The Love of God Displayed in Christ

July 1, 2008

It is simply an awesome and yet wonderful and utterly glorious thing to meditate on God’s love for Himself. In one sense it is taking a spiritual stroll into the very glories of the Godhead. If it is true that by definition and biblical revelation the one God is triune, then we need to understand how He operates within the Trinity as far as revelation will take us. Holy Scripture is the revelation of the mind and love of God and yet it is also the revelation of all of the character of God. When we read John 14:6 and are told that we cannot go to the Father but through the Son, we usually nod our heads and go on with life. But we must deal with Scripture with prayer and spiritual understanding. A text cannot be understood by looking at the Greek and a few commentaries. We must seek the Lord to give us understanding. After all, Christ is still our Prophet and the Holy Spirit is still the One that gives illumination.

Can we understand any aspect of the Holy God who exists as triune except how He says He reveals Himself? He tells us that He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. John 1:17-18 has some very clear teachings in this matter: “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” The text itself tells us that grace and truth came into our reality (realized = reality) in Jesus Christ. In other words, as we look back at John 1:14 the body of Christ was the very dwelling place of the glory of God’s grace and truth. The glory of God’s grace and truth are recognized in their reality in Jesus Christ. The grace of God was shown in concept in the Old Testament as it looked to the New Testament reality, but in Christ the very grace of God came and dwelt among men. In fact, the grace of God dwells in the hearts of men as the life of God who is Jesus Christ. In other words, if we want to know the grace of God we must see the glory of that grace shining in Jesus Christ.

With that in mind, let us look at John 14:6: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.'” In light of the fact that Christ is spoken of as the very outshining of the glory of God (radiance of in Hebrews 1:3) we know we cannot understand God Himself without beholding Him in the shining forth of His glory. We must look at this in terms of the Trinity. The Son is the very Word of God and is God Himself. A word is what we use to express ourselves or our thoughts with. Christ is the expression of the glory of God. Therefore, if we want to see God we must go to Him through the Son. The Gospel consists of the glory of God in Christ: “in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (II Corinthians 4:4). The Gospel is termed in this verse as the gospel of the glory of Christ. But what is that glory? “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). The Gospel is the glory of Christ because the knowledge of the glory of God shines in the face of Christ and is only seen in Christ.

There is no Gospel apart from seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ. There is no Gospel apart from seeing the Gospel as the Gospel of the glory of Christ. The glory of the Gospel is not about how great man is or about what God has done for man, but the glory of the Gospel is all about the glory of God as within the Godhead. It is in light of this that we see John 14:6 as something far more than a mere proposition. This text tells us that the way to the Father is through the Son and there is no other way to see and love the Father but through the Son. This text tells us that there is no other place that we can discover the truth about God but in Christ where the glory of His truth shines. Jesus Christ is not just something about the truth, but He is truth itself. He did not only come to give us propositions about the truth, but He came as the shining forth of the glory of God who is truth. This text also tells us that Christ is the life. It is not just that there is life and Jesus tells us about life, but He is eternal life itself. The person who has Christ has the life and the person who does not have Christ does not have the life.

I John 1:1-3 is clear that Christ is the Word of life and that life was manifested and it is that life that is eternal life. In some way, then, we have no way of understanding God except through the Truth Himself and receiving life Himself. Christ is the very truth of God and is eternal life Himself. If God loves, then His love is displayed in Christ. But since God is love His love is never apart from His love for Himself. All that God does in displaying Himself is His love for the Son. God loves to display His grace and truth in salvation but that is because Christ is His grace and truth in reality and on display. There is no Gospel apart from God’s love for Himself which is to say apart from His love for the Son and shining His glory through the Son and putting the Son on display. The Gospel is not primarily about human beings, it is about the love of God for Himself and that love displayed in Christ.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

God-Centered Love a Comfort For Believers

June 27, 2008

Being able to see how it is that God loves Himself within the Trinity as His only true love and all that He loves comes from Himself teaches us what grace really is. This is the teaching that should give us confidence before God. This allows us to seek His face for Himself because it is God in us giving us a love for Himself and that is true grace. Let me give some quotes from Jonathan Edwards that make this point so powerfully and beautifully:

“Our love to God is given to us by God, and is the fruit of His love to us; but God’s love to us is originally from Himself. If God had not first loved us and, as a fruit of His love had not inserted a principle of love unto us, we never would have loved Him. Our love to God is a great gift, and a fruit of infinite kindness; but God needed not to have love inserted into His heart for those whom he loves; it was there from eternity, and was of Himself.”

“Our love to God is for His worthiness and is infinitely less than His worthiness; but God loves us without worthiness. He loves you with your infinite unworthiness. Our love is not only attracted and drawn by God’s worthiness of our love, but after all it is infinitely short of any equality to the loveliness of the being beloved. But God’s love is not only not attracted by any loveliness in us to attract it; but it overcame infinite repulsion.”

