CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE LOVE OF GOD
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. --- John 3:16
It would be difficult to imagine a more daunting assignment than the one given in Ephesians 5:1: “Therefore be imitators of God.” In the immediate context, this specifically means forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave us (Eph. 4:32), and to walk in love, as Christ loved us (Eph. 5:2). Once we bounce back from the initial shock of the command, we must ask, how we are going to even begin to imitate such divine forgiveness and love? Paul provides us with a clue: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (v. 1). This is so important that Paul basically reiterates the same point again in the next verse: “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (v. 2). The link here is clear: We live a life of love when we truly experience Christ’s love for us, which is seen most profoundly in his voluntary death on the cross for us. As John R. W. Stott has said, “All our love is a reflection of and a response to God’s love for us.” It is absolutely crucial, therefore, that we understand and sense God’s love; it is not a trivial matter to feel like a beloved child of God.
Feeling like a beloved child of God, however, does not come naturally. Truly embracing God’s love requires great faith. Paul Washer said on one occasion, “People talk about the greatest act of faith as raising the dead or walking on water, etc. I’ve seen many extraordinary works of God. But in my opinion what takes the greatest act of faith on the part of the believer, speaking for myself, is to look in the mirror, the mirror of God’s Word, and see my stumbling and see my failure and see my need, and to believe his promises, the declarations about his love that he has made toward me, that he honestly and genuinely and truly and infinitely and unconditionally loves me.” I concur.
One reason it takes great faith to believe in God’s love for us is because this kind of heavenly love is totally foreign to our earthly experience. It really is “out of this world.” Conditional love is all this world knows. That is our default setting. We love that which is beautiful or successful or inspiring or intelligent, etc. Simply put, love must be earned. In order to feel like a beloved child of God, which transforms us, let’s consider this love from a number of different angles, like a person examining the various facets of a diamond.
God’s love shines brightly when we see it against the dark background of its undeserving recipients. What is the object of God’s affection? The world, the cosmos. “For God so loved the world” (Jn. 3:16). In John’s gospel, as well as in his epistles, the world hates God, rejects him and rebels against him. In fact, cosmos is “used 186 times in the Greek New Testament and always with a sinful connotation.” This is a crass illustration, but one Sunday morning when I was leaving our church, a car coming from the other direction came around the corner and almost hit me because he was driving in my lane. Due to the sharp curve around this corner, this is a common occurrence, so I didn’t give it a second thought—until the driver of the car gave me “the finger.” I’d be lying if I said I easily brushed it aside. It got my heart racing, but then I thought: This is how the world treats God every day. They are the ones driving in the wrong lane, and they give God the proverbial finger.
God loves those who despise him (Matt. 5:43-48). The apostle Paul comments on this love for those who loathe God: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8). In this context, God’s redeeming love is not for friends, but for enemies (Rom. 5:10); it’s not for the godly, but for the ungodly; it’s not for the righteous, but for the unrighteous; it’s not for saints, but for sinners.
Jerry Bridges said, “Some years ago I prayed that God would show me more of His love. He answered that prayer by showing me more of my sin—not just specific sins I’d committed, but the sinfulness of my heart. Then I began to appreciate more His love to me.” I shudder to think that at one time I was among those who, in essence, gave God “the finger.” In spite of that, I have been a privileged beneficiary of his agape love.
The great twentieth-century theologian B. B. Warfield spells out the connection between God’s bestowal of undeserved love and our proportionate expressions of love and joy. Warfield writes, “We are sinners, and we know ourselves to be sinners lost and helpless in ourselves, but we are saved sinners, and it is our salvation which gives tone to our life—a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert. For it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much and, who loving, rejoices much.” This is worthy of further reflection: Our love and joy swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert. Case in point, the woman in Luke 7, who had the reputation for being “a sinner.” When the opportunity presented itself, she brought “an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” (vv. 37-38). How did Jesus explain her scandalous worship? She loved much because she was forgiven much. “But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (v. 47).
