The love of God in Delighting in the Trinity

In Delighting in the Trinity, Michael Reeves discusses how God's triune-ness and God's love go hand in hand. God has been loving within the trinity since eternity. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit; the Son loves the Father and the Spirit; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. God is love, and always has been love and loving.

With this in mind, Reeves brings up the idea of humanity's fall; part of that picture is the idea of Adam and Eve directing the love they had for God to something other than God: ourselves and anything but God. To this catastrophic event, God responded in love. Reeves writes,

Astonishingly, it was this very rejection of God that drew forth the extreme depths of his love. In his response to sin we see deeper than ever into the very being of God. “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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 Jn 4:8-10). 

The God who is love definitively displays that love to the World by sending us his eternally beloved Son to atone for our sin. (68)

And so, it is in the cross-God's remedy for sin-that we see God's love poured out most profoundly and prolifically. Reeves continues:

Without the cross, we could never have imagined the depth and seriousness of What it means to say that God is love. “This is how we know What love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 Jn 3:16). On the cross we see the great holiness of God’s love, that the light of his pure love will destroy the darkness of sin and evil. On the cross we see the intensity and strength of his love, that it is not an insipid thing at all, but majestically strong as it faces death, battles evil and gives life. For Christ was not bound against his will and dragged to a crucifixion he did not choose. Nobody could take his life from him, he said. “I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (Jn 10:18). Jesus’ self-giving love is entirely unconstrained and free. It comes, not from any necessity, but entirely out of who he is, the glory of his Father. Through the cross we see a God who delights to give himself.

Thus, the triune God who has been love since before creation, demonstrates that He is love most gloriously in the cross of Christ. I highly recommend this book by Michael reeves!

The Greatest Love

"If you only hope for unconditional love from God, your hope is great, but too small. Unconditional love from God is not the sweetest experience of his love. The sweetest experience is when his love says:

"I have made you so much like my Son that I delight to see you and be with you. You are a pleasure to me, because you are so radiant with my glory.""

-John Piper

Loving God aright

From Jonathan Edwards' first lecture in Charity and Its Fruits:

When God and man are loved with a truly Christian love, they ate both loved from the same motives. When God is loved aright, he is loved for his excellency, and the beauty of his nature, especially the beauty of the holiness of his nature; and it is from the same motive that the saints are loved-for holiness' sake. And all things that are loved with a truly holy love, are loved from the same respect to God. Love to God is the foundation of gracious love to men; and men are loved, either because they are in some respect like God, in the possession of his nature and spiritual image, or because of the relation they stand in to him as his children or creatures-as those who are blessed of him, or to whom his mercy is offered, or in some other way from regard to him (5-6).

If we love, or are loved, we should thank our gracious and merciful heavenly Father as all true love is related to God.

Say it ain't so, Toto!

"Hold the line, love isn't always on time -
love isn't always, love isn't always on time
Hold the line, love isn't always on time, love isn't always on time
Love isn't always on time, love isn't always on time, oh oh oh"

Toto - Hold The Line

Romans 5:6 (ESV): For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Sorry Toto, Love is always on time!

Accepted

In this post, I considered how God rejoiced over his people. Spurgeon's devotional, Morning by Morning, was the springboard for those thoughts. Yesterday in his devotional, Spurgeon returned to the idea of how much God love's us with the following:

“Accepted in the beloved.”
Ephesians 1:6

What a state of privilege! It includes our justification before God, but the term “acceptance” in the Greek means more than that. It signifies that we are the objects of divine complacence, nay, even of divine delight. How marvellous that we, worms, mortals, sinners, should be the objects of divine love! But it is only “in the beloved.” Some Christians seem to be accepted in their own experience, at least, that is their apprehension. When their spirit is lively, and their hopes bright, they think God accepts them, for they feel so high, so heavenly-minded, so drawn above the earth! But when their souls cleave to the dust, they are the victims of the fear that they are no longer accepted. If they could but see that all their high joys do not exalt them, and all their low despondencies do not really depress them in their Father’s sight, but that they stand accepted in One who never alters, in One who is always the beloved of God, always perfect, always without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, how much happier they would be, and how much more they would honour the Saviour! Rejoice then, believer, in this: thou art accepted “in the beloved.” Thou lookest within, and thou sayest, “There is nothing acceptable here!” But look at Christ, and see if there is not everything acceptable there. Thy sins trouble thee; but God has cast thy sins behind his back, and thou art accepted in the Righteous One. Thou hast to fight with corruption, and to wrestle with temptation, but thou art already accepted in him who has overcome the powers of evil. The devil tempts thee; be of good cheer, he cannot destroy thee, for thou art accepted in him who has broken Satan’s head. Know by full assurance thy glorious standing. Even glorified souls are not more accepted than thou art. They are only accepted in heaven “in the beloved,” and thou art even now accepted in Christ after the same manner.

The forgiver and the avenger

God is both the forgiver of our sin and the avenger of that sin. Again, we see that God's justice and His love must be expressed. In this Psalm from the English Standard Version the emphasis is mine:

Psalm 99

The Lord Our God Is Holy

99:1 The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
2 The Lord is great in Zion;
he is exalted over all the peoples.
3 Let them praise your great and awesome name!
Holy is he!
4 The King in his might loves justice.
You have established equity;
you have executed justice
and righteousness in Jacob.
5 Exalt the Lord our God;
worship at his footstool!
Holy is he!

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
Samuel also was among those who called upon his name.
They called to the Lord, and he answered them.
7 In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them;
they kept his testimonies
and the statute that he gave them.

8 O Lord our God, you answered them;
you were a forgiving God to them,
but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
9 Exalt the Lord our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the Lord our God is holy!

God's love and the atonement

From Redemption accomplished and Applied by John Murray:

No treatment of the atonement can be properly oriented that does not trace its source to the free and sovereign love of God...

The love of God from which the atonement springs is not a distinctionless love; it is a love that elects and predestinates. God was pleased to set his invincible and everlasting love upon a countless multitude and it is the determinate purpose of this love that the atonement secures...

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...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 inherently is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects. (9-10)

Sam Storms on the sovereign love of God in election

"Many mistakenly assume that, if God is by nature loving, he must choose all, as if to say it would be a contradiction of the divine character were he not to love everyone equally. But this fails to note that the saving love of God is also sovereign. John Murray explains it this way:

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 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 reside wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the "I am that I am."

Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say that it is distinguishing." (Chosen for Life, 183)