A
Note On God’s Love
Exodus
34:1-9
Romans 5:1-5
1st John 4:8
I:
-- Maureen
and I are fortunate: both our daughters live within a 40-minute drive of
our home. Several years ago,
however, our older daughter Catherine lived in
Hong Kong
. Needless to say, while she
was in
Hong Kong
, on the other side of the world, our love for her never diminished.
We loved her as much as we had ever loved her.
Still, because she lived so very far away there was less – much
less – that we could do for her. When
Catherine eventually returned home we didn’t love her more.
We couldn’t love her more than we did already.
Neither did we begin to love her.
We began to love her from the day she was born (if not sooner.)
But it was the case that when she lived closer to us our love was
able to do more for her.
God comes closest to us in the cross.
Note that: God comes closest to us not in nature (as so many
people try to tell us); God comes closest to us in the Incarnation of
his Son. Jesus Christ (not
anything in nature) is the
image of God, the apostles tell us.
You and I are made in
the image of God. Then we
are closest to God where God draws close to us by means of that image,
his Son, in whose image you and I are made.
More specifically, God draws closest to us in the cross of his
Son. God’s love for us is
brought to effectual focus in the cross.
The cross doesn’t mean that God loves us more than he did prior
to Christmas and Good Friday; and the cross doesn’t mean that God
began to love us there. But
the cross does mean that God’s love -- begun in eternity and
undiminished through time -- did something for us there and was able to do something for us just
because God himself came among us and dwelt with us in the incarnation
of his Son.
This lattermost point is crucial, for in day-to-day life we are
aware of people whom we love, love ardently, yet whom we are unable to
help; at least unable to help precisely where most they need to be
helped. Perhaps the most
poignant, most piercing instance of this is the person dearest to us who
is chronically ill or terminally ill.
Regardless of how much we can do and should do for her, our love
can’t do the one thing that uniquely needs to be done: our love
can’t reverse, can’t overturn, whatever it is that has rendered our
dearest scarcely recognizable.
By contrast, when we were unrecognizable as those created in the
image and likeness of God, God’s love did
for us what most needed to be done.
What did God’s love for us do uniquely?
In his love, focused effectually in the cross, God made provision
for us. In the cross God’s
love made the provision apart
from which other expressions of his love would be pointless.
Specifically God’s provision for us in the cross did three
things. (i) His
crucified love cancelled our guilt as God himself bore his own judgement
upon us. (ii) His
love reconciled us to him, bridged the abyss that our sin had opened up
between him and us. (iii)
His love replaced the sign before the heavenly court -- “No Access!”
-- with a new sign -- “Welcome Home!”.
In other words, where human love often can’t do for our dearest
what most needs to be done, God’s love could -- and did.
In the provision God made for us he overturned our predicament
before him.
In all of this we mustn’t think that God “fixes” the human
predicament the way a serviceman fixes a malfunctioning dishwasher.
In repairing the broken-down dishwasher the serviceman suffers
nothing himself. If he has
to replace a part he does; he doesn’t replace a part of himself.
If he has to use a propane torch on metal joints he doesn’t
sear his own heart. But in
the cross God “fixed” the human predicament only
at the cost of a suffering that was greater
than the suffering of those he was helping.
During World War II an American troopship, the U.S.S. Dorchester,
was crossing the
North Atlantic
when it was torpedoed. The
troopship had been crammed -- overfilled, really -- with men needed for
the war effort in
Europe
. As the foundering ship was about to sink it was discovered that there
weren’t enough life-jackets for everyone.
Whereupon four military chaplains gave up their life-jackets to
four 19-year old soldiers, and perished themselves.
Scripture constantly points to the nature of God’s provision
and its cost to him. Peter
writes, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” (1 Peter
2:24) Paul writes, “For
our sake God made him (his Son) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in
him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21)
Isaiah says, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was
bruised for our iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Jesus himself says simply, “I came to give myself a ransom for
many.” (Mark 10:45)
Please note the verbs: “He bore; he made, he was wounded; he
gave”. They are all verbs
of action: God did something
on our behalf. His purpose
in Christ wasn’t chiefly to show
us something (as if we needed an illustration) or to tell
us something (as if we needed instruction).
His purpose in Christ was to do something -- and he did it.
He provided the remedy for the human predicament precisely at our point of
incomparable need.
II:
-- Yet
we must be honest in all things. God’s
provision benefits us only as we own it for ourselves in faith, only as
we seize it and glory in it and accord it a huge-hearted “Yes”.