“We love God because He has won us by His love and kindness to us, whereas His love has no motive out of Himself. God’s love is not only the cause that gave our love to God, but ’tis the good or motive of it. We don’t love God without an expectation of infinite benefit by Him, whereas God loves us without expectation or possibility of any benefit by us. When a godly man sets his love on God it is as all his happiness and as his Chief Good, because he sees Him to be the Fountain of happiness, the only happiness fit for him. But God’s happiness doesn’t consist in man, but in Himself, which shows how infinitely more disinterested God’s love to man is than is man’s love to God.”

What we see from these quotes of Edwards is in one sense the real comfort of all who love God in and through Christ. God does not love us based on our love for Him or our works for Him, but He loves us based on His love for Himself or His love for Christ. God beholds His glory in Christ and works love for Himself in us so that He may behold Himself and the shining forth of His glory in Christ in His people. God looks upon His people with infinite pleasure because He beholds His own glory in them. Our love for Him is really His love for Himself that He has worked in the hearts of His people.

As we reflect on this, we get the real idea of what perseverance of the saints looks like. It is not that I am to trust in myself and work harder in order to keep myself saved, but it is God in Christ giving me faith in Himself and love for Himself. It removes our sight from self to Christ. This is all a gift of God and is His grace because all of His motives are from Himself. He does not love a human being because of anything in the human other than Himself. This is of unspeakable comfort to the true believer who trusts in Christ alone. This should help us to understand grace as the love of God which is shown to human beings based on God rather than based on human beings. It shows us how God can show grace and why He shows it. As Ephesians 1:6 puts it, “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”

This also instructs us in the way of evangelism. We must always teach people that they must be broken of their pride and of their self-sufficiency in order to trust Christ. A person must learn to trust in Christ by grace alone which teaches us and them that salvation is totally apart from anything they have done or have merited. A so-called “gospel” teaching us that Christ died for men because they had value is another gospel in all ways. It is not a Gospel of grace alone and it is not the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The teaching that all God does is from a love for Himself as triune is the only teaching that sustains the biblical and Reformed Gospel of grace alone and of “to God alone be the glory.” The love of God for Himself, therefore, is the real foundation for all true grace, which is the foundation of the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. It is in Christ that we see the glory of God and it is Christ in us who manifests that glory through us by grace. True and pure grace can alone give true and pure assurance. It is this teaching that removes all hope from ourselves and from that emptiness of self one is enabled to trust in God alone because He saves based on Himself alone as triune with nothing from us.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

The Seeking Church, Part 1

June 26, 2008

It would be quite easy to continue using Scripture to show in place after place with example after example the true state of the professing Church in America and in other places as well. However, at some point it becomes necessary to start looking at how change must take place if it is going to take place at all. As noted with philosophers and theologians, it is easy to pick another position apart. It is far different and far harder, however, to set out a positive position that answers the questions of others. Quite simply and directly, apart from God changing the hearts and minds of the professing Church today there is no hope. Our problem is that God has turned His face from us and has turned us over to the power of our sins. We have become blind to the true state of spiritual things and we have replaced true spiritual life with activities and programs. The only thing that can truly change the professing Church is God Himself. In trying to answer the question of how God will turn His face to the professing Church and bless Her with Himself is a formidable task. The answer is first from Scripture and then secondly from history. The only way that God will turn His face to the Church is if the Church becomes a praying Church.

In one sense you could imagine a preacher saying that in a sermon. The very next thing would then be a series of things to do. There would be prayer meetings and other things to do. I am not saying that prayer is the only issue at hand, but I will look at how prayer can demonstrate to us what the real problem is. It is quite true that God will not return to the professing Church until it is truly praying. But is prayer just going before God and asking Him things? If so, all we need to do is to spend enough time asking God for things then all things will be set right. The absurdity of that view should need no real answers, but in fact that is where we are in America right now. We have arrived at the point where we think of prayer as simply spending time with our eyes closed and our tongues saying things to God. Remember Hannah in the Old Testament (I Samuel 1:9-18). She spoke in her heart but her lips moved. Eli thought she was drunk but she was lifting a burdened heart to the Lord. This is more of a picture of prayer. In order to pray truly we must obtain burdened hearts before the Lord. True prayer is from the heart above all. In other words, our hearts must become broken from self and burdened for the things of the Lord. While it is true that the professing Church must begin to pray, it must realize what true prayer is before it can begin to pray. Hearts must be changed in order to see the true God and to see the true nature of the heart before God.