Perhaps, one reason why many Christians don’t love and rejoice as much as they should is because the heinousness of their sin has not been driven home by their pastor, for fear of giving offense. Consequently, these pastors avoid offending (which we could also call convicting one of their sin). Also, they (unwittingly) avoid providing redeemed sinners in the congregation with an opportunity to be awed by God’s love toward a wretch like themselves. Maybe they even think, as too many unfortunately do: “Well, I don’t understand why God wouldn’t love me.” In this case, God’s love is not only taken for granted but it is also expected. This person will never be overwhelmed by God’s love for them so that it never transforms them into loving, joyful worshipers.
Whence did God’s love for the world originate? Manifestly, it wasn’t induced by the world, since its abhorrent nature would lead one to conclude that the world is not only unlovely but is also unlovable. This love originated with God himself. The apostle John wrote, “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…. We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:10, 19). God is the initiator. Concerning God’s electing love, C. H. Spurgeon said, “I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterward; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.” So what reason would God have for loving his elect? What reason did the Lord have for loving and electing Israel? Moses provided Israel with this explanation: “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7-8). “[H]e loved them because he loved them. What kind of logic is that: I love you because I love you? Well, it may not be the logic of Aristotle, but it is the logic of grace.” It is the logic of divine love.
We have clarified that this love originated with God, but we still have not given a precise reason as to why. The deepest answer provided by Scripture is because “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8, 16). This is an astounding statement about the nature of God; one that you couldn’t make about another person. You could, for example, say, “She is lovely” or “She is a loving lady” but never “She is love.” Only God is love.
Due to the prevalent misunderstanding of this glorious truth, we must stress that this is not an exhaustive definition of God, as if God is love and nothing other than pure love. It’s not uncommon, even for Christians, to recoil from teaching about God’s anger or wrath, and protest, “But my god is a god of love.” We don’t want to make the mistake of pitting God’s attributes against each other and surmise that somehow God’s love is incompatible with his holiness or justice or jealousy. A. W. Tozer stated it well: “God cannot separate Himself into parts and do with one attribute one thing, and with another, another. All that God is determines all that God does. So when God redeems a man in love, or damns another man in justice, He’s not contradicting Himself, but justice and love are working together in the unitary Being of God.” At all costs, we need to avoid the temptation to allow this wonderful truth that “God is love” to swallow up and devour his other perfections.
When did God’s love for his elect begin? I have to confess that this is a bit of a trick question, because God’s love for his own had no beginning. God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4-5). God’s love for the elect is an everlasting love without beginning or end. Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” An everlasting love means that it had no beginning nor will it have an end date. God’s faithful devotion to his chosen ones will never be thwarted. The apostle Paul gloried in this truth.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35-39)
How comforting to know that we did nothing to deserve his love in the first place, and we can do nothing to destroy it anywhere along the way.
What did it cost God to love this wretched, rebellious world? Nothing less than his only Son. As is written in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave”—stop here before we move on. Notice that to be a loving person is to be a sacrificial giver. It’s the opposite of a selfish person who is only interested in what he can get from others. So, for example, parents who love their children find great delight in giving them gifts: birthday presents, opportunities to develop and expand their God-given talents and abilities, a college education, etc. The greater the love, the greater the willingness to sacrifice. Now ponder what God gave due to his love for this fallen world: his one and only Son. If that doesn’t stagger you, make it more personal. “For God so loved me that he gave his only Son .…” No higher price could have been paid for your redemption. No higher manifestation of God’s love could have been set forth. As Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13).
J. I. Packer observed, “The measure of love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of His only Son to be made man, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God…. The New Testament writers constantly point to the Cross of Christ as the crowning proof of the reality and boundlessness of God’s love.” The apostle Paul asserted, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Paul knew that he was loved by Christ, because Christ sacrificed his life for him. Whenever you’re tempted to question God’s extravagant love for you, fix your gaze on the cross where that love has been tangibly and definitively demonstrated. At the same time, I think most Christians would still confess that God’s love is difficult to fully grasp.
