God Loves… Himself

Until we see that God is centered upon Himself and loves Himself and that it is His holiness for Him to do so, we will not see the true grounds for the Greatest Commandment, which is the same thing as “be holy for I am holy.” We will not understand sin for what it really is: loving self from pride rather than loving God, which is having self as a god in His presence and worshiping the idol of self. We will not understand the nature of the new birth, which is to receive a new heart and the indwelling love of God so that we may be delivered from the love of self as our primary love and truly love God for who He is rather than for what we think He has done. We will not understand the nature of the love of God toward humans, which is to cleanse them from their pride and self-love in order to give them a love for Himself. We will not understand the nature of repentance, which is to be turned from self-love and pride to humility and the love of God. We will not understand the nature of sanctification, which is the growth from self-love and the focus on self-interests to being sharers of His love for Himself.

If God’s love is defined by what He does for human beings, then this is a different way of looking at God and man than Scripture. This would be essentially a turning or twisting of the Greatest Commandments. If God’s love is defined by what He does for human beings, then man’s love for God is defined by what man does for himself and other human beings. This would turn love your neighbor as yourself (Second Greatest Commandment) into the Greatest Commandment and make the Greatest Commandment contingent on the Second. But Jesus taught us that the Second Greatest Commandment flows from the Greatest Commandment (“The second is like it” Mat 22:39). If God is truly focused on human beings as His standard, then the Greatest Commandment is to love human beings. That would also change the standard of love and so we really have fallen into humanism as the standard. But instead, God Himself is the source and standard of love rather than human beings.

We must see the massive, massive difference this makes in all things. If “God is love” means that God is the only source of true love and the only true object of true love, then humanism can reside quite well in an outwardly conservative theology. We can stress creeds and conservatism all we want against humanism but we will still be caught in its deceitful web if we are not governed by the thought of God as being God-centered. Man cannot work up love in his heart for God, but this love must come from God. If God is the only source of true love, then we can see how God must love Himself and so it is only in loving Himself that that there is any love possible for human beings. This also shows that true love is always working to bring human beings to the point of seeing the true God and sharing in His love. To do that means that humans must begin to repent of their self-love and pride.

We must also see how God is the pattern for human love rather than our false conceptions of what human love is, which is based on what is outwardly good for humans as we conceive of it. We must love God and out of the love of God which comes from God we must love other human beings according to the true standard of love, which is God Himself. God’s love in the soul always transforms the soul to be like Himself and from His love for Himself He works love for Himself in the human soul. Humans tend to drop the standard of love down to niceness and graciousness as that is within the power of self-love while true love for God and others is only possible by the power of God. The human standard of love, which is niceness and graciousness, is without the goal of seeing others transformed into the image of God by true love and will only feed the self-love and pride of ourselves and other human beings. True love will be a part in breaking them of their pride and self-love rather than feed it. This is so opposite of what the world thinks and teaches, and yet it is true in light of the truth of God’s love for Himself.

If God does not love Himself as triune then how can He change our heart from sin (love for ourselves as supreme) to love Himself as supreme? We must see this and how vital it is to theology and to the Christian life. If we do not see that all flows from the love of God for Himself, then we will continue in our bondage of defining love in a human fashion and we will not see God for who He is and we will not understand sanctification and holiness. Humanism is so pervasive today that it is hard to have our spiritual heads raised out of it to breathe in the pure air of a thorough God-centeredness. Without this it is possible to be as orthodox and conservative as we can and yet be entirely wrong on what love is and since God is love we will not understand the true God. If we continue to think of the cross as being primarily about God’s love for human beings rather than being primarily a love from within the Trinity, we will not understand the cross and we will make God out to be an idolater who loves human beings more than Himself. If the true idea of God is three in one and one in three, then the true idea of God is a God that exists in perfect triune love for Himself and there is no love apart from that. This is important beyond words.

We continue to look at what should be the very focus and center of theology. Unless theologians and those who deal with Scripture turn from man-centeredness and from looking at God as if He is man-centered, our theology and our biblical studies will be no better than forms of humanism and will be a form of humanism itself. We have traversed some teachings and will traverse a few more trying to show the difference that the biblical God who is centered upon Himself in His perfect Trinity has with the god of modern America who is focused on man. As we think about the source of love, we are forced into the view that the source of love is either from ourselves or from God. But we must face this issue with clear thinking and above all Scripture. The source of love is what determines the object of our love. If the source of love is from ourselves, then we will love ourselves first and foremost. We can see that from Luke 6:32: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” What we see from this text is that those who have themselves as their source for love will love themselves and all those that do something that is good for their chief love which is self. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our being and then to love our neighbors as ourselves. The sinner, however, is focused on himself as his chief love and so loves himself rather than God and his neighbors. The Pharisees demonstrate to us what religion is when self is not delivered from love for self. Self-love becomes enamored with self in religion and so does all from love for self and for what self thinks it can obtain from others and God for self. The source of love will determine the object of love.