The answer in practice is certainly not easy. It will require a self-sufficient people to repent of its self-sufficiency in order to trust in His self-sufficiency. It will require a proud people who have hidden their pride beneath the guise of humility to be broken for and from their pride. It will require a selfish people to repent of their selfishness and live for God rather than themselves. It will require a self-centered people to repent of their self-centeredness to become God-centered in all ways. It will require a people who worship at the throne of the self-god to repent of the self-god (themselves) in order to worship and serve the living and true God. It will require a people to quit thinking of the “church” in terms of buildings and think of it in terms of God’s real temple being the souls of human beings. It will require people to seek God in love rather than seeking to do things in their own wisdom and strength with His name attached. It will require people to repent of their human centered views of God and worship the one and true God-centered God. It will require people to repent of thinking of grace as God helping people and trust in God who does all things as moved and motivated by His own glory. It will require people to repent of their many and various idolatries in thinking that their prayers and other religious duties are needed by God and are pleasing to Him just because they do Him. God opposes the proud and all that is from their selfishness and pride even if it is their “prayers.” God is not pleased with anyone or anything other than Himself and His own glory. Human beings must wake up and realize who they are and who God is or true worship and true prayer is not possible. Humility is utterly necessary and not the kind that flows from the pens and pulpits in America today. The kind of humility that the Bible talks about is not a form of virtue that man works up, but instead is the emptiness of self and pride.

Let us look at some false kinds of prayer in an effort to examine our own hearts. After all, what we must realize is that if we are not praying from a humble heart seeking the true God in truth and love then we are not praying in a biblical manner seeking the biblical God. Prayer that flows from the brain that looks to form correct thoughts without true affections and love is not acceptable to God. Prayer that is for the fulfillment of our duty is not acceptable to God as performances of duty are not done out of love for God. The Pharisees were quite adept at performing their duty. What is different from our duties and those of the Pharisees? Ah, we say, but we are not legalists as they were. The very fact that we think our duty is acceptable to God should tell us that we are like the Pharisees. The fact that when we do our duty and find ourselves feeling good about ourselves or that a burden is gone because we have done our duty should set off the Pharisee alarm in our hearts. If we seek to “pray” in some way just to fulfill a duty and are satisfied in some way when the duty is done, that shows us that we are like the Pharisees in that we have prayed for reasons of self and have not sought God at all in the so-called prayer. All duty prayer (though hidden and disguised) demonstrates to us that we are not praying out of love but instead we are fulfilling a duty and as such we are modern Pharisees in this way.

Let us be as plain as we can be. Until we are seeking the Lord from the desires of the heart for Himself and not just the things He does for us, we are only seeking ourselves in prayer. II Chronicles 7:14 shows us the true pattern of prayer. It shows us that there must be humility (emptying of self & filling of Christ) in order to pray and that true prayer is seeking the face of God. If our prayers are only seeking God for wealth and health, we are doing nothing but seeking ourselves. Even if we are asking things with the right words, the heart of the matter is the heart. Without the heart seeking the face of God in prayer we are doing nothing but seeking ourselves. What this means is that we can organize prayer meetings until the buildings are full every minute of every day of the year and not one true prayer might be offered. We can have many formal prayer meetings that last the entire night, but not one true prayer might be offered. We have to face up to reality that true prayer requires a true heart in order to pray. The call to prayer, then, is also a call for people to begin to examine the motives and intents of the heart.

As we begin to examine the motives and intents of the heart, let us face the brutal reality of the prayer meeting of the professing Church. Our proud and selfish hearts want to deny the obvious, but let us not lie to God and ourselves. First of all there is really very little prayer in the corporate meetings of the local church. After all, we only have so much time and we must get on with the important things. Within the local church there is little or perhaps no prayer at all. We have gotten to the point where we want our services to run seamlessly and we want people to be entertained. There may be a brief time to offer up a short “prayer,” but to really pray would ruin the flow of the service. The few places that have what is called “prayer meetings” have little time for prayer by the time the study is finished and the gossip and all the prayer requests have ended. What usually happens is that words are offered for the physical problems of people and God is not truly sought. To put it bluntly, that is not prayer at all. True prayer is seeking the presence of God Himself from the heart. Anything else is not prayer at all.

But there can be flowery words offered in prayer. There can be intelligent words offered up in prayer when people know enough correct theology or verses of the Bible to repeat. But that is not prayer that is earnestly seeking the Lord. Let us be honest with our own hearts. The Pharisees prayed in order to be honored by men. Let us not imagine that we have never done that. We can also pray in a way in order to get people to be pleased with us or to say amen to our prayer. We can have prayer meetings because we want to be conservative and we can go to prayer meetings in order to fulfill our duty or to show others we are serious about prayer. But do we truly pray? Do we really seek God in prayer from the desires and motives of the heart? Ah, now that is a different story.

Let us go again to the motives and intents of the heart in prayer. Do we really desire to know God and to be in His real presence when we pray? What is our real intent when we offer words in prayer? Be real and be honest as we all are plagued by a deceptive heart. If you pray for the Lord to show you the real intents and motives of your heart in prayer, do you really desire for Him to do what your words ask for? You know the words, but do you really want to see your own heart? Could it be that massive numbers of people are deceived about what prayer is and about what they offer up as prayer simply because they lie to themselves about their own so-called prayers? How will God return to a people who are in darkness about the darkness of their own hearts when they have no desire to really see the sin of their own hearts (which He hates)? How is it that we think God will bless us with Himself when we love sin in our hearts over Him and prefer deception in our hearts over His truth?