If you were asked to put together a top ten list of the most difficult biblical doctrines to comprehend, what would you include on your list? The sovereignty of God? Predestination? Election? Limited atonement? The impassibility of God? I doubt if very many would include the love of God. After all, even little children can understand it and sing: “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” Yes, even children can know something of God’s love for them in Christ. But that knowledge is just the tip of the iceberg. The apostle Paul thought of God’s love as such a difficult, transcendent reality that believers needed to be “strengthened with power through [God’s] Spirit” if they were going to know it (Eph. 3:16). So he pours out his heart in intercession: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (vv. 17-19, NIV).
When Paul prays for the Ephesians to “know this love that surpasses knowledge,” he is not asking that they may merely know some facts about the love of Christ, but that they may know his love personally, intimately, and experientially. Perhaps Paul is thinking of an experience akin to that of Moody Bible Institute’s former president R. A. Torrey. “It is said that R. A. Torrey earnestly sought God’s face, and one day while he was reading the Scriptures and praying he was so overwhelmed with a profound consciousness of God’s love for him that he began to weep and weep. Eventually he asked God to show him no more: he could not bear it.” This is Paul’s goal for God’s people: a profound consciousness of Christ’s love that is transformational. “Knowing” this type of immeasurable love doesn’t come easy. After all, how easy is it for you to believe that God loves you, just as much as he loves his own Son? Yet he does, and Jesus prays that you would understand that (Jn. 17:23). Our consciousness of this love requires nothing less than a powerful work of God’s Spirit. We should, therefore, pray for it, as Paul did.
Another expression of God’s love is seen by its extreme benefits. Generally, the more we benefit from the love of another, the more we feel loved. In John 3:16, the benefits are stated negatively, “shall not perish,” and positively, “have eternal life.” It’s not an exaggeration to call these benefits extreme. We all deserve hell, but because of God’s love for us, he gives eternal life to all who believe in Christ.
As incredible as this is, it’s just the beginning of the benefits. The Judge not only pardons us and grants us life, but he adopts us into his family. Most Christians have been addressing God as Father since they were little children, so they just take it for granted. They shouldn’t. Calling God “Father” is so radical that some scholars assert that this demonstrates the difference between the Old and the New Covenant.
The German theologian Joachim Jeremias, a New Testament scholar, did a study in which he searched through the Old Testament writings and existent rabbinic writings from ancient Jewish sources. He could not find a single example ever of a Jewish writer or author addressing God directly as Father in prayer until the tenth century AD. He found examples of God being referred to as “the Father,” but the word Father was never used in a direct form of personal address….
Jeremias also examined the prayers of Jesus, and there he made an equally fascinating discovery—in every prayer of Jesus recorded in the New Testament except one, He addresses God as Father.
Jesus alone has an inherent right to call God Father, due to his divine nature and equality with God. We, outsiders who have received Christ and believed in his name, have been granted “the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12). Through our adoption we can now address God as Father—a privilege that the Old Testament saints could hardly have fathomed.
When the apostle John wrote about Christians being called children of God, his excitement could hardly be contained. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:1-2). When John says “See what kind of love” it is his way of saying: take a close look at this astonishing love. When John speaks of this “kind of love” that “usually describes that which is surprising or admirable … here it signifies ‘of what a degree’” The NIV captures the thought well by translating verse one: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us.” It seems that the two greatest demonstrations of God’s love for us are seen in the cross of Christ and our adoption into God’s family.