Scripture teaches us that in order to have true love we must have God work it in us. Apart from Christ we can do nothing (John 15:5) so true love must come through Christ to the believer in order to be fruit from God. Anything that we call love is not love if it comes from self because self only produces self-love. The Holy Spirit must pour out the love of God in the soul (Romans 5:5) which is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22ff). If God is the source of love in our hearts, then what is the object of His love that He works in us? If God does not love Himself as triune first and foremost, then what is the love that He works in us by the Holy Spirit? If God as triune is the source of all true love, then He is also the object of all true love as the Greatest Commandments teach us. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love and that love must be for God or the Holy Spirit would be working in us that which is idolatrous. Does the Holy Spirit work in man a love for human beings as our primary love in contradiction to the Greatest Commandment or does the Holy Spirit work a love for God in man? If God as triune does not love God as triune more than human beings, then how can He work love for Himself in us? If the phrase “God is love” simply means that He must love human beings with a focus on human beings, then there is no way He could work love for Himself in our hearts which is indeed the greatest love that there is. Unless God loves God above all and whatever He loves He loves for His own sake there is no source of love that we have access to that will lift us from idolatry.

I John 4:7-9 speaks with perfect clarity to this: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” What we see is that love is from God (v. 7). The source of true love is from God. True biblical love is from God and all other love is from the self-love and self-centeredness of wicked man. This is why the words of Christ in John 13:35 should hit us with such force: “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” The disciples of Christ are known by their love for each other. This is how we can tell if we or others are true disciples of Christ. This is also a teaching in differing passages in I John. The reason that a true disciple has true love for other true disciples is because Christ lives in them and the love God has for Himself is worked in His people and they are known for their true love.

We then go on and see in I John 4:7 that since love is from God all who love (truly love) have been born of God and known God. On the other hand, the one that does not love (true love from God) does not know God for God is love. In other words, the God who is love gives His people true love and those people are born of God and they know God. To know God includes a love for God. Verse 9 then tells us that the love of God was manifested in us. Simply put, the source of love determines the object of love. If a person truly loves God and not just because that person thinks God has done something to benefit that person, then the love of God has worked itself in that person and that person is born of God and knows God. Since a believer loves God the love that God has for Himself as been worked in the believer and so love is from Him, and through Him, and then to Him (Rom 11:36). Without any real question God must love Himself with all of His heart if He is to work love for Himself in us.

We will continue with how important it is to know that God loves Himself as His real object of love in all things. We have heard that God loves people and so their suffering is used for good. That makes little to no sense if God does not love Himself in Christ primarily. If God does not love all for the sake of Christ, then there is no true love in a person’s suffering. If God’s love is to the person in a direct manner and is for the person him or herself, then His love does not come through Christ and is not primarily for Christ. Our suffering, then, would not make sense because we think that love would prevent suffering and in a human sense it does. But instead God loves us for the sake of Christ and His love is such that what is best for us is to be conformed to Christ from the heart. God will also use suffering to bring to the top the remnants of our humanism and self-centeredness. When we suffer it is so “natural” to focus on ourselves first and expect God to remove the pain. But the purpose of the pain is conformity to Christ in our inward person. God’s love is for Christ and so all He does is to make people like Christ. But since conformity to Christ is best, what He is doing is true and real love to the suffering believer as well.

It is only when the fog that is brought upon our minds and hearts by humanism and man-centeredness begins to be burned off by the brightness of God’s love for the Son that we can begin to understand these things in their proper relationships. The man-centered view of love is that if God is love then He must love me and if He loves me then these bad things will not happen to me. In one sense the logic itself is flawless, but the premises that the argument or position is based on are heavily flawed. The argument is based on a wrong idea of what love is and a wrong idea of what it means for God to be love. We can see, then, that this is a very practical teaching as well. Many people have left the idea of God and have become professing atheists when they were diagnosed with a serious illness or see an illness in one they loved. Others have stopped believing in a personal God when they had a serious accident. They are told that God has a purpose in the illness or accident and that He is working all things for good and they are to believe that. However, if one does not have a true conception of love or of God as love, then those words are as empty as their former belief. Though it is biblical and true that God works all things for good, we need to understand that in a different way than is commonly set out. The good that is mentioned to these people is not what is spiritually true and does not refer to God’s true love, which is Christ and His love for human beings as seen in conforming them spiritually to Christ. If we tell people who love themselves and think that because God is love He must love them and that means that He must do what they want, then we are simply fueling their self-love and misconception when we tell them biblical things as if all is focused on them. It is nothing but man-centeredness and fuels people’s inordinate self-love and focus on themselves. They need to understand things from God’s view.

