There is nothing more wonderful than the intervention of God for the blessing of His rebellious creature, in the Person of the Son, an intervention in which God is fully revealed in His nature of love and in His disposition of grace and compassion for sinners who were alienated from Him, and enemies in mind by wicked works. If the history of man exposes what he is in all his shame and degradation, it also reveals, in God’s dealings with him, the patience, long-suffering and kindness of God, proceeding from a nature of love, yet altogether consistent with His holiness and righteousness. This blessed consistency is brought fully to light in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Love of the Father for the Son
Divine love belongs essentially to the relationship of the Father and the Son, for the Son, the Only-begotten of His bosom, knows from all eternity the deep affections of the Father, reciprocal affections that belong peculiarly to them in the eternal relations of the Godhead. In this connection, the Son on earth could say, “Father…Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
Coming into Manhood, the Son remained in the same relationship as Son to the Father, never ceasing to be His Only-begotten Son, yet taking up the relationship in entirely new conditions as Man before Him. As the Only-begotten, the Son was able to reveal the Father in His nature of love, in His eternal counsels, and in His compassion for men; and it was the delight of the Father to open the heavens, and to declare, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). In the consciousness of His Father’s love, the Son on earth said to the Jews, “The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that Himself does” (John 5:20), and to His disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).
Jehovah’s Love for Israel
It was because God loved the people of Israel, and their fathers, that He took them up and made them a peculiar people, giving to them His oracles and His promises of blessing (Deut. 4:37; 7:7-8). Because of His great love for Israel, God brought them out from under the hand of Pharaoh, overthrowing their enemies who had brought them into bondage. Moses delighted to tell Israel of God’s love for them, saying in his blessing of the children of Israel before his death, “Yea, He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down at Thy feet, every one shall receive of Thy words” (Deut. 33:3). The aged saint and servant of God views His people as loved by Him, secure in His hand, and sitting down at His feet to learn His word and will.
Jehovah’s love for the favoured nation of Israel was well-known to the nations, for the Queen of Sheba said to Solomon, “Because the Lord loved Israel for ever, therefore made He thee king, to do judgment and justice” (1 Kings 10:9). Huram, king of Tyre said the same thing, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 2:11. Isaiah speaks of Israel as precious in God’s sight, and loved of Him (Isa. 43:4); Jeremiah telling the rebellious nation that Jehovah had appeared of old and said, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee” (Isa. 31:3).
In spite of what Israel were, and the evil they had done, God’s love for them remained, and through the prophet Hosea He recalled what He had done for them at the beginning of their history, saying, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1). And when the remnant that God had brought back to the land had manifested their indifference to God and to His kindness for them, Jehovah says through Malachi, “I have loved you, says the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?” (Mal. 1:2). Like their fathers, who had been taken captive on account of their sins, they were insensible to all the love and goodness of Jehovah their God.
Jehovah’s Love for the Stranger
Although Israel, as a nation, had a special place in the ways of God, being loved by Him, and separated from the nations, He desired them to know His attitude to the strangers who happened to dwell with them. In the chapter in which Moses said, “The Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them he also said, “He…loves the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:15, 18-19).
God’s Love for the World
When the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of the brazen serpent and the truth of eternal life through faith in the Son of Man lifted up, He at once revealed that this wondrous blessing was not to be confined to Israel. The giving of God’s Only-begotten Son had the whole world in view, and showed what was in the heart of God. His love was measured in the infinite gift of His Son, a sovereign love that the death of Christ would make available for all who believed in Him, whether they belonged to the favoured nation or to sinners of the Gentiles, the blessing of eternal life.
God’s Love for Us in Romans
The saints at Rome were addressed by Paul as “Beloved of God,” and saints by divine calling (Rom. 1:7). It was because God, in His sovereign love had set His heart upon us that He called us by His grace into this place of favour in which we now stand before Him. We have the love made known in the cross, for “God commends His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). There was nothing in us to love when we were in the distance from God, but the motive lay in the heart of God; it was a love of divine compassion that chose to take us up and make us suitable for His holy presence.
Having believed God’s testimony in the Gospel concerning the death and resurrection of His Son, God sealed us with His Holy Spirit, claiming us for Himself, and the Spirit has “shed abroad in our hearts” the love that was revealed in the death of His Son (Rom. 5:5). So that we not only believe in God’s love, but we know it consciously in our hearts by His Spirit. From the love of God, nothing can separate us, not life, death, nor angels, for the love we have learned is in Him in whom God has blessed us, even in His own Son (Rom. 8:38-39).
God’s love is not to be found in this world, for the Lord said, “O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee.” Nor is it to be sought in the things of nature, or in the creation. None of the religions of this world know the love of God, for it is only to be found “in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God’s Love for Us in 1 John 4
In this remarkable chapter we learn that “love is of God; and…he that loves not knows not God; for God is love” (Verses 7, 8). God is love in His nature, and all divine love has its source in Him, and all who have this divine love have the knowledge of God. Although we have the divine nature as God’s children, a nature that loves God and all who are born of God, love’s manifestation was in God sending “His Only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (verse 9). We owe the divine nature that God has given us to Himself, and we owe the eternal life to His sending His own Son to die for us upon the cross, after He had manifested the eternal life in His sojourn in this world.
We could never have enjoyed the divine and eternal life communicated so long as our sins remained, but the same love that gave us the divine life has dealt with the question of our sins, and the same blessed Son of God who died to give us life has put away all our sins upon the cross. God’s wonderful, sovereign love has been made known both in the sending of His own Son, and in the Son securing propitiation by His death, all the efficacy of the work done on the cross being now found in Him where He is in the presence of the Father who sent Him. Verse 10 of this chapter tells us of the love manifested in sending the Son to be the propitiation; verse 2 of chapter 2 tells us that “He is the propitiation for our sins.”
God desires that His love should be perfected in His own, and therefore says, “No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us” (verse 12). The expression of the divine nature in the children of God makes known to others the same love that was seen in Jesus, and is the evidence of God dwelling in the hearts of His own by His Spirit, and that His love is known and enjoyed by them according to His will.
Having the divine nature and the Spirit of God indwelling us, we know the love of God, for God has given us to realise that we are children in His family, and that His love rests upon us as it rests on His own Son; but the love we know consciously in the heart is the love that we have seen and believed on when revealed in the death of God’s own Son (verse 16).
It is because God’s love is truly known in the heart that we have boldness for the day of judgment. In this way, “has love been perfected with us” (verse 17), for it not only tells us that all our sins have gone in Christ’s death, thus dealing with the past, but it has also secured the future. Why should we have any dread for the day of judgment when we share the Son’s own place before the Father. His place of acceptance is ours, for the One who bore our sins is accepted before the face of the Father. The Son’s place of relationship, favour and affection is ours, even now while in this world, so that we never need have a bit of fear.
God’s love is a perfect love, a love that has provided for everything in regard to the past, the present and the future, a love that has dismissed every bit of fear from the breasts of those who know His love. So long as the least dread remains in a believers heart, he “is not made perfect in love” (verse 18). Fear is not normal to the Christian; it is the work of the enemy, but the love of God made known in the death of Christ, and shed abroad in our hearts, banishes all fear.
Before ever there was a movement in our hearts Godward, He loved us with an infinite, sovereign and eternal love, so that it has been written, “We love, because He first loved us” (verse 19).
The Father’s Love for Us
How comforting it must have been for the disciples to hear the Lord say, “The Father Himself loves you” (John 16:27). This is not sovereign love, love without a motive outside of itself, it is complacent love, a love that finds delight in its object; and the reason for the Father’s pleasure was that the disciples loved the Son, and believed that He came “out from God.”
The manner of the Father’s love to us is given in 1 John 3, where we are told of the relationship of children into which He has brought us. Soon we shall share the Son’s place in the display of His glory, but even now we are before the face of the Father as His children knowing Him. The coming of the Son made this possible, and it is the pleasure of the Father to have His children now before Him.
Soon, we shall be with the Son in the display of His kingdom glory, according to His own desire, expressed to the Father; and in the same glory that displays the fruits of His work on the cross, there will be the display of the Father’s love for those the Son has procured for Himself and for the Father (John 17:22-23).
R. 25.1.67