Today, we continue our series on the Attributes of God. While our LORD has many attributes, we will focus on seven. Last week we studied "The Wrath of God." Now, we will teach on "The Love of God." God's Holiness, Wrath and His Love are very closely connected. Most of the world is in revolt against God and is rushing headlong toward hell without brakes. Everywhere you turn the God of the Bible is held in utter contempt by men and women in the pulpit, the pew and the world. This teaching on "The Love of God" is essential to the preaching of the Gospel. People who are unsaved need to hear this truth. If you are unsaved, listen closely to this message. Your eternal destiny is at stake.
Introduction
Our subject today is the Love of God. By way of introduction, we will look at three natures of God. First, John 4: 24 reads: "God is Spirit." In the Greek language, there is no indefinite article "a" in the Biblical language. God is not "a" Spirit, which would put Him on a level with humanity, but God is Spirit, and He is that in the highest degree and the highest sense. God being Spirit, He is not limited to one place, and therefore He fills heaven and earth. God is ever present, and all things are before Him (Hebrews 4: 13).
Second, according to 1 John 1: 5, "God is light," and in Him there is no darkness. Light is the opposite of darkness and stands for holiness, goodness, and life, just as darkness stands for sin, evil, death and so on. The third thing that describes the nature of God according to 1 John 4: 8, is "... for God is love." In other words, God is love itself. We could not say that love is merely one of the attributes of God, because love is His very nature. Because God is love, therefore He loves.
Yet, the question can be asked, what is God's love? Too many people today make an idol by falsely creating a God of their own imagination. They believe that God's love overlooks sin and is accepting of all lifestyles. So many unsaved religionists of today talk about the love of God as a "pass" for sin. Their concept of love is so shallow, it reveals they are total strangers to the Love of God. Today's message will provide a true understanding of the Love of God and you will be able to identify non-Biblical love when you see it.
Section 1: Scriptures and the Love of God
The following Scriptures illustrate the love of God:
1. 1 John 3: 16: "Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us...."
2. 1 John 4: 10: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (appeasement or atonement) for our sins."
3. 1 John 4: 19: "We love him, because he first loved us."
4. Romans 5: 8: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
5. John 15: 13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
6. Titus 3: 4: "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared."
7. Ephesians 3: 19: "And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
8. Romans 8: 35, 38-39: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ...For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 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."
It is a great place to be when you can rest upon the fact that God's love for you never changes. God being love, He loves the individual with all Himself; He cannot love you anymore, He cannot love any less. God is not under the law of love, nor does His He love by rule. He loves because He is love, and His love never changes. It never varies. There is no shadow of turning with our God.
Do you know that love personally?
Adoniram Judson, the great missionary to Burma, knew personally the love of Christ. His great text was, "To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." When he was about to die, with friends standing around his bedside, he kept repeating the words, "Oh, the love of God! Oh, the love of God that passeth knowledge!" He had spent 43 years as a missionary suffering persecution and trials, yet, at the end, his focus was the love of God.
Section 2: What is the Love of God
a. God's love is UNINFLUENCED. What does this statement mean? It means there is nothing in the object of His love (being man) to attract or prompt the love of God. There is not one thing in you or in me that would prompt the love of God. There is nothing within the sinner which would call God's love into exercise, or cause God to manifest His love toward that sinner. In other words, there is nothing within the heart or life of any individual that would call into play the love of God.
You may ask, what prompts God to love? The answer is that the only reason God loves a sinner is found in His Sovereign will. The only reason God loves me is not found in me, but within God Himself. You cannot influence God to love you. You cannot make God love you. If God loves you, it is because He wills to do so. His loving you is found within Himself.
Deuteronomy 7: 7-8 tells us why God chose and loved Israel: "The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any other people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the LORD loved you." Ezekiel 36:32 reads: "Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord God."
Did you ever stop to think that God has loved His people from everlasting? Read II Timothy 1: 9: "Who hath saved us, and called us with a 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." God has loved His children from everlasting, long before you were born.
God's love is uninfluenced:
1. By your actions.
2. By your will.
3. By your works.
4. By anything within you.
There is an incorrect teaching promoted by many that prefer to believe that God loves everyone and that He looked down through the annals of time and chose those that chose Him first. In essence, God saw who would receive the message of salvation and man's will and actions was the reason for their election. This approach is not consistent with the Scriptures cited. If you read Romans 9: 18-23 you will see Paul's anticipated rebuttal of the false, view of election. If the choice was for men to make, Paul would not need to defend God's approach to who He loves as being His choice not dependent on man's will and works. Paul's defense only makes sense if God's love was uninfluenced by man's will and actions.
When God sets His love upon an individual, it is an everlasting love, and when God saves an individual, He knows all about him; He knows all about his sins, his wickedness and his corruption. That person can never do anything to surprise God. Therefore, he is saved forever.
b. God's love is ETERNAL.
Since God is eternal, so is His love. As God had no beginning, His love had no beginning. This is so difficult for our finite minds to grasp. Jeremiah 31: 3 reads: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Isn't that amazing? Isn't that a blessed thought? Isn't that an amazing fact?He loved His people before He ever spoke heaven and earth into existence. From all eternity God's love has been for His children.
This should be part of all believers' anchor in times of trouble. We live in dark times with sin abounding. When people come against you and kick your name around like a football and they speak evil against you, you can slip away under the shadow of the Almighty and rest in the shadow of His love for you. If you know Him, you can proclaim that you are the object of His love and "if God be for you who can be against you." With God's love, whom should you fear?
Yes, the love of God is eternal. Ephesians 1: 4-5 states: "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: having predestined us...." Notice the words, "in love: having predestined us" to be conformed to the image of His Son because He loved us. Where did this love come from? It was not because of anything He saw in us, but according to His own purpose in grace. God's love dates back to the endless ages when there was nothing, and no one but God. Therefore, now get this, God's love toward you had no beginning and no ending, it is from everlasting to everlasting.