When hard things happen to us, we must know that God loves Himself as triune and is focused on the expression of His glory. He is not focused on my physical welfare and His love is not to be judged by how things go with me physically. The glory of God is the primary issue in the entire universe and it is primary in the affections and loves of God. To become a believer a person must be turned from the love of and focus on self to the love of and focus on God. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Our very holiness consists in love for God and in being holy as He is holy. If God is truly holy, then, He will do nothing but what will produce holiness in people. If God is truly love, then His love for Himself will not allow for Him to do anything but what produces love for Himself in those He loves. All that God does, therefore, must be working love for Himself in people or He would not be holy and He would not be doing what is best for those He loves.

Suffering makes no sense in a humanistic and man-centered world. It makes no sense in a very religious world or a very Christianized world either if it is presented in a man-centered way. It makes no sense in a Reformed way of looking at the world either if these things are presented in a man-centered way and even of a man-centered God. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with humanism and man-centeredness and even worse a man-centered God. When we do this, even within the realms of Reformed theology, we have a different God than the biblical One. We have also changed the very heart of Reformed theology into something that is man-centered. When people are suffering, the easiest thing to do is to say something to make them feel better. While it is harder, it is true love for God and them to tell them about the true God. We are encouraged to be nice and to be gracious, but those things can be nothing but lies about God and about other people. The God who loves is the One who sends suffering to conform people to Christ. Those He lives in must speak the truth about God and human beings because only in that will true conformity to Christ take place. Being nice and gracious can be true hate in disguise since it may be from nothing but man-centeredness and a man-centered view of God. True love is all about God.

The natural man can be and many will be centered upon God if God is man-centered. This is simply another way for man to be centered upon Himself. We see this in the teachings of the Gospel very clearly. If we teach a God that is man-centered, a man never has to repent of his man-centeredness in order to believe in that God. As long as man can work up a belief in a God who is centered upon him and loves him as he is, then man can remain self-centered and simply love those who love himself. This does not require a change of heart or a change of love. It is just another way for man who loves himself to expand his self-love. This is the so-called gospel that has so permeated and wrecked the professing Church in America in our day. This is the so-called gospel that has been permeated by man’s depraved desire to love himself and make himself the center of all things. This is the so-called gospel that has been so influenced by the self-esteem movement and a secular psychology that is based on evolutionary teachings and the idea that depraved desires of the heart of man are something natural rather than sinful.

What we must understand is that man’s self-love and pride knows no discernible bounds. This horrible part of man’s nature is a rebellion against God as expressed by the Greatest Commandment (which tells man to love God with all of his being) and yet man loves himself with all of his being. Instead of man exalting God and seeking His honor and glory, in pride man seeks to exalt himself and seek his own honor and glory. Man is so great in his own eyes and loves himself so much that he believes God will save man from hell and do all to serve man in man’s drive for glory and honor out of self-love and self-interest. Man is so blinded by self-love and pride that he thinks that he can do things for God and God will be pleased that man is doing something for Him, though in fact man is in simply using what he thinks of as God for his own purposes.

A man-centered approach to God being man-centered is really one way man tries to use God to serve himself. God created man to be His image and the purpose of man is to be a way for God to manifest His glory. But instead man wants God to be his servant and to do his pleasure. This is easily seen in the way that man prays. Man prays for himself and his own benefit. He prays for God to do things for him that he cannot do. He prays for God to fulfill his plans and do his desires. So we come up with a god that we like that is more powerful than us, yet He is love in such a way that He does not really threaten us and we can control Him by being good and praying. Prayer then becomes an effort to manipulate God to do what we want and we do that by using the name of Jesus.

Man’s pride is such that he tries to do missions, evangelism, and start churches for his own honor and glory. He will invoke the name of God and he will have pious externals, but as the Pharisee who crossed land and sea to make one convert much is done in the name of the honor of self and in man’s pride in thinking that he can do something for God though in fact his own interests are there. A lot of work can be done in and around “churches” simply out of the desire for honor and of self-love and pride. Man in his great pride tried to erect the tower of Babel in order to reach God, and now man is trying to reach God by erecting towers of works and honor for self. He does this because he thinks that God loves him as he loves himself and is focused on him as he is focused on himself. He thinks, as Scripture sets out, that God is like himself.

Until man begins to see that God is God and as God He is focused in Himself within His triune being, man will not see himself for who he is. Until we see that God is focused on Himself and all must be done for His glory in truth, man will continue to think that he can do something for God. Until we see that God’s love is focused on God, we will think that we are the center of the universe and live for ourselves and think that God is focused on our world for our purposes too. Until we can see Christ as the eternal Son of God who is the Beloved of God, we will think that God is focused on us. Until we see that God has an eternal purpose which He is carrying out in Christ, we will carry out our own purposes thinking we are doing something for God.