Besides calling God Father, there is another implication of our adoption that we must not overlook. Paul wrote, “[A]nd if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17). As children of God we share in Jesus’ inheritance and glory. A surprising feature of this inheritance and glory is that we reign with Christ. King David said God made man “a little lower than the heavenly beings” (Ps. 8:5). But, for Christians, that order is going to be reversed so that we will judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3). Going a step further, Jesus told his disciples, “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Lk. 22:28-30). But, perhaps, the most amazing statement about reigning with Christ comes in Revelation 3:21: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Can you even imagine sitting on the throne with God the Father and his Son? If you have been adopted into God’s family due to his love, you are blessed beyond measure.
God’s love for the elect is not casual or lukewarm. John 3:16 stresses God’s passionate love. The order in the Greek text reads: “For so loved God the world.” In English, the subject comes first, followed by a verb and then a direct object. Greek grammar isn’t confined to these rules. Translating the Greek, therefore, is sometimes like putting a puzzle together. “So loved” is put first for emphasis. When you want to stress something in the Greek language you put it first in the sentence. This verse is underscoring God’s love as the factor that moved him to send his Son.
Additionally, notice that the verse doesn’t say, “For God loved the world,” but “For God so loved the world.” Many Christians have been quoting this verse for decades, so the words flow smoothly, effortlessly (and sometimes thoughtlessly) from our lips. But have we paused long enough to inquire into why it includes the little word so? This tiny word so, which could be easily overlooked, signifies degree or intensity. We could accurately amplify and translate this verse, “For so passionately did God love the world that he gave his only Son.” Putting our two points together, John 3:16 is principally about God’s fervent love that inspired him to send the Son. And we would be remiss in not pointing out that the Son did not come reluctantly; but rather, he came willingly and eagerly out his love for his Father and for those whom the Father has given him.
No matter how plainly and emphatically the Bible states that God really, really loves us, we still struggle to believe it. It seems just too good to be true. But numerous passages describe God’s passionate love. Deuteronomy 30:9 says that the LORD takes delight in prospering his people. It’s a joy for God to bless his people. In Jeremiah 32:40-41, Yahweh says: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” God rejoices in doing good to his people, and this good is not done halfheartedly, but with all his heart and soul. Finally, consider Zephaniah 3:17: “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Have you ever pictured God singing? Believers exult over God with loud singing all the time, because he is worthy and we love him. Zephaniah tells us that God exults over you, Christian, with loud singing! It staggers the imagination.
When we, who are undeserving of God’s eternal, sacrificial, passionate love with its extreme benefits, receive such love, our souls are transformed. How does this transformation work? D. A. Carson writes,
We can intuitively understand how this works from our experiences in the natural realm. Perry Downs, a colleague at the institution where I teach, and his wife, Sandy, have for years served as foster parents. Most of the children they have helped, now well over twenty, have been newborns and have stayed with them until adopted. But some years ago, the agency with whom they are connected asked them to take in twin eighteen-month-old boys. Perry and Sandy hesitated but agreed to accept them when the agency assured them that the boys would be with them only for about six weeks.
The first night in the Downs’s home, the boys were put to bed, and not a peep came from their bedroom. Curious, Perry crept into their room a half hour later. He found both boys wide awake, their pillows wet with tears, but neither was making a sound. It transpired that they had been beaten for crying in several of the homes in which they had been placed before coming to Perry’s and Sandy’s. This was their ninth home. Testing suggested that the twins were irremediably damaged emotionally and intellectually.
As it happened, the twins stayed with Perry and Sandy for close to two years. By the time they were adopted, they were judged within the “normal” range of intellectual and emotional capacity.
What is true for the natural realm is equally true for the spiritual realm: love transforms a person. When a person truly feels like a beloved child of God they will never be the same again.
And can it be that I should gain
An int'rest in the Savior's blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me?
Refrain:
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, should die for me!
'Tis mystery all! Th'Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine!
'Tis mercy all! let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more. [Refrain]
He left His Father's throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace;
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race;
'Tis mercy all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me. [Refrain]
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee. [Refrain]
No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th'eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own. [Refrain]
Charles Wesley
Copyright 2025, By Every Word Foundation