That is the God that saves you, a God that loves you from everlasting to everlasting. Can you say, "I know Him in whom I have believed"? God's love from the dateless past will continue throughout the dateless future. God cannot love you anymore or any less, because He is God and God is love. Personally, I can testify that I am amazed that God loves me. I am overwhelmed that with my corrupt nature and sins, that God would love me. This convinces me that His love is based on Who He is not on anything I have ever done. There is nothing in me that God would love. His love is based on His nature not mine.
His love is eternal and founded in His nature, not mine.
c. God's love is Sovereign.
God Himself is Sovereign and under obligation to no one. Since God is a law unto Himself, and always acts according to His own pleasure, then God's love is Sovereign. Because God is love, God loves whom He pleases. I have been asked, "Does God love some people and hate others?" You don't need my opinion, the Word of God says in Romans 9: 13: Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Now "hated" means loved less. The point is that GOD DOES NOT LOVE EVERYONE THE SAME. That is His Sovereign decision and not dependent on man's will or actions. Now why would God love Jacob more? He was the rascal, the conniver, the schemer, one who cheated his brother, lied to his father, and conspired with his mother. Why did God hate Esau? Esau was the gentleman, the home-loving one, the considerate of his aged father, and even forgave the rascal Jacob when he returned from exile. Why? Because it pleased Him to do so. It is strange to us that the love of God could be manifested toward the most unlikely creatures of Adam's race.
God's love is Sovereign, because it is uninfluenced by any one of God's creatures. If God was ruled by a law to love everyone, He would be regulated by something outside of Himself and that would mean that He was not Sovereign. He is not ruled by a law of love. God is free to love who He chooses to love. He is Sovereign and He loves "according to the good pleasure of his will." God awakened me as a lost sinner. I saw my destination and knew that hell awaited me. But God, His Holy Spirit awakened me to my lost condition. He broke my will, and He saved me and pardoned me. He shed His love in my heart. Have you experienced that love?
d. God's love is infinite.
God is infinite and so is His love. God's wisdom is unlimited (for He knows everything of the past, present and future), God's power is unlimited, and there is nothing too difficult for Him to do. So, God's love is without limit; it is infinite. We cannot begin to fathom the depths of His love for His children. You cannot reach the height or length or breadth of His love. Ephesians 2: 4 reads: "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith He loved us."
We see from Ephesians 3: 19 that the love of God passes knowledge, and no mind is able to comprehend, nor tongue fully expresses the love of God. You can't do it. Have you ever sat with the Lord and had a time of prayer and worship? Do you know what I am talking about? Have you experienced the love of God in Christ?
e. God's love is immutable.
This means that God's love is unchangeable. James 1: 17 says, "(There) is no variable, neither shadow of turning." God's love knows no change. It cannot increase or decrease. Consider the Word that says God said, "Jacob have I loved," and He loved him in spite of all his unbelief and wickedness and sin. John 13: 1 tells us "...having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." God's love will never change for you.
Did you ever stop to think that Divine love is strong as death; waters cannot quench it, fires cannot burn it out, and nothing can separate us from it? May the Holy Spirit drive that great truth home to our hearts at this time; that God is love, and no matter what trouble may overtake us, or how shadows may fall around us, and though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God still loves us, and His love for us never changes. This is so amazing that the God of the Bible has an unchanging love for His children.
f. God's love is holy,
God's love is holy. God's love never conflicts with His holiness. In Hebrews 12: 6, we read, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." God will not wink at sin, even in His own people. Because God will point out sin in our lives and lead us to self-judge it, repent and forsake it, is no sign that He loves us any less. When God scourges us, it is a sign that He loves us. When He permits us to go down into the valley and walk in the shadows of darkness, or when He permits us to live in the furnace of affliction or suffering, or when we face the need of material things in our lives which God seems to withhold, just remember one thing: God still loves us, and He never lets His child down whom He loves. He may defer the answer getting there, but God loves us still. The shadows of bereavement and sorrow may hang over us, but God loves us still.
There have been times in my life that I have had great trials of faith. You may be experiencing difficulties also. Let me remind you the same things I tell myself in times of trials:
1. God loves me.
2. God's love does not change.
3. God's love is eternal.
4. God's love is holy.
5. God's love is everlasting.
6. God's love is unchangeable.
7. I am His even if He slays me.
8. I trust Him.
g. God's love is gracious.
Awakened sinner, I wish you knew the graciousness of God's love today. It is His love that awakened you to the fact that you are lost; it is His love, the manifestation of His grace, that caused Him to throw back the skylight of your heart and let you see yourself as you are that He might set you to crying after Christ as your Saviour and Lord. The love of God is seen in His giving His Son to die in your place. Oh, the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross is the heart of the gospel.
It is His graciousness that allows to live another day, another hour, or another minute in rebellion to Him. It is His love that causes Him to delay His judgment and wrath for your rebellion against His authority. All sin is rebellion against His Holiness. Turn today from your sin, repent and believe the Gospel, and embrace the love of God. He will never turn you away if you come to Him.
Conclusion
Love reigned supreme in the death of Christ on the cross for sinners. Last week, we studied the Wrath of God, and this week the love of God. The two are woven together. It is because of the wrath of God against sin that the true love of God is revealed in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for your sins. God's wrath cannot be separated from God's love. And God's love cannot be separated from God's wrath.
Do you know His love today? Have you experienced His love? You can start today if you respond to His call to your heart. Repent and believe the Gospel: Christ crucified, Christ buried, Christ rose from the dead, Christ ascended to heaven and Christ returning again!
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