In the past the KKK thought God was on their side as they espoused racism. There are many now in the African American community that think God is on their side. Both are very wrong. God is fully centered upon Himself and His own glory. Man was created in the image of God and now man wants a god like himself. The fall occurred when our first parents wanted to be as God. That is the essence of sin and of our rebellion. We want to love ourselves and be focused on ourselves rather than God. We want God to be focused on us as we are focused on ourselves. As long as we can think that God loves us and serves us, we will love Him and serve Him. It is not until we see God as utterly glorious in His focus on His glory that we will see our sin, true repentance, and the Gospel.

The true Gospel of God makes men new creations (II Corinthians 5:17). These new creations are new creatures in Christ and have new desires and goals in life. These are creatures with new loves, comforts, and hopes. These are not like the old creatures that lived for themselves and loved only that which loved them, but their old hearts have been crushed and broken and now they have the very love of God in their souls. Now these souls love God for who He is and love His glory and honor rather than their own. Now these souls have pleasure in Him rather than in the pleasures of the world. These are souls that have had their hearts of pride and self crushed and broken and now there is room for Christ to make His home in them. Now Christ is Lord rather than self. Now that new soul is emptied of self and is humble and so Christ is truly at home there. All of these glorious teachings are based on a God who loves Himself within the Trinity rather than from a teaching that focuses on the love of man for self.

A soul that is content with being saved from hell and not being saved from self-love and pride does not understand the glory of God who loves Himself which is displayed and manifested in the face of Christ, and to those who have Christ they become instruments through which that glory is manifested. The soul that wants to retain its position of self-love and pride is one that believes that God loves him or her and will save him or her without changing his or her heart. That is a false gospel. The true Gospel is that there is hope that God will save based on grace which has its cause within the God who loves Himself. The true Gospel is that there is hope that this God will have mercy and will change the heart of the sinner so that it now loves Him rather than itself. This is the Gospel that looks upon the sinner as one that by nature is a child of wrath and dead in sins and trespasses. It looks upon the sinner and sees nothing but a mass of sin and idolatry. The Gospel of God and of the glory of God in the face of Christ is glorious in grace because it starts with nothing but sinners and God Himself. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)

Verse 4 is a very intriguing verse. The wording of the verse is a little different, but it shines with His glory. The text tells us that God is rich in mercy and all who know they need even a little mercy are happy to see that. But the verse goes on to say why God has mercy. It is “because of His great love.” This fits with our modern thinking that for some reason God loves human beings and has mercy on them. But so far we don’t have the answer as to why God loves man. When we add the words as the text adds the words (“with which He loved us”), something different is going on. God does not just love a human being and thus it fits the modern perspective of God being love and therefore loving man, but it tells us of this great love with which He loved us. This points to a love within the Trinity and then from that love God gives a love to man. This love is such that it takes dead sinners and makes them alive together with Christ. The purpose of all of this is so that “He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We can see in the Ephesians 2:4-7 text that God is love and from that love He loves human beings. But a human being is not loved and cannot know that s/he is loved until s/he is raised from the spiritual dead. That is because all of God’s saving love is in Jesus Christ. We must remember that in the Trinity the Father loves the Son. When this text tells us that God’s grace, kindness, and love are in Christ Jesus, we must not discount what that means. It means that human beings are loved in truth only when the love of God is set upon them and they are in Christ. In other words, the love of the Father is still in Christ and is still primarily for Christ. The text tells us the reason that He saves sinners and that is to manifest the riches of His grace in Christ. God’s primary motive in saving sinners is for the sake of Christ and to display the glory of His grace. In other words, His motives in salvation have to do with His own glory. His love in salvation is based on Himself in His triune being.

The Gospel of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of the kingdom, and the Gospel of grace are all the same Gospel and all teach us to trust in Christ alone. We are told many things about what it means to be justified by faith alone, but do we trust in the love of God in Christ alone in order to be saved by grace alone? Can God save sinners to the glory of His grace alone if His love for sinners is based on anyone or anything other than Himself? Can the sinner trust in Christ alone if the sinner believes that God’s love for him or her is based on anything but Christ? If all of God’s saving love is in Christ, and surely no one who believes the Gospel will argue anything different, then a person must be in Christ to be loved in a saving manner. Can this mean anything other than that God loves the Son and all that are united to the Son by faith? Does the Father love sinners and save them in a way where His saving love is not in Christ alone? You see, the Gospel is glorious and gives sinners hope in God only to the degree that it is based on and flows from God’s love for Himself. If it is based on sinners, there is not hope.

