God is Love
God is love. Think on that for a moment. The Scriptures certainly declare that God does love, but that verse proclaims that God actually IS love. Divine love is not an emotion as we humans define it, no, it soars higher than our ability to even wonder, much less capture it in earthly words. Unexpressed or unrevealed love is not love at all. Claiming to love and yet not showing it with acts of substantiation is nothing more than fond musing.
But let us meditate upon the love of God itself. God’s love is not some emotional attachment, and in fact much of the anthropomorphic allegories about God’s emotions are for our benefit and understanding. God’s love is action, and more specifically, redemption. Before the first moment of creation as we know it the Scriptures declare and we should surely realize that God knew every particle of future history as if it was yesterday’s news. So when God created, His plan was all inclusive as it pertained to us made in His image.
Curiously the Genesis account reveals no conversation where God proclaims His love for Adam, and indeed throughout the Old Testament the word is used sparingly. The fact that God loves is moot and unremarkable without a revelation that is pertinent and effectual to the object of that love. Actions speak louder than words is a divine principle that God Himself has taught to us, and at times God has proved Himself to His people. He has proved His might through many awesome deeds, He has proved His longsuffering by His mercy and vice versa, and He has proved His grace by many acts of undeserved kindness. The inherent attributes within the Godhead cannot be separated from or even examined apart from the deeds that not only substantiate and showcase them, but those deeds are God and His attributes.
Now if a husband gives flowers to a next door neighbor, does that substantiate his love toward his wife? What if that same husband gives flowers to both his wife and the next door neighbor, does his wife receive her flowers just as if she was the only recipient of his love, or is her perception of his love diluted with the removal of the uniquesness of his love toward her? Take all the creation, enjoyed by God’s friends and enemies simultaneously, does that substantiate God’s love for His people when these artifacts of creation are enjoyed by everyone and even traversed by Satan and his demons as well? Does God’s universal provision for everything living prove that He loves every creature, or does it prove God’s kindness and that this scenario is part of God’s overall plan?
In the following treatise I am going to proffer this thought as a divine truth:
The atonement is not only the greatest exhibition of God’s love, it IS God’s love and is the greatest revelation of God Himself.
The atonement is not only the greatest exhibition of God’s love, it IS God’s love and is the greatest revelation of God Himself.
Rom.5:8 - But God proved His love toward us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
The word for “proved” means to exhibit, to introduce, or to present. God presents His love not through trees or mountains or stars, and He doesn’t use great and flowery words of devotion and emotional attachment, no, God’s love is the cross. Some human words to set the stage and outline that event are necessary, but the love that is projected in that one death by torture is unfathomable. But it is the recognition of the parameter less love that makes it sacred. The love that has always existed within the divine nature is uncovered and displayed on the cross of God’s redemption. It is not only the height of God’s love, it is the only complete revelation of that love.
All of created history has been unalterably tethered to God’s love which is the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The cross says “I love you with My love which is through My Son on the cross”. Before the cross all of God’s statements of love for His people Israel were whispers through His Word and through the blessings and earthly deliverances God had brought them through. Temporal and fleeting but with a fragrance of coming redemption they were, but the whispers of God’s actual love were ever so delicately spoken of in the prophetic annunciations embedded in the sacred shadows to be revealed in an act so surprising, so unsettling, and so perfect that only with the Spirit’s illumination can we now see the obvious perfection in the prophetic mysteries.
God’s love comes riding on a donkey in a prepared vessel still unbroken. And this love continues on a journey to a prepared place where this incarnate box will be broken and the fragrance, the majesty, the color, and the unspeakable love of God will come streaming out to paint the landscape of history in such a glorious revelation that none dare to ask if there is more. And the Author and Exhibitor of this love seals this unveiling with the word “Tetelestai!”, it is finished. This work of atonement is the depository in which God poured all His love, and all other supposed expressions of divine love not tethered to the cross are fabrications at worst and misunderstandings at best.
Eph.2:4-5 - But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are you saved)
As we see in this verse God’s love always leads to redemption. Without the offer of redemption love is hollow and nothing more than a verbal pronouncement that is void of any substance or authentication. The redemptive quickening of dead sinners is the purpose of God’s love. God doesn’t just say He loves, God shows He loves. The work on the cross is not only one in a long line of loving proofs from our Creator, it is THE proof and substance of God’s infinite love. Without the atonement and the offer of redemption God’s love would be nothing more than a kiss on the forehead as we entered hell.
Does God love those who are in hell? Without the offer of redemption still intact I would be suspicious of that love since as I have shown God cannot love except through His Son on the cross. So all who reject God’s love while still alive on this earth and go into eternity lost, they enter that eternity separated from God’s love forever, while to the redeemed “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. I cannot see how God can love those in hell since the atonement which has not covered them is not only the vehicle through which God can love a fallen sinner, it is God’s love period. Without the cross the eternally lost are separated from God’s love forever.