Let us be honest with God and with ourselves. Most of our prayers are really the prayers of self and are for self. We want to keep up the illusion that we are holy and that we are seeking God. We blame the world and carnal Christians when the real problem is that we are liars to ourselves about our own hearts and want to keep up some sort of pretense before others and God. Until we want God bad enough to have the truth of our own wicked hearts opened up to us, we will not seek God in truth. The place for each minister and for each person to start is brutal honesty about his or her own heart. You cannot fool God so don’t try. He is not fooled now and He will not be fooled on judgment day. Until we are willing to have our hearts exposed, we will not seek God in true prayer.

Posted in The Seeking Church | Leave a Comment »

How God’s Love is in the Believer

June 25, 2008

Some enormous claims have been made in the last two posts. First, we have seen that there is no love apart from being born of God and knowing God (I John 4:7-8). Second, the love that a believer has from God is really the love of God for Himself and He gives that to the believer by dwelling in the believer and sharing His love for Himself with the believer. In this post I would like to develop that thought some more.

Last time (The Love of God in the Believer) the effort was to show that love is really God Himself as triune. We saw this from I John 4:12 where it is God Himself who abides in the believer and so perfects His love in the believer. I John 4:13 then goes on with the same thought: “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” Jonathan Edwards wrestled with this text and came to the conclusion that God abiding in us and perfecting His love in us (v. 12) can only be understood if we understand the Holy Spirit as the love of God. This has caused some people to stumble in some way, but the alternative position is far worse. It is said that if we believe that the Spirit is the love of God, then we have denied that the Spirit is a divine person by implication. On the other hand, if we deny that love is the Spirit of God we have asserted that love is something greater than God Himself and that God gives things other than Himself as the greatest good. It is not necessary to deny that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person to assert that He is the love of God. All that is necessary is to understand that God is love and that He is love as triune. We know from Scripture that it is through the Spirit that He pours out His love in the heart (Romans 5:5) and it is only by the Spirit that the fruit of love is worked in us (Galatians 5:22). We can simply say that the Spirit in some way is the very outflow of the love of God for Himself and it is the Spirit who works the very love of God for Himself into the souls of human beings.

I John 4:15 tells us of a true confession of Christ: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” A true confession of Christ is in the context of love here. God abides in the person that confesses (confess means to speak the same as) and we know from v. 12 and v. 16 that when God abides in a person the love of God abides in that person. To speak the same of Christ as the Father speaks of Christ is to speak of Christ as the beloved Son of God that is loved above all by the Father. It is far more than just saying some words about an intellectual agreement one has with some historical facts. Verse 16 then goes on to say: “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

I John 4:16 is an enormous verse with an enormous meaning for the text. The problem is that there is a better way to translate the verse. In the first part of the verse it tells us that “we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.” The word “for” in that verse is really the preposition for “in.” That word is translated as “in” many, many times. It is not that the word cannot be translated as “for,” but it is a theological translation rather than just a grammatical one. In other words, if we read the verse like this we see how it fits the context much better: “we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us.” In other words, we know the love of God by what it is doing in us, and even more than that we know the love of God in us because it is God in us. We see that in the next part of the verse: “God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” The second part of the verse only makes sense if we change the translation from the first part or the verse from “for” to “in.” We know we are believers because the love of God dwells in us and that shows us that God Himself dwells in us. In light of 4:7-8, then, it tells us that we are true believers because only true believers are born of God and know God and therefore have the love of God in them.

This is one of the major teachings of I John. It tells us that the believer is truly a believer and that a believer does certain things and does not do certain things because of the nature of true love. The nature of true love is not just that God gives something to people, but that God gives Himself to people and true love behaves in certain ways with certain motives because true love is God Himself in the soul of the true believer and the life of the believer is Christ in the soul, which is nothing else but eternal life Himself. Christ Himself is the Word of life (I John 1:1) and is the life of God manifested in the soul of human beings who confess Him as Lord. Christ is the life of God shining out His glory in the world and in the souls of true believers. Christ has purchased the Spirit for believers and they have the love of God in their souls. Believers have God as triune dwelling in their souls and so have the life and love of God in them. This explains I John 4:19 better: “We love, because He first loved us.” Indeed we love because He set His love on us and now He as love abides in us and shares His love with us.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

The Love of God in the Believer

June 23, 2008

In the last post (A God-Centered View of God’s Love Changes Everything) we started an analysis of II Corinthians 5:14 in light of the fact that God loves Himself: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” One question about the text that remained unanswered had to do with what the love is that controls a human being. In one sense the question can be seen as derived from other points, but we will try to deal with that question in this post. The core issue has to do with God loving Himself and all that He loves must be for His own sake. The love that controls a human being is really the love of God for Himself dwelling in the human soul since the only true source of true love is God Himself. For a human being to have true love s/he must have received that love from God. But what is love itself?