Think again of the four military chaplains on the U.S.S.
Dorchester who gave up their lives.
The soldiers into whose hands the life-jackets were pressed still
had to put them
on. The sacrificial act
of the chaplains was certainly necessary to save the soldiers, but just
as certainly it wasn’t sufficient: the soldiers themselves had to own
the life-giving gift.
And right here’s the problem, for right here the analogy breaks
down. So sunk in spiritual
inertia are we that we can’t “put on” Jesus Christ in faith.
The soldier could put on the proffered life-jacket just because
the soldier wasn’t inert, wasn’t already dead.
But fallen humans are spiritually inert; spiritually dead.
If we doubt this or dispute it we need only recall our Lord’s
conversation with Nicodemus. Says
Jesus, “Truly I say to you, unless one is born anew, born from above,
he cannot see the
kingdom
of
God
.” (John 3:3) We can’t
even see it, much less enter it. Since
we can’t see it, aren’t even aware of it, how could we ever want it?
How shall we ever know of it?
On the one hand we must embrace our Lord in faith, or else the
provision God has made for us is of no benefit to us.
On the other hand, we can’t so much as recognize our Lord’s
approach, much less seize him. And
not being able to recognize the provision God has made for us, we
can’t recognize our incomparable need before God.
The worst aspect of spiritual blindness is that we are blind to
our blindness; we are ignorant of our ignorance, deluded about our
self-delusion. With his
characteristic pithiness John Calvin remarks, “What can a dead person
do to attain life?”
According to the written gospels Jesus spent much time throughout
his earthly ministry assisting the deaf and the blind.
He did so for two reasons. One,
deafness and blindness are disfigurements of God’s good creation,
instances of evil, and therefore ought to be remedied.
Two, physical deafness and blindness are parables, metaphors, of
our spiritual condition. Sin-vitiated
men and women, of themselves, cannot hear
the word of God or see the
kingdom
of
God
. Of ourselves we can’t
hear the word of God as word of
God; we can only hear religious words about religious opinions
suggesting religious notions of greater or less credibility.
But recognize the truth and reality of God’s address when he
speaks to us? Recognize our
Lord’s approach when he visits us?
No. Calvin knew
whereof he spoke when he said, “What can a dead person do to attain
life?”
Then how will God’s provision for us ever become a benefit to
us? There has to be a
secret, stealthy visitation of God’s Spirit.
God must steal upon us and rouse us at least to the point where
we can see, hear, recognize and
respond. God must
infiltrate us by his Spirit (the Spirit being God’s secret agent) and
awaken us to our need, his provision, its availability, and the urgency
of it all.
This subtle, imperceptible work of the Spirit John Wesley called
“prevenient grace”. Pre-venient
grace is grace that “comes before.”
Comes before what? Comes
before that flood of grace, that flood of God’s love which floods the
hearts of all who welcome him who is God’s provision for us.
A needy woman reached out in faith to touch Jesus.
As she made contact with him he said to her, “Your faith has
saved you; go in peace.” When
she reached out to him she exercised faith.
But before she reached out to him why did she think he could help
her? How did she recognize
him as God’s provision for a capsized world?
Before blind Bartimaeus cried out to Jesus, “Son of David
(i.e., Messiah), have mercy on me!”, what gave Bartimaeus to
understand that Jesus was the Son of David?
When Jesus called fishermen to leave their nets and begin fishing
for men and women, what rendered Christ’s word believable and
compelling? Prevenient grace
is the hidden movement of God’s Spirit within us moving us towards
that moment when we consciously embrace the grace of the crucified and
find God’s love flooding our hearts.
Prevenient grace renders faith possible; we render faith actual
as we welcome him who has already welcomed us; whereupon God’s love is
lavishly spread abroad in our hearts. (Romans 5:5)
III:
-- God’s
love, spread abroad in our hearts, issues in glad and grateful hearts;
issues in faith; issues therefore in our answering love for him.
As faith develops, his love for us and our love for him
interweave ever more profoundly. A
bond is forged that becomes the instrument whereby God works for good,
for our good and others’ good, in the midst of much about us that
isn’t good. Paul writes,
“We know that in everything God works for good with those who love
God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
We must note the strong conviction in Paul’s declaration: “We know; we know that in everything God works for good with those
who love him.”
Paul himself was living proof of his conviction.
