend with all saints the breadth, length, depth and height of God’s love (Ephesians 3:17-19).
Ephesians 3:19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
5. God’s love is immutable
God’s love never changes. James 1:17 tells us that our Heavenly Father does not change… “in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Hebrews 1:12 tells us, “but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.” Hebrews 13:8 states, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
If God is love and God never changes, His love never changes. Go back to Romans 9:13. Jacob have I loved…despite the fact that Jacob was a deceiver and went astray often, God’s love for him never changed. Consider the Disciples in the garden who were scattered the night Christ was taken to be crucified. Though they forsook Christ and though Peter denied Him, God’s love for them never wavered.
Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Romans 8:38-39
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 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.
6. God’s love is holy
The love of God never conflicts with His holiness. His holiness is what adorns His love making it so radiant. Remember in our study of the holiness of God, because He is holy, He cannot look on sin. This truth remains the same after an individual has been saved by the grace and mercy of God. God deals with sin in His people. He will not wink at sin. His love is pure.
Hebrews 12:6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If a professing Christian can go years and years living in sin and not be bothered by it, never experiencing Holy Spirit conviction or chastening of the Lord there would be good reason to question his salvation. Hebrews 12:7-8 goes on to tell us that if a person is not chastened by the Lord for his sin, then he is not a son…he is not saved.
7. God’s love is gracious
The love and grace of God are inseparable. God’s love and grace which flows from within Him was the determining factor which caused Him to give His only begotten Son for sinners. Because God loved certain sinners, He sent Christ to become their sin and suffer the wrath of God upon the cross of Calvary in their stead. Christ did not die to make God love us. Rather it was because God loved us in Christ before the foundation of the world that He sent Him to be propitiation for the elect of Israel and not them alone, but also for the elect of the world.
The English word “grace” translated from the Greek word χάρις (charis, pronounced: khä'-rēs) means the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of Christian virtues (Strong’s Concordance reference G5484).
There is no greater manifestation of the gracious love of God than was seen on Calvary. If you ever doubt or wonder about the love of God, look to Calvary.
John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 10:14-15
14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and lay down my life for the sheep.
16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
18 No man taketh 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 commandment have I received of my Father.
If you are reading this and you have been saved by the pure grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and His grace is evident in your life, then know that He loves you with an everlasting love. If you are reading this and you have not come to Christ for salvation, if you love and revel in sin and do not want Christ to reign over you, the wrath of the Almighty God of heaven is upon you and unless you repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, you will die in your sins and spend eternity in hell suffering the justice and wrath of God.
Isaiah 45:22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
1 Timothy 1:15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…
Acts 16:31 …Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved…
