God’s Love C (Listen or Read)
God Is Love with NO “Buts”
When we say, “God is love, but He is also just and must punish sinners forever,” we demean God’s greatest expression of love: His Son’s sacrificial death for all mankind. Talk about injustice! How unjust this is to Him who propitiated the sins of the whole world by giving His life as a ransom for all (1Jn. 2:2; 1Ti. 2:6)! To recognize God’s righteous and remedial purpose in judgment in no way contradicts His holiness, justice, or the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death. To the contrary, it magnifies them. How dare we qualify or limit a Love “that never fails” (or “ends” as the RSV puts it–1Co. 13:8)!
Scripture straightly declares God to “be” love (1Jn. 4:8, 16), but never to “be” vengeance. God is one; He is not divided within Himself. Augustinian theologians have pitted His love against His attributes of holiness and justice, not realizing that His very essence is Love. He “is” Love. When referring to God as love, they immediately qualify it with “but,” as though His love was not compatible with holiness and justice. To justify this, they claim that His ways are not ours ways, quoting Is. 55:8-9. In so doing, they deny His unfailing love in order to maintain their flawed idea of judgment. However, they overlook what Isaiah was really saying in chapter 55: He was referring solely to God’s abundant mercy (Is. 55:7). Elaborating on God’s essence of love, Thomas Allin wrote:
God is not anger though He can be angry, God is not vengeance though He does avenge. These are attributes, love is essence. Therefore, God is unchangeably love. In judgment He is love, in wrath He is love, in vengeance He is love—“love first, and last, and without end.” Love is simply the strongest thing in the universe, the most awful, the most inexorable, while the most tender.4
God’s righteous judgments, like His acts of mercy, are a manifestation of His love—a love with no “buts.” Both His mercy and His judgments serve His one holy and loving purpose to draw (drag) all men to Himself. Scripture abounds with passages of God’s great love and mercy. Here are just a few to ponder:
¨ The Lord is merciful and gracious; slow to anger, and abounding in mercy… (Ps. 103:8).
¨ He is good! For His mercy endures forever (Ps. 136:1). (Repeated 26 times).
¨ The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy (Ps. 145:8).
¨ The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down (Ps. 145:14).
¨ You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing (Ps. 145:16).
¨ Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness (La. 3:22-23).
¨ I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness, One who relents from doing harm (Jon. 4:2).
¨ He delights in mercy….will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities (Mic. 7:18-19).
¨ He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Be merciful, as your Father (Lu. 6:35-36).
¨ Love suffers long and is kind…endures all….never fails (1Co. 13:4-8).
¨ Blessed be the Father of mercies and God of all comfort (2Co. 1:3-4).
¨ The Lord is very compassionate and merciful (Ja. 5:11).
¨ God…only does wondrous things (Ps. 72:18; 86:10)!
God truly loves all humanity unconditionally, and if we should doubt this, even for a moment, we need only look at His Son, the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature
(He. 1:3). Erasmus Manford, 19th century minister, publisher, and author wrote:
Jesus appeared on earth in the character of a Savior, not of a destroyer.…When persecuted, He retaliated not; when reviled, He reviled not; when reproached and scoffed at, He did not curse His foes. His whole life was one continued exhibition of love, benevolence, and compassion. It is emphatically and truly said of Him, “He went about doing good.”…He gave health to the sick, feet to the lame, ears to the deaf, speech to the dumb, sanity to the lunatic, bread to the hungry, forgiveness to the sinful, salvation to the lost, and life to the dead.…He wept at the grave of Lazarus, His friend, and also over the approaching woes of Jerusalem, where resided His bitterest foes; and even for His bloody and cruel murderers He prayed on the cross, and in the agonies of death at their unfeeling hands, besought His Father for their forgiveness.…The character, then, of Christ is the character of God; the tenderness and compassion that Jesus possessed for all men, the good, the evil, is that which God possesses for all humanity.5
To sum up the theme of God’s love, I encourage you to read Lu. 15:11-32. Please note carefully verse 20: “When he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Jesus gave us this story so we would get a glimpse of the Father heart of God for all His wayward children. What a Father! The Psalmist also writes, “His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life” (Ps. 30:5a). Why is it that on earth God’s anger lasts but a moment and His favor is for life, but (tradition says) after death, His favor is not even a moment, and His anger is forever? How can God’s love change so drastically at the beat of a heart?
References: See Bibliography page.