Think of his two-year imprisonment (house arrest) in
Rome
. In itself this wasn’t
good. Yet think of the good
that God “worked” from it. For
two years Paul declared the gospel to visitors who could get to him
readily just because he was in the largest city in the
Roman Empire
. Imprisoned in
Rome
and unable to travel, he pondered and then wrote the “prison
epistles”: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, letters
that breathe the sufficiency of Christ.
Then again, the suffering that his imprisonment forced upon him
authenticated his ministry; everyone knew he wasn’t an apostle because
it was a “cushy” job. In
fact his ministry cost him dearly; and the price he was willing to pay
magnified the truth of the gospel and his vocation to the gospel.
Paul’s experience confirmed his conviction: in everything God does
work for good with those who love him, who are called according to his
purpose.
I have long been convinced of the truth of the apostle’s word:
in everything -- even the bleakest and the blackest -- God does work
for good with those who love him. I
have long been convinced of something else: one day we shall be
permitted to see what good God
wrought from so much that wasn’t good, and see
as well how God wrought it. I
have long been convinced of all this just because I have seen enough of
God’s work already that I can’t doubt what he’s doing now, and
seen enough of God’s work already that I can’t doubt he’ll one day
let me see it all.
At the same time we must note the full measure of Paul’s
statement. He doesn’t say,
as a general principle, “In everything God works for good.”
He says, “In everything God works for good with
those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”
Let us make no mistake. There
is a fork in the road. To
speak of those who love God is to admit that there are those who do not
love God but are indifferent, even hostile.
To speak of those who are called according to God’s purpose is to admit that there are those who prefer the
“call” of another purpose; these people have their own agendas and
schedules, their own priorities and preoccupations.
But their spiritual obtuseness in no way impedes the work of God
in the “everything” of those who do love him, those whom his oceanic
love has brought to life and freed to love.
For to know ourselves the beneficiary of God’s love is to sense
the throb of our own heart’s love for him.
IV:
-- The
outcome of such interwoven love is glorious.
Because nothing in God himself can interrupt his love for us, and
because nothing outside God can separate us from him, his love is going
to see us home, and see us home gloriously.
“Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord”, the apostle exults.
We must be sure to note the future tense.
“Nothing will be able
to separate us -- ever”. We
already know that nothing can separate us from God’s love in the
present; we know this because God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts
now, flooding us at this moment. Just
because God’s love drenches us now, and just because we know God
himself is steadfast, constant, undeflectable, we know therefore that no
future development will ever pry us out of God’s love.
It all means that God’s love, vivifying us now, sustaining us
now, is going to be the vehicle that carries us home triumphantly to the
glory that awaits us.
I was only a child when I became fascinated with the story of
Elijah. According to the old
Hebrew legend
Elijah
,
Israel
’s greatest prophet, was taken up to heaven by a chariot of fire
pulled by horses of fire. As
Elijah was taken up in flaming splendour his successor, Elisha, cried,
“My father, my father! The
chariots of
Israel
and its horsemen!” (2 Kings 2:11)
By this Elisha meant that Elijah, equipped with the Word and
Spirit of God, was more formidable than all the armoured divisions of
the Israelite army; more formidable than any hostile army.
Twenty-five hundred years later, in the year 1546, when word of
Martin Luther’s death (he died in Eisleben) reached his friend, Philip
Melanchthon, in Wittenberg, Melanchthon burst into the classroom of
startled students at Wittenberg University and cried, “My father, my
father! The chariots of
Israel
and its horsemen!” Melanchthon
meant that Luther, equipped with the Word and Spirit of God, was more
formidable than all the forces arrayed against Luther that had battered
him for years yet had never broken him.
It can be said -- and will be said -- of any Christian, of any
person equipped with the Word and Spirit of God, “My Father, my
mother. The chariots of
Israel
and its horsemen!” For any
Christian, equipped with the Spirit of God by definition, is more
formidable than all that assaults us and tries
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In other words, God’s love is the chariot of flaming splendour
that bears us home triumphantly to the glory that awaits us.
V:
-- Bring
us home? “Us”?
Who are the “we”? Who
are the “we” of whom Paul speaks when he says, “Nothing will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”?
He is speaking of “those who love
God, who are called according to his purpose.”
He is speaking of those who have owned for themselves that love
which made provision for them at the point of their incomparable need.
These people have “put on” the Lord Jesus Christ in faith as
surely as four young men on foundering troopship put on the life-jacket
pressed upon them by those who gave it up at enormous cost.
Victor
Shepherd
October 2006