To answer this question we must go straight back into the biblical teaching of God Himself who is love. We have seen that Scripture teaches that “God is love” (I John 4:8) and that the only person who truly loves is the believer who is born of God and knows God. So we know that God is love, but can it be true that love is God? At this point we must tread very carefully. Of course God is not what many people call love in our day and so at times it would be blasphemous to teach that God is love if we mean what many people mean by that phrase. However, we must also tread carefully if we deny that true love is God since Scripture does teach that God is love. We have seen that true love is triune by nature and God is the only source for true love. This is not to deny that there is much pseudo-love in the world that passes by the name of love, but the devil is always out to deceive. If love for God is true love, then we know that the devil will try to convince those who believe the lie (that they will be like God as in Genesis 3:5) that their love for themselves is true love. The devil will also try to convince people that they are the source and power of love themselves and if they will but make the proper choices they love. But Scripture teaches us that God is love and that only those who are born of God and know Him can truly love (I John 4:7-8).

We know that God loves Himself as triune and so all true love flows within the Trinity. We know that true love does what is best for another person and what is truly best is for a person to love God in accordance with the Greatest Commandment. So we must ask a few questions of God. What can God give to a person that is the very best for them? Can God give a person something other than Himself that is not the very best? Can God give a person something out of love if that something is not Himself? We can begin to get the picture, but let us look even deeper. Scripture teaches us that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. What is it that the Father gives or does that shows He loves the Son? What is it that the Son gives or does that shows He loves the Father? Surely love between the Father and the Son is something more than just having a feeling for each other. If a man can have no greater love for a friend than to lay down his life, then that teaches us that true love is giving of our very selves. How can we even think that the love of the Father and of the Son for each other is something less than giving themselves to each other because they alone are what is best?

In some way, then, we must understand the Holy Spirit as the one that the love of the Father and the Son flows through. But even more, in some way the Father gives Himself through the Spirit and the Son gives Himself through the Spirit. We can now understand Romans 5:5 better: “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” In some way the Holy Spirit as the love of God gives us a love for God because that is God’s best gift and that is giving sinners a love for Himself or bringing them to where they share in His love for Himself. It is the fruit of the Spirit to work love in the hearts of His people (Galatians 5:22). We can do nothing apart from Christ (John 5:4-5), which teaches us that the believer as the branch can do nothing but what comes from the vine. The believer has no love and is controlled by no spiritual love but what is received from Christ as indeed the branch receives from the vine.

The claims that have just been made are enormous. The claim is that when God sets His love on a human being His love must be understood as giving Himself and not just something of Himself because He gives what is best. We see this in I John 4:12: “12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” The believer is told that if s/he loves other believers it is God who abides in us. It is not just that the love of God dwells in us, but God abides in us and it is His love that is perfected in us. Thus we see that only believers love. That is because only believers have God Himself who is love dwelling in us.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

A God-Centered View of God’s Love Changes Everything

June 21, 2008

It is hard for our minds and hearts to wrap around the thought that God loves Himself within the Trinity and that is His only true love. All other love must flow from God’s love for Himself. This is quite a different way of looking at things than is done in the modern day. We can look at a familiar passage and see the difference this view makes. II Corinthians 5:14: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Now we normally think of the love of Christ as being the love that Christ has for a person and the person recognizes that and that is what controls him or her. We think of it as Christ having such a depth of feeling for us that we are controlled by His depth of feeling and so return certain feelings in such a way that it controls our behavior. Still others might say that His love at the cross was such that He died for all and we should be governed by His love He had for human beings at the cross.

Now, let us examine the thought of this text a little more. As we read and think through this text, we can see how we have just supposed certain things and so end up with a man-centered interpretation of Christ in the passage. We have supposed that the love of Christ was primarily for me. We have supposed certain things about what love is. Did love for man control Christ when He was in human form or did love for the Father control Him? We know that Christ had to have loved the Father perfectly in all things in accordance with the Greatest Commandment or He would not have been without sin and there would be no perfect sacrifice. What love of Christ is it, then, that controls a person? Indeed it is true that man is to do all he does being controlled by the love of Christ, but that does not answer what the focus of Christ’s love is. It also does not answer what the very essence of love is either.

It is easy from a man-centered perspective to sit back and think of the love of Christ being the feelings of Christ toward me and then living based on that. After all, since man thinks he is so wonderful and loves himself it is not a huge leap for him to think that God thinks man is wonderful and loves him in the same way that man loves man. But does the Bible speak of love that way? In Romans 5:5 we read this: “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” What is the only reason that a man has true love? It is because the Holy Spirit is in that person’s heart. This sounds like a shocking statement, but nevertheless it is biblical. The only people who truly love are believers. Only believers truly love anyone. I John 4:7-8 is very clear on 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.” This text tells us why we should love one another. The first reason given is that love is from God. The second reason which is built on the first reason is that all those who love are born of God and know God. The third reason is that the one who does not love does not know God. The fourth reason is that God is love.