As we continue to discuss what the phrase “God is love” means, we must wake up to reality though some will think it is brutal. What some call God’s love in saving sinners is really nothing more than sentimental humanism. If God saved sinners from hell and did not give them a true love for Himself in their heart, then the new birth did not happen and sinners have wicked hearts and yet would be delivered from something called hell. What this ends up as is simply a false god and no true salvation. What we end up with is a group of sinners who love nothing but themselves and what is good for them ending up in heaven where all the focus is on God. They would absolutely hate it there. Saving sinners from hell is not the whole of true salvation. True salvation is being saved from a sinful heart which earns hell and being given a love for God in order to love Him. If we only have a God who is focused on doing external good for human beings, then there is nothing but hell left for us all.

When men and women want to be loved for who they are and what they are, they are cutting their own spiritual throats in their pride. How wicked it is to wish for God the Father to turn from His love for His Son to love human beings. How wicked it is for us to want the Son to focus His love on us rather than on the Father. This shows us that we don’t really want to be saved from sin, self, and pride, but we want to be saved with the wickedness of our sin of self and pride intact. Until we desire for God to save us from our self-love and pride, we don’t really want to be saved from sin and to love God in truth. Until we desire to be delivered from our self-love and pride our only desire is to be delivered from hell. Our desires to be delivered from hell also reflect our idolatry in many cases. If we desire to be delivered from hell even if God has to change and be idolatrous to do so, then we don’t love God and instead love ourselves at the expense of God.

The so-called “Gospel” in most of America today is about a god that loves human beings so much that he could not live without them. He wanted them so much that he sent his son to go and do something so that human beings would not have to suffer. That is not the Gospel of God, that is the gospel that sinners love while staying in their sins. They want to be delivered from the guilt of their sins and not the power of sin itself which resides in their hearts in self-love and pride. Oh sure they will go to church and start to live better in an outwardly moral way. Oh sure they will make some self-sacrifice because escaping hell is worth it. So we end up pleading with men and women who are in the bondage of self-love and pride to trust in Christ out of motives and intents that are no better than their self-love and pride afford. The true Gospel demands that men and women repent of their sin of self-love and pride. The true Gospel is that God changes the hearts of men and women from their self-love and pride and gives them a love for Himself and even shares His life of love with them.

It matters little whether people are Reformed or not in the academic or creedal sense if they do not see that God loves Himself in perfect love and the only hope of sinners is that God would change the hearts of sinners based on His love for Himself and give them that fountain of love that He has and will rejoice in for all eternity. When the evangelism of modern people who call themselves Reformed really has no difference with the Arminians and Pelagians except a little better theology, then we know that there is a problem. Most likely it is located in the area we are discussing now in what the phrase “God is love” means. If we do not believe and love the teaching that God loves Himself and our only hope is in that, then our foundation to understand the Gospel is weak at best. If people are going around evangelizing people based on a method that God loves them so much and now they must do something, they have missed the true Gospel. If we go to people to get them to believe something or to get them to make a choice based only on their self-love, we have a message for them that will leave them in their sins and perhaps harden them in their self-love and pride. We have given them a false gospel and not the Gospel of God.

I hope that it has become obvious that the teaching that God loves Himself has important and vital ramifications for all theology and of life. It is not just something we can tack on here and there, it is utterly vital to all of Christianity. As we have seen in previous posts, it is this understanding of God which helps us to understand grace in its beauty and glory. It is this understanding of God which alone allows for a perfectly sinless Savior and so a true Savior. It is this teaching alone that gives the sinner any true hope of being delivered from self and pride and so to deny self and go to Christ. Self-love and pride will never move a sinner to anything more than self-love and pride. Self-love will never cast out self-love and pride only blinds us to our pride. We must have a triune God who loves Himself so much that He sent His Son to deliver us from hell and from the bondage of self-love and pride. That same Beloved Son lives in His people by love and faith. That same Son gives and is grace itself.

When people say the phrase “God is love,” it appears to me they believe that since God is love, then God must love human beings and themselves. Even Reformed people write and speak like that. But what is this but a man-centered view of God? While it is a fact that “God is love,” we must deal with what that this statement means. A man-centered view of God just assumes that because God is love then He must love human beings and, of course, me. We must fight this tendency to view God and His glory from man-centered ways and motives. We make many assumptions based on deeply held presuppositions that if God is love then He must love all human beings and then we assume that we know what love is based on man-centered views. To put it bluntly and perhaps even callously, what can pass as theology in our world today, and in particular the discussion of the love of God, is an abomination to God and is an idol to human beings. Our views of the love of God have not been developed from a study of Scripture and of the character of God, but from and by the depths of darkened hearts that interpret everything by self-love. In our teaching, writing, and preaching on the love of God we have exchanged the glory of God for something made in our own image. Though we have claimed to know God, we have not honored Him and have been given over to futile speculations and so our foolish hearts have been darkened and we have become fools while professing to be wise (Romans 1:18-23). We have suppressed the truth of who God is by distorting His love and so we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and have ended up in worship of ourselves rather than God (Romans 1:25).

