Goodness of God: Love

Aaron Sturgill

Theology Proper • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago • Presented 4 years ago

Love

Being and Attributes of God

God's Love

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Purpose Statement. Reflect the love of God you’ve seen demonstrated in Jesus Christ and experienced through God’s grace, mercy and patience.

Lesson Aims. (1) To define the love of God, (2) to understand the different aspects in how God’s creation experiences God’s love, and (3) to better understand how we can reflect God’s love.

God’s Love Defined

Based on the following verses how is God’s love best explained? “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (). “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (). “The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (). “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (). “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” ().

Having drawn some conclusions about God’s love in the previous verses, let’s dwell a little longer on . “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (1) “God shows.” His love is visible or noticeable. (2) “for us.” God’s love benefits others, not just Himself. (3) “We were still sinners.” God’s love is not based on the condition of the recipient or the treatment by the recipient. (4) “Christ died for us.” God’s love is sacrificial for the good of someone else.

God’s love is based on evaluation and choice. It is a matter of the will and an action. It is unconditional. It is not based on emotion but instead a purposeful choice. Wayne Grudem well wrote, “God’s love means that God eternally gives of himself to others.”[1]

God’s Love Experienced

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ().

Define mercy.

NBD. It is the gracious favour of the superior to the inferior, all undeserved (Snaith). . . . It expresses the affective aspect of love: its compassion and pity. ‘The personal God has a heart’ (Barth). . . . The specific notion of mercy—compassion to one in need or helpless distress, or in debt and without claim to favourable treatment.[2]

BEB. Prominent in the concept of mercy is the compassionate disposition to forgive an offender or adversary and to help or spare him in his sorry plight.[3]

EDBT. mercy then comes to be seen as the quality in God that directs him to forge a relationship with people who absolutely do not deserve to be in relationship with him.[4]

Friberg. ‘eleos’ as an attitude and emotion roused by the affliction of another pity, compassion, sympathy.[5]

Passages on Mercy. “Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.” (). “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. (). “For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you” (). “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” (). “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” ().

Define grace. Grace is unmerited favor or undeserved kindness.

BEB. the doctrine of grace pertains to God’s activity rather than to his nature. . . . Grace is the dimension of divine activity that enables God to confront human indifference and rebellion with an inexhaustible capacity to forgive and to bless. God is gracious in action.[6]

Friberg. as a quality that adds delight or pleasure graciousness, attractiveness, charm . . . as a favorable attitude . . . as a religious technical term for God’s attitude toward human beings kindness, grace, favor, helpfulness . . . exceptional effects produced by God’s favor . . . practical proofs of goodwill from one person to another.[7]

Passages on Grace. “he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight” (). “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” ().

Distinction between mercy and grace. “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” ().

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Define Patience.

Friberg. μακροθυμία as a state of emotional quietness in the face of unfavorable circumstances patience, long-suffering . . . as constraint exercised toward others forbearance, patience (2C 6:6); (3) as God’s constraint of his wrath long-suffering, forbearance ()[8]

NBD. Biblical patience is a God-exercised, or God-given, restraint in face of opposition or oppression. It is not passivity.[9]

BEB. Ability to take a great deal of punishment from evil people or circumstances without losing one’s temper, without becoming irritated and angry, or without taking vengeance.[10]cxz

Passages on Patience. “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (). “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (). “because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water” ().

Patience in light of God’s grace and mercy. God’s patience is the ongoing dispensing of God’s grace and mercy in light of our sinfulness and animosity. He is slow to judge. He continues to offer the opportunity and time needed to come to repentance.

God’s Love Reflected in Us

Our love should be visible. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (). “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel” (). “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death” (). “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” ().

Our love should benefit others. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD” (). “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (). “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ().

Our love should not be based on conditions or emotions. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (). “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (). “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (). “Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” ().

Our love should be sacrificial. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (). “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (). “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” ().

Our love should give us confidence in our salvation. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” ().

[1] Grudem, Systematic Theology, 198.

[2] J. W. L. Hoad, “Mercy, Merciful,” ed. I. Howard Marshall et al., eds., New Bible Dictionary, 3rd edition (Leicester, England ; Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 751.

[3] “Mercy” ed. Walter A Elwell and Barry J Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), 1440.

[4] Philip H. Towner, “Mercy,” Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Carlisle, Cumbria: Baker Pub Group, 1996), 521.

[5] Friberg, Friberg, and Miller, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, 143.

[6] Gilbert Bilezikian, “Grace,” ed. Elwell and Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, 898.

[7] Friberg, Friberg, and Miller, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, 407.

[8] Friberg, Friberg, and Miller, 252.

[9] J. W. L. Hoad, “Patience,” ed. Marshall et al., New Bible Dictionary, 873.

[10] Elwell and Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1619.

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