Sunday Postscript 121105

Yesterday’s service was the most painful I have ever endured.  However, it was not due to the content, but rather; it was due to the excruciating pain of a kidney stone that decided to flare up Sunday morning.  I am always amazed at God’s sustaining grace – and as I said to our elders before the service – “God will give me the strength, I believe that”.  And praise be to God, He did for His glory; though it was not easy.  Please keep me in prayer as I deal with this “stone of stumbling and rock of offense” this week.  Yesterday, we also celebrated the Lord’s Supper and the message fit in quite well with the sacrament.  We did cancel the evening service though due to my incapacitation and the impending bad weather (so I’ll preach that message next week, d.v.).

Our text was 1 John 4:7-11 and the title was “God is Love”.  Love is one of the great attributes of God.  Love not only describes God’s actions, but it is His very being – He loves and He is Love.  Since God is love then it necessarily follows that love is from God.  If there is no God, then there is no love and according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 13 – if you have not love then you have nothing and are nothing.  God is the source and fountain of love.  God’s love is perfect and unconditional.  God’s love is perfect because it is complete and lacks nothing.  God’s love is unconditional in that it is not dependent upon anything outside Him.  God does not love us because of our purity, beauty, intelligence or talent – He loves us because He is Love

But there are two cautions.  First, God is not “just” Love.  Many people today (including many Christians) trumpet the idea that God is love and only love.  This is warm fuzzy Christianity.  Those who espouse this error like to make a distinction between the God of Judgment in the OT from the God of Love in the NT almost as if they were two different gods.  But the God of Judgment in the OT was a God of Love and the God of Love in the NT is still a God of Judgment.  These folks are often at a loss when tragedy hits as they are confounded with the question:  If God is a God of Love (only) then how could He allow this to happen?

Another caution is that you can’t reverse the phrase and come out with the same result.  That is, Love is not God.  This also is a very popular belief today.  I was reminded of the Beatles song, “love, love, love – all you need is love (love is all you need)”.  To say love is God is to make love an idol.  Those who preach tolerance of all kinds of sinful lifestyles have fallen prey to this idolatry.

There are two other attributes of God that often seem contradictory to “God is Love”; His Holiness and His Justice.  God is Holy. God’s holiness is His absolute purity and His perfection; He is without spot or blemish.  Because God is Holy, He cannot stand the sight of sin, He hates it (Ps. 5:4; Prov. 6:16-19).  And because of God’s holiness, because He hates sin – He must punish sin for He is also Just (Ps. 111:7). God’s justice is His measuring all things with perfect fairness and equity according to the perfect standard of His Law.  When God administers His justice – all receive their just rewards; blessing upon those who keep His law and holy wrath upon those who do not.  And remember, it is this same God who is the God of Love.

God’s works are multi-faceted displays of His glorious attributes and no where is this more evident than in the greatest manifestation and expression of God’s Love toward Mankind:  “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10).   God sent His only begotten Son (John 3:16) into the world – into our world with all its sinful and fallen decadence.  This is what we celebrate at Christmas; God’s sending His one and only Son into human history. This sending of His Son was a great manifestation of God’s Love to us.  But why?  Why would God show us His love by sending His unique only begotten Son into this fallen and sinful World?  

Was it because of our love for God?  Absolutely not!  First, our love for God did not cause God to send His Son into the World; God’s love is unconditional – it is not motivated by anything outside of Him.  It is unmerited.  Secondly, there was no love on our behalf for God to respond to.  We did not love Him!  We could not love Him – because of our sin we could only love and serve ourselves.  We were God’s enemies; we had broken His law and violated His covenant.  Consider the descriptions of how we were, when we were in sin: Eph. 2:3, 12; Rom. 1:29-31; 3:10-18.  How could we possibly misconstrue this as love for God?   Thus, it is impossible that our love for God would spur on His love for us. But look how John defines love – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us” (vs. 10) – undeserved, unmerited, unconditional – That, friends, is Love! But it gets better.

God sent Jesus Christ His Son to be the ‘propitiation’ for our sins.  This is a great theological term that should not get lost in modern translations.  Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  This is where we see the Love of God crashing in through His Holiness and Justice.  We know that God is Holy that He hates sin and in His Justice He must Judge all sin – and the wages of sin is death.  Well we just considered what we look like when we are in sin – if that is how we remain – we are headed for condemnation and destruction under God’s Holy wrath and anger.  This is what we all deserve because of our guilt and sin before a most Holy and righteous God.  Eternal punishment in Hell is our just reward. But, enter God’s undeserving, unmerited, unconditional Love through His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord whom He sent into the World.  

Paul explains it this way in Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  Christ died for us. He was the propitiation for our sins. He was the atoning sacrifice that removed our sins. He endured the wrath and curse of God on our behalf. He suffered and died on the Cross so that we would not have to. God’s righteous and just wrath for our sin was turned away from us and poured out upon His own only begotten Son whom He sent for this very purpose all because He loved us. Through His shed blood we have reconciliation and Peace with God.  Praise God for His indescribable Gift.