It is utterly preposterous to determine what it means for God to be love by what it means for a fallen human to think he is loved. Even worse, it is a vicious and wicked form of idolatry. It is a wicked thing for a human being to make himself the standard of love for another human being, but when we make ourselves the standard of love for God we have just committed a sin that is beyond human expression or comprehension. We are so blinded by our self-love and our pride that we have made human beings the standard for God’s love and then we try to have as our standard that same god. It is exactly what the Pharisees did in other ways. They saw the standards of God and then moved them to where they were hard to keep but still attainable. We have done the same thing with the love of God. We have changed it to something we can obtain by our own effort and in our own strength. This is simply to say that we have lowered the character of God to make it more like ourselves. It is also to say that when we think of love in a way that is contrary to the character of God, we are vicious in our idolatry.

The only standard for the love of God is His love for Himself. To say that “God is love” according to the Bible is to say that within the triune God there is perfect and infinite love. Was God love from all eternity before He created human beings? Is God love now while untold numbers of people suffer His wrath? Will God be love in eternity while untold numbers suffer His just and perfect wrath for all eternity? If we use the standard of human beings to measure His love, then we will not understand what is really going on and we will not understand love at all. God is love and is perfect in that love for all eternity because He exists in perfect love for Himself as triune and He cannot change from that perfect love because He is life itself and is so immutably.

When we move the focus of God’s love from Himself to human beings, the focus and core of Reformed theology and all of theology has changed as well. The doctrines of God, salvation, of Christ and everything else will have changed. When Christ went to the cross, was His main motive and intent out of love for the Father or out of love for human beings? What is the Greatest Commandment? If Christ went to the cross out of love for human beings then He sinned and no one is saved. Instead of Christ hanging on the cross with a primary love for human beings, He had to have been on the cross out of perfect love for the Father or He was not a perfect sacrifice. This is not to deny that He loved sinners and gave Himself for them, but we must understand that His focus was not primarily on sinners or we end up with an idolatrous Savior, which is no Savior at all.

As we begin to grapple with what the phrase “God is love” really means, we must never back off from insisting that the meaning must be obtained from God’s love for Himself within the Trinity. We must also never back off from the doctrine of human depravity and know that the proud in heart are an abomination to God and that He will not dwell with the proud. All human beings are born in sin and are proud in heart and are at enmity with God. Unless God loves Himself within the Trinity there is no hope for human beings. Unless God loves Himself within the Trinity there could be no possible way for God to have a motive toward sinners other than loathing or disgust. We must get real about the nature of the love of God and of ourselves if we are going to understand the grace of God and of the Gospel. If we don’t, we will look like modern America sliding into the pit, which in fact we are.

In the last post we started looking at what the phrase “God is love” might mean. We must also realize that any discussion of an attribute of God must also include His sovereignty and so all love must be sovereign. We must know that God only operates toward human beings by grace and so all of His love toward a human being is by grace. While there is much talk in the modern day of grace coming by works, Scripture tells us that if it is of works it is not of grace (Romans 11:6). In fact, if it is by works it is no longer of grace. Many Reformed people see that but still hang on to certain aspects of it in their quest for holiness, and appear to make grace contingent on holiness. What we forget or don’t understand is that it is grace that makes us holy in the first place rather than works. Rather than our works for holiness making us fit instruments of grace it is grace that makes us truly holy.

Romans 3:24 is a key to this thought: “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” In English the words do not convey the same thought as in the original. What the NAS translates as “gift” others have translated “freely.” But when God justifies freely, what does that mean? It does not have the idea of no cost involved, but the idea of being free of cause within human beings. In other words, for grace to be truly grace, the sinner has no cause within him or herself for God to show him or her grace. The cause for grace is within God Himself. It is only when there is no cause within the human being that grace can really be grace. In that case grace is totally glorious grace.

Ephesians 1:4-6 sets out the same concept in different language: “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” God chose people before the foundation of the world. Now what would move Him to choose people before the world began? Would it have been their holiness or good works eons before they were born? In contrast to that the text tells us that He chose “us” so “that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” Notice that His choice came before the holiness here. We were chosen to be holy rather than us being holy in order to receive something. In light of the fact that He chose some to be holy, it is in love that He predestined sinners through Christ to Himself. We can simply note at this point that saving love is always in Christ the true Beloved. But now notice that the text itself tells us why He did this. He did it “according to the kind intention of His will.” That is not the best of translations. It literally means that He chose according to His own good pleasure or to the good pleasure of His desire or will. Saving love is given according to His desire.

Predestination or choosing to holiness that is done out of love is according the good pleasure of the desire or will of God and the purpose for that is “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” The text mounts one phrase on top of another to get it through thick skulls and hard hearts that grace is always according to the purposes of God rather than the works or merit of man. The text then goes on to drive another nail in the coffin of the works or merit for grace crowd. That grace is “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” Grace is graciously given or given without cost or cause within those who receive it. Grace is given only in the Beloved which shows us that it is given us for His sake. The term “freely bestowed” in Ephesians 1:6 is not the same words in the original as Romans 3:24. In this text the word “freely” is from the same root as grace and has the idea of giving without cost or bestowing on free of cost. But to bestow it on freely does not mean simply without cost or merit, but as with true grace it has the idea of being given with the cause of it found in God alone.

It may appear as if the conversation has moved from “God is love” to the grace of God, but it has not. If all grace from God is from God as its cause and man cannot earn or merit grace from God in any way, then this is very instructive as to the nature of true love as well. All love from God comes to human beings by grace rather than it being earned or merited. If love comes by grace and rather than something the human being has done, then why are we loved and what is the basis for the love of God? The basis for the love that God gives human beings by grace is His own love for Himself. The causes of grace and of love are from within the triune God rather than from the human being. In order for grace to be truly grace, the cause for it must be from within God and not man. The cause of love, therefore, can only be found in God rather than anything man is or has done. When we think of what it means for God to be love, therefore, we must take into account that His love is such that it is moved from within the Trinity rather than anything human beings are or have done. In order to receive the love of God, then, we must be broken from any hope or merit within ourselves. Anything less is to base it on ourselves rather than God alone.

As we go on in this line of thought, in the background we should keep Reformed theology in mind. No matter how pious it sounds and no matter how biblical we are in the sense of being in line with scholarly Reformed theology, we must remember that the heart of Reformed theology must be the heart of what is biblical. If we do not have at the heart of our theology, even if it is orthodox, the biblical God, then we have an idolatrous theology. A theology that agrees with orthodox confessions by the letter can still be idolatrous if we have a different God than found in the Bible and by the authors and signers of the confessions. The God of the Bible is supreme in all that He does and is all about His own glory in love to Himself as triune. Regardless of our orthodoxy and confessions, if we have a God that is focused on human beings and His love is determined by how He behaves toward them, then we have a god that is an idol rather than the biblical God.

With the previous paragraph in mind, could it be that the massive paradigm shift that has occurred within Christianity as a whole and Reformed thinking specifically has moved dramatically with regards to what love means and what it means for God to be love? What does “God is love” really mean? We see that on church signs and we hear it over and over, but many things are assumed by that statement. In fact, there is a massive theology necessary to sustain the statement as it relates to the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture. The statement is certainly biblical, but it is also a statement that can be massively heretical depending on what one means by it. In fact, all liberals who have any belief in God at all would agree that God is love. But they would mean something entirely different by it than a conservative believer. But then the modern conservative believer would mean something entirely different than Jonathan Edwards and others would have meant.

The more I reflect on the statement “God is love,” the more I see how important it is to be clear on what it does mean. If we are man-centered or even think of ourselves as God-centered (where God has a focus on man), we will think of that statement, with its corresponding theology, in a far different way than one who thinks of God being God-centered. The idea of God and His love will naturally have a heavy weight of influence on the way we think of the Gospel and what it means for God to love a human being. The idea of God and His love influences the way we go about doing anything in life. In other words, if we are wrong on what the statement “God is love” means, then we go way off the path in many other beliefs as well. If in fact one vital part of God is that “God is love,” then if we have that wrong we are at the very least very close to a different idea of the true God. If the way we think of “God is love” has a great influence on why we do evangelism and missions, we must get this right. If this has a lot to do with how we view ourselves and other human beings, then this is something we must get right.

But the statement “God is love” seems so self-evident that this has to be an easy statement to deal with. How could we be wrong on something so simple and clear? But we must always remember that we are fallen human beings. As fallen human beings we do not see the truth of God with any degree of clarity at all apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also true that what we do see we want to distort and suppress. If we think of the love of God as something self-evident because we think we know what love is, we are terribly wrong on the issue. We must force ourselves to the reality of the issue and that is that Scripture must teach us the true nature of love and that the character of God is what determines what love is rather than our fallen minds and natures.