As we behold these verses in I John 4:7-8, it would be very easy to run from the obvious meaning. People throw out many illustrations to show that unbelievers do love in some way. Only true believers truly love because only true believers know God who is love. Only true believers have access to the only source of true love and that source is the God who is love. Yet those who are born of God and know God are those who love because they have the love of God poured out in their hearts. Okay, one might say, I can see that it is impossible to get around the obvious meaning of this text that John stated in the positive and in the negative. But how does that demonstrate that God loves Himself? All it shows is that God is the only source of true love and only those who are born of Him and know Him have true love.

But what we must remember is that God is triune. It is not just that He is a single and solitary individual living in the outer edges of the universe in love for Himself in a singular way, but He is triune. In other words, the God who is love is triune and so He lives in perfect love within the Trinity. To say that God is love is to say that as triune He lives in love for Himself. To say that God is self-sufficient is to say that God is sufficient within Himself to love Himself for all eternity without another being or anything else. Once we begin to focus the thoughts of the soul on what it means for God as triune to be love, it will change everything in terms of our worldview. It shows us that God does not need us to live in perfect love. It shows us that God is perfect in love when His love is for Himself and that the Greatest Commandment must in fact be a command to us to love Him as He loves Himself. It teaches us that we are only loved if in some way we are loved for His own sake. We must keep in mind that man is made in His image and believing man is renewed and/or regenerated when “the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4:24). In other words, when God looks upon human beings He sees Himself in some way. When He looks upon unbelievers who have fallen and who have the devil as their father He seems Himself abused and misused as the devil did. When He looks upon believers who are united to Christ He sees Himself because believers are one with Christ (Col 3:4). In other words, believers are loved for the sake of Christ.

At this point we can see the tremendous change this would make for the Gospel and sanctification. The Gospel is not primarily about God’s love for human beings, it is the love of the Father for the Son and of the love of the Son for the Father. All love for a person, therefore, is entirely of grace because there is no cause found in man whatsoever but all causes for it are found in God alone (Romans 3:23-25; Eph 1:6; 2:1-10). The Gospel is all about the glory of God in Christ (II Corinthians 4:4-6) rather than about the glory and wonder of man. I don’t have to wonder why God loved me, I can understand that all of His love is truly within Himself and all that He shows is for Himself and His own glory. It is enough to make people fall on their faces in utter adoration of Him who lives in perfect love as triune and shares His love for Himself with people in Christ. This is a person that is controlled by the love of Christ because it is the love of God shared by the triune God in a person that loves Christ. This is the life of God in the soul of man as Henry Scougal wrote.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

The Love of God and Evangelism

June 19, 2008

“Nothing is more common, and certainly nothing more fatal than self-deception. The number who are ruined by false views of religion is doubtless great even when compared with those who perish in avowed infidelity or careless indifference. And it is an act of kindness not less than an imperious duty to expose the delusions into which our fellow-men are liable to fall”

– Self-Deception by Jacob Helffenstein, reprinted by International Outreach.

This is a monumental statement made by a man written when things were better concerning biblical truth than they are now. We live in a day when it seems as if God has utterly abandoned us. We live in a day where much about religion still goes on but there is little of the true Christianity that is centered upon a God-centered God and therefore resides in the hearts and loves of a people in which the God of love lives and manifests Himself.

One sign that demonstrates our shallowness of theology and true views of God is how we practice evangelism. If we are doing evangelism with a God that is man-centered rather than a God that is God-centered, it will be man-centered and give a false view of God. We must remember that men must be turned from their sin of self-centeredness to one that is God-centered. If they only hear of a God that is man-centered, then they will never turn from themselves in reality. They will go from being self-centered in their outward sin to being self-centered in their religious practice. This is not a change of heart, it is just a change in practice while the heart remains in its enmity to God. The practice of evangelism in the modern day is focused on human beings and a man-centered view of God, which is for God to be man-centered. Evangelism, even among the professing Reformed, is done from a man-centered view. The biblical God is not in the heavens begging and pleading with men to make a choice for Him. We must go to the biblical God and ask Him to change our hearts.

In modern evangelism we think that by going to a human being and presenting some facts to the person and then asking the person to pray or make a choice is enough. Even people who profess to be Reformed have that as a basis for evangelism. It is abominable at best. It matters not the form of theology that is set out before people if they do not understand something of the true God. These people must know that they are opposed to God and are at enmity with Him and they need to have their hearts changed from being self-centered to loving God. They need to know that the only hope they have of having the love of God in them is if God puts it in them.

