Word of Encouragement (4/22/2020)
Today, we will actually reflect on one more attribute of God—love.
Love is another one of those words, which are used a lot but hard to define. 1 Cor. 13 gives us a wonderful description of love but not a definition. Someone said that the best way to define the doctrine of the Trinity is by saying what it is not. This may apply to love as well—at least, it may be a good way to begin. One good way to do this is by distinguishing love from lust:
· Lust is different from love because it is self-centered: whereas love is for the good of the other, lust is for the satisfaction of one’s own desires for pleasure and possession.
· Lust is different from love in that its object is often forbidden or illegitimate. (Even when it desires the right object, its desire is too much.)
· Lust is inordinate in its desire even when it is after the right object. When we lust after something, we are consumed by it and we lose all sense of balance. It leads to harmful and destructive results.
When we apply these ideas to God’s love, we have to keep in mind that God IS love. That means God’s being is what defines love; it is not God who has to fit into any human idea of love. I say this because the above ideas bring up some issues about God’s love.
Love is different from lust in that it is not self-centered. But we said in other places that God, being the absolute Good, is morally obligated to be self-centered: His chief end is to glorify Himself and to enjoy Himself forever! Is He capable of love, then?
He most certainly is! Let us not forget that He is a triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Their love for one another is not self-centered but other-centered. But the question is whether God is capable of loving us. He most certainly is! Paul says, “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 2:4-6). But God loves us for the glory of His grace. Isn’t that being selfish?
Loving others for the sake of one’s glory cannot seem farther from true love. That is rather selfish and that would be right in our case. But this doesn’t apply to God because He is the absolute Good: for Him to seek the glory of anything above His glory would be morally wrong. So, in loving us, God loves something about Himself: He loves us because He made us in His own image; He loves us because “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” (Eph. 2:10); He loves us because we are the trophy of His redeeming work.
I hope we don’t complain about this but rather glory in it. If His love for us is bound up with His love for Himself, we are eternally secure. For God will always love Himself and He will not fail to bring glory to His name. We don’t want God to love us according to our desires, which are often sinful and self-destructive. We don’t want God to love us on the basis of our merit because it is not good enough and we can lose it.
This answers another question about God’s love: in sacrificing His only Son for our salvation, did God love us too much? If His love was just for our sake, that would have been the case. But His love for us was ultimately to “show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7).
Let us praise God for His wonderful love and rest secure in it!
Have a blessed day as you reflect on God’s amazing love for you!