THE LOVE OF GOD

 

II. The Love of God.

First in the consideration of the subject of “love” comes the love of God - He who is love, and from whom all love is derived. The love of God is that part of His nature - indeed His whole nature, for “God is love” - which leads Him to express Himself in terms of endearment toward His creatures, and actively to manifest that interest and affection in acts of loving care and self-sacrifice in behalf of the objects of His love. God is “love” (1Jn_4:8, 1Jn_4:16) just as truly as He is “light” (1Jn_1:5), “truth” (1Jn_1:6), and “spirit” (Joh_4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of His essential nature; love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. God not merely loves, but is love; it is His very nature, and He imparts this nature to be the sphere in which His children dwell, for “he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him” (1Jn_4:16). Christianity is the only religion that sets forth the Supreme Being as Love. In heathen religions He is set forth as an angry being and in constant need of appeasing.

1. Objects of God's Love:

The object of God's love is first and foremost His own Son, Jesus Christ (Mat_3:17; Mat_17:5; Luk_20:13; Joh_17:24). The Son shares the love of the Father in a unique sense; He is “my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth” (Isa_42:1). There exists an eternal affection between the Son and the Father - the Son is the original and eternal object of the Father's love (Joh_17:24). If God's love is eternal it must have an eternal object, hence, Christ is an eternal being.

God loves the believer in His Son with a special love. Those who are united by faith and love to Jesus Christ are, in a different sense from those who are not thus united, the special objects of God's love. Said Jesus, thou “lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me” (Joh_17:23). Christ is referring to the fact that, just as the disciples had received the same treatment from the world that He had received, so they had received of the Father the same love that He Himself had received. They were not on the outskirts of God's love, but in the very center of it. “For the father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me” (Joh_16:27). Here phileō is used for love, indicating the fatherly affection of God for the believer in Christ, His Son. This is love in a more intense form than that spoken of for the world (Joh_3:16).

God loves the world (Joh_3:16; compare 1Ti_2:4; 2Pe_3:9). This is a wonderful truth when we realize what a world this is - a world of sin and corruption. This was a startling truth for Nicodemus to learn, who conceived of God as loving only the Jewish nation. To him, in his narrow exclusiveism, the announcement of the fact that God loved the whole world of men was startling. God loves the world of sinners lost and ruined by the fall. Yet it is this world, “weak,” “ungodly,” “without strength,” “sinners” (Rom_5:6-8), “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph_2:1 the King James Version), and unrighteous, that God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son in order to redeem it. The genesis of man's salvation lies in the love and mercy of God (Eph_2:4 f). But love is more than mercy or compassion; it is active and identifies itself with its object. The love of the heavenly Father over the return of His wandering children is beautifully set forth in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15). Nor should the fact be overlooked that God loves not only the whole world, but each individual in it; it is a special as well as a general love (Joh_3:16, “whosoever”; Gal_2:20, “loved me, and gave himself up for me”).