I am not asserting that we must teach each and every person that God loves Himself as His primary love. I am asserting that the truth of that must be behind the evangelism we do or we will practice a false evangelism. The goal of evangelism must be primarily out of love for God and the display of His glory and not the salvation of souls. This sounds terribly heretical to some, but if we do not love the glory of God more than people, we do not love the people in truth either. We are not going to human beings and trying to make God acceptable to wicked haters of God, we are going to tell them that they are dead in sin and that God alone can give them a new heart and save them. Even if we do not tell them that God is more concerned with His glory from His triune love for Himself than the whole world, we must operate on that basis. God does not need them and they are totally in need of Him.

Without the basis of the truth of God loving Himself within the Trinity we will not tell men what they need in order to be delivered from self-deception. If men continue to think that God’s love is all about them, they will never understand that they must have a new heart in order to love God and that He does this totally from grace. As long as men think that God loved them and sent His Son to die for them from a human-centered perspective they will not understand that God saves to the glory of His name and out of love for His Son. The man-centered teaching about the cross has led to a man-centered way of evangelism that leaves men in their self-centeredness and pride rather than seeing how opposed to God they really are and how badly they need grace for a new heart.

Modern evangelism teaches men that God so loved them that He gave His Son who made a great sacrifice and came to die for them. The Gospel is said and thought to be all about them. Some are moved by this because they think they have a great benefit by it and so they think they love God when in fact all their love is really for themselves. But until man repents from himself (self-love, pride, self-focus, self-motivation) and is turned to a true love for God man is not saved from the bondage of sin, the dominion of the devil, and the rule of his own heart. If God is so focused on man rather than Himself, then why can’t man be focused on Himself? Without a God-centered God we have no true Gospel and many are deceived. Many are ruined by a false gospel based on a false view of God who is focused on them rather than on Himself. This is true in Reformed circles as well.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

The State of the Church, Part 24

June 18, 2008

In the past several newsletters the effort has been to show the dismal state of the professing Church in America and perhaps beyond. This is not to say that there are not many outward things going on and perhaps pockets of spiritual life in a few places, but the effort has been to show that the congregations and ministers alike are under the judgment of God. The main evidence for this is that there seems to be very little to no seeking of the Lord for His sake. There is a lot of seeking the Lord in name for larger congregations and more money. There is a lot of seeking the Lord for financial and physical health. But the reality should break in upon us and we must begin to see that we are seeking the Lord for things rather than seeking the Lord for Himself. We are even seeking the Lord for spiritual things but even those seem to have been averted from what the Lord has intended for them to our selfish interests.

We see a picture of this in Philippians 2:19-21: “But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition. 20 For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. 21 For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.” This is a brutal text in terms of ripping the veil from the covering of American versions of Christianity. Paul wanted to send a man to the Philippians in order to teach them the Word of God and shepherd their souls, but he had no one available at the moment. Why is that? He had no one who would truly be concerned for the welfare of the people because the ones he knew about were those who sought the interests of self rather than of Christ.

How many men who want to be pastors today have so died to self-interests that they truly seek the spiritual welfare of the people and the interests of Christ? The so-called ministry has become about salaries and total packages. We now look for ministers who have are more like CEO’s who can run a business and get people in the door rather than those who seek the true welfare of the souls of the people. Of course those “CEO’s” want larger salaries and bigger perks to do the work. This type of situation is really a ministry sent from hell with the blessings of the devil rather than sent by Christ regardless of the numbers of people coming or the amount of the offerings. It is still seeking after the interests of self rather than the interests of Jesus Christ though we will offer words and statements that make it sound like we are after the interests of Christ. That is deception.

But what kind of minister do people desire today? They want someone who will make them feel good about themselves and who will not make them endure a long sermon or one that searches their hearts. They desire a minister who is moral and so they end up applying the qualifications of a minister like a Pharisee to make sure the man has been morally qualified since he was fed his formula. However, if we get beyond the outward qualifications do they really want a man that is sold out for the interests of Christ? If a man is focused on the interests of self he can be controlled in many ways. But a man that is sold out to Christ and is dead to the praise and honor of men is not a man that can be controlled by anyone other than Christ. That is a dangerous minister to the congregation that wants ease and comfort in the world. So congregations do not really want a man that is sold out to Christ though they think they may. A man like that is one that will not be hired or at least not for long.