If it is true that fallen humans suppress the truth of God and trade the glory of God for a lie, why do we think that the love of God (essential to God) is something that is easy to understand and easy to accept? An example would be helpful at this point. When perfect love came and walked on earth, He did nothing that was not in accordance with the perfect love of God and that was not an expression of perfect love. Yet He was mocked, persecuted, and then killed. We must understand that fallen man hates God and therefore hates true love. We are terribly deceived if we think that by being loving we can talk a fallen man into changing his mind about God. Fallen men hate the true God of love whenever they see it or hear of it. We are greatly mistaken if we think that we can present the love of God in its true form and fallen man will love it. It is a sign that our generation has fallen far away from the truth of God when no one gets mad at us when we talk of the love of God. It is a sign that our preaching is really at odds with the truth of God when unregenerate men will hear us gladly without some hostility. Oh, some will say, we just need to be more gracious. Perhaps that is another word that we have linked with grace and then with love. Perhaps it is just an excuse to be nice without the true love that flows from the true God. Perhaps we should go to Scripture on our knees asking God to show us Himself and therefore what true love is.

In history the Reformed have taught a lot on and about prayer. Today we think of prayer as consisting of a bit of praise to God for what He has done for us and then asking for more things that He can do for us. But notice that when we praise God for what He has done for us, we are very centered upon ourselves. When we ask for more things that He will do for us, we are again asking Him to do things centered on self. In prayer it seems as if all the selfish things of the heart will arise and plead for God to give it to them. This selfishness and self-centeredness are given religious expression and even said to be a good and holy thing as long as it is “prayer.” We have sanctioned selfishness and pride within the Church in the name of prayer. Let us hear the words of Stephen Charnock on this matter of prayer being an expression of our self-centeredness and practical atheism:

“When we entertain a high opinion of ourselves, and act for our own reputes, we dispossess God from our own hearts and while we would have our fame to be in every man’s mouth, and be admired in the hearts of men, we would chase God out of the hearts of others, and deny his glory as a residence anywhere else, that our glory should reside more in the minds than the glory of God; that their thoughts should be filled with our achievements more than the works and excellence of God…It is evident, in performing duties merely for a selfish interest; making ourselves the end of religious actions, paying a homage to that, while we pretend to render it to God…Things ordained by God may fall in with carnal ends affected by ourselves; and then religion is not kept up by any interest of God in the conscience, but the interest of self in the heart; we then sanctify not the name of God in the duty, but gratify ourselves; God may be the object, self is the end; and a heavenly object is made subservient to a carnal design… in the actual aims men have in their duties. In prayer for temporal things, when we desire health for our own case, wealth for our own sensuality, strength for our own revenge, children for the increase of our family, gifts for our own applause; as Simon Magus did the Holy Ghost; or, when some of those ends are aimed at, this is to desire for God not to serve himself of us, but to be a servant to our worldly interest, our vain glory, the greatening of our names… when pardon of sin is desired only for our own security from eternal vengeance; sanctification desired only to make us fit for everlasting blessedness; peace of conscience, only that we may lead our lives more comfortably in the world; when we have not actual intentions for the glory of God, or when our thoughts of God’s honor are overtopped by the aims of self-advantage… how is it with our confessions of sin? Are they not more to procure our pardon, than to shame ourselves before God, or to be freed from the chains that hinder us from bringing him the glory for which we were created; or more to partake of his benefits, than to honor him in acknowledging the rights of his justice? Do we not bewail sin as it hath ruined us, not as it opposed the holiness of God?”

We can see from these words of Charnock what idolatry it is for man to have himself as his highest motive in prayer. When we pray and our desire is for ourselves rather than God, though indeed we might have some fleeting thoughts of God in the so-called prayer, we are in the midst of idolatry and call it religious duty. We should know that it is the height of arrogance and sin to pray in an effort to use God for our own selfish intents and motives. We should know that in prayer as in all of life we are to do all to the true glory of His name and we are to love Him with all of our beings while we pray and in the intents and designs of the prayer. Could it be that in the “prayers” of the professing Church we see idolatry and self-love as much if not more than anywhere else?

Instead of the focus of prayer being asking God for things for our own purposes, we are to pray in His name and for the sake of His name. In other words, true prayer is when the soul of a human being loves God above itself and loves itself only for the sake of His name and begins to plead with God for the sake of His own name. After all, we are to love Him more than ourselves. After all, if we loved Him more than ourselves and ourselves only for His sake, we would pray for all that we prayed for in order that His glory would be manifested. If a holy prayer is only the prayer that is truly out of love for Him and for His glory, then what is God’s intent for prayer? Is prayer a way for God to show how focused He is on human beings or the way for human beings to manifest how focused they are on God? Could it be that human beings in true prayer are really signs of changed hearts so that their prayers are really the breathings forth of God’s love for His own glory? Our prayers themselves are to be God-centered in all ways and in that they show union with God and His own centeredness upon Himself. Even in (perhaps especially so) our prayers we are to show the glory of God’s focus on and love for Himself. If not, we do it for pride and self.