Eph.5:2 - And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
Even when God commands us to walk in love He includes a redemptive quality as well. Our love for others must be exhibited through the prism of redemption which flows completely from the cross as both our salvation and our example. Much of our cultural rebukes and our condemnation of certain sins and sinners does not contain God’s love since it has no redemption. Anything that is not refracted through the prism of the cross is not the authentic love of God, and to walk in love we must take up that cross and make it our own.
Since I believe Christ died as an offering for all men, and that He tasted death for every man, I believe God extends His love to all sinners before their death. This can only happen through the sacrifice of His Son, and without at least the availability of redemption, there is no divine love. The only reason that God’s wrath has not been realized upon the unregenerate sinners is because of His continued offer of redemptive love. God loves all sinners through the atonement, but once that atonement is closed and the entire company of the elect are secure, the love of God ceases to be offered to the eternally lost.
Our reformed brethren would count the non-elect as in that status upon birth and even before, while many of us conclude that is not actualized until death. Suffice to say that distinction is surely insignificant.
I Jn.3:16 - Hereby we perceive the love of God, because He laid down His life for us…
Again we see the cross of redemption as the looking glass not just into the love of God, but at the very substance and reality of that love. And when captured with, by, and inside the redemptive refuge of that love, nothing can separate us from its hold. Let me explore further the concept of separation from the love of God. Paul tells us in Romans chapter eight that no charge can be brought to God’s elect, and that when God spared not His own Son for us, well, that cannot be trumped. God’s love through His Son on Golgotha renders all the elect inseparable from the power and reality of that colossal love. And this redemptive love is God’s love itself, unable to be parsed or divided or diluted and passed out in partial form to all His enemies. A sinner is either in God’s love through the cross or he is outside that same love, there is no shallow “I love you a little” type of divine love. God’s love is pure, it is complete, it is whole, it is eternal, and it is redemptive.
The unregenerate sinner, still living and exposed to the potential of God’s gospel love, is still outside God’s actualized love but still within the possibility of receiving God’s atoning love. And as such God still offers and extends His love through the gospel to all sinners everywhere, and although they are not yet recipients of God’s redemptive love, they are offered a seat at the banquet table of God’s love through the shed blood of the Master of the banquet. It may be semantics but perhaps they are recipients of God’s offer of love and as John noted, this love is so strong and powerful, it draws all sinners simply by the strength of its residuals and aura. In essence, God loves all sinners through the cross.
But when a sinner rejects or dies outside redemption, the offer dies with him. And in the end, when the last sinner is saved by the grace of God’s love, the atonement is complete and the entire sacrifice on Calvary has been used in its totality to redeem the elect with none “left over” for those in hell. The potential is now closed and the door to God’s scarlet ark is now closed with only those souls saved inside. But as the verse in I John says, we can only perceive the love of God through the cross. An all powerful Creator can make a million universes with a word, and that is amazing but provides no portal into any love. He can know everything, and He can have no beginning and no end and in that we are awestruck, but it still offers no proof or demonstration of His love.
Only the cross demonstrates, authenticates, and in reality reveals the love of God. All other perceived glimpses are sparks that have come from Golgotha. All good and perfect gifts, when examined more closely, are beams streaming from God through His Son and His cross. Without the loving cross of peace, God would most certainly still be at war with all His creation, and us most especially who rebelled so profusely and so completely against our Creator.
Lastly let us consider that God is the Father of Lights in whom there is no darkness or shadow of turning. God’s love has no levels and no vacillating intensities. Imagine a match lit in the daytime in your front yard. Of course you can see the flame, but the light has little impact on its surroundings due to the diffusion of all the other lights during the daytime. But imagine that same light lit under ground in a cave without the intrusion of any outside light. That small flame stands as the only illumination in that place and it draws all eyes either to it directly or to that which it reveals. And so it is with the atonement contained in our Lord’s cross and the open display of God’s love.
God’s love through the cross stands alone as the only illumination in the midst of total darkness in this world and it draws all eyes to it directly or to that which it reveals. There is no divine love outside the sacrificial Lamb of God and it remains the only light of God’s love ever given. All acts of mercy or divine philanthropy are spiritual fingers that point to this cross, for without the atonement mankind is an object of God’s wrath, fixed in His judicial crosshairs, and soon to be judged.
There remains one and only one expression of God’s love, and that is the redemption paid for and offered through the cross. It is not only God expressing His love, it is God’s love. So the next time you meditate upon the cross, allow the Spirit to attach His very Words to this breathtaking and astonishing event...
"God is love".
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