What we are left with is a terrible picture. Ministers seek the things of self rather than the interests of Christ and the true spiritual welfare of the people. Congregations, though they might not admit it, really want a man given to the interests of self because a man like that will not make them uncomfortable and will give them essentially what they want. We can smile knowingly and point to the people down the street, but it is true of us all. Reformed ministers want to go to Reformed congregations because they think that they can preach Reformed teaching without being persecuted. Reformed congregations want Reformed ministers because they are comfortable with that type of teaching and it all goes under the guise of truth. But where is God? Reformed people no more want to have their hearts exposed than anyone else. Reformed ministers can preach what is intellectually Reformed and do so from self-interests as well. It is easy to stand up and preach and teach an intellectual doctrine and never really get to the heart. Oh, we may say words about the heart and tell people it must be from the heart, but if we never get beyond that we have only given lip service to the heart rather than exposing the heart for what it is before God. All sin comes from the heart and until we get to the source of the sin we have not exposed sin for what it is. If we reach the heart the people will get uncomfortable and that means we will get uncomfortable and will have complaints. It is much easier to be orthodox and moral and go on with the way things are rather than to deal with the hearts of the people. We simply must not offend anyone but Christ. After all, He will forgive us. Right?

We don’t like to see what is going on and we may not even believe it, but the spirit of the Pharisee is alive and well. It is not that we have to be just like the Pharisees in order to have the spirit of the Pharisee, but we can be like them in some ways. The Pharisees were religious in all that they did out of the interests of self. They did all in the name of God but they did not really do what they did out of a true love for God. Perhaps the deepest issue with the Pharisee was his devotion to self and the effort to have self honored while doing so in the name of God.

One of the things brought out in the last newsletter was the lack of true prayer in the churches and as individuals. What is at the root of hearts that lack true prayer? It is the heart of a focus on the interests of self rather than the interests of Christ. We see many in our day praying for wealth and riches and we have little trouble identifying those people who are really praying for self. But of course they will say that they want God to be honored and for God to be seen as great when He gives them all of the stuff that they are asking for. We know that those people are deceived and we wonder how they can be so blinded to it. But are they all that different than most of America today? If we are doing the same thing in a different way, perhaps we are blinded to ourselves as well.

Why do we evangelize? Why do we pray for results from evangelism? Is it from self-interests or is it truly for the glory of God? The Pharisees traveled over land and sea to make one convert and we know they did not truly love God but were in the service of self. Could it be that churches have evangelism programs that are driven by the interests of self rather than the desires from the heart for the glory and honor of God? Could it be that we are more interested in numbers and success in order to make ourselves look good and in order that we can be part of a successful church than we are truly interested in the honor of God and the true spiritual good of other people? When we go out evangelizing, could it be that we have a program designed to make it easy to get decisions and to avoid conflict with people? Could it be that we will not deal with the sin of people’s hearts in order to avoid any sort of trouble and conflict? But if we do not really deal with the sins of the heart, we have not dealt with sin at all. We are only skating along on the outside and we are not dealing with the issues of salvation. If we only deal with the outside we are only dealing with moral reformation at best. Is that really being interested in the souls of people or is that being interested in numbers?

We say that we are going to have prayer meetings, but do we really pray for anything but the external? The Pharisee spent a lot of time in what he called prayer but it was in order to make a show. Are our prayer meetings, if we still have them at all, more than anything but a way for people to show up and fulfill a duty? Are they any more than people praying for physical issues or external issues with the church? Where is God in our love and in what we truly desire? Are we seeking the interests of God or of self? Are we willing to pray prayers that will cost us for them to be answered? Ah, now we get to an entirely different level. Even if we pray for God to change another person’s heart, are we willing to talk to that person about the issues of the heart? Are we willing to be mocked and spat on in order to speak to another person about the real issues of his or her heart? Perhaps down deep we know that it is much easier to utter words than it is to be willing to suffer in order for God to use us.

It is easy to shrug off dealing with the hearts of others by stating Arminian or Reformed theology. The Arminian will state that the person is simply obstinate and will not make a choice. The Reformed person will say that God needs to change the person’s heart. Either position can simply be an excuse not to be the instrument of God by speaking to the person in such a way that exposes his or her heart. The heart is so deceitful it will look for any excuse to make it easy on self. But down deep it is the same spirit of the Pharisee that keeps coming up and lying to us. It is that we are in the service of the interests of self rather than the interests of Christ.

One of the hardest judgments of God is to give a people over to themselves. They will then follow their own selfish interests and do that in the name of religion. This is true of Arminians and Reformed, of liberals and conservatives, of Christian and non-Christian, of minister and non-minister, and of politician and non-politicians. Men are lovers of self and follow the interests of self rather than Christ. Some people in the interests of self become atheists and others become conservative “Christians.” But all are born dead in sins and trespasses and at enmity with God rather than lovers of God. All are born with deceitful hearts and trust in self rather than in the wisdom of God. But when true Christianity has been so engulfed with the tsunami of selfishness and self-interests rather than men seeking the interests of Christ as in our day, it shows that we are under a terrible judgment of God. We must repent of our self-interests in order to seek His. Only then have we repented and been saved from sin.

Posted in State of the Church | Leave a Comment »

The Importance of Understanding the Nature of God’s Love

June 17, 2008

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.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

All True Love is from God

June 14, 2008

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.

Posted in Historical Reformed Theology | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »