Old Testament Types of the Father’s Love

Isaac, as is well-known, is a type of the Son of God, the Only-begotten of the Father, the One into whose hands the Father has committed all that He has. To Abraham, the Lord said, “Take now thy son, thine only Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering” (Gen. 22:2). How great was the love of Abraham for Isaac, the one in whom the fulfilment of all God’s promises centred; yet he took his son, in obedience to the word and will of God, and laid him on the alter.

Abraham’s love for Isaac is but a very feeble illustration of the infinite love of the Father for the Son; yet God was willing to spare “not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32). In the sacrifice of Isaac we learn of the great love existing between the Father and the Son, but also of the love of God for us. In love, God gave His only Son, but also of the love of God for us. In love, God gave His only Son that we might be accepted in all the efficacy of that wonderful burnt offering that glorified God and brought us before Him in all the acceptability of what the Son is and what He has done.

Of Joseph it is written “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours” (Gen. 37:3). Because of his father’s love for him, and the favour shown, Joseph became the object of his brethren’s hatred (verse 4). the hatred typified in Joseph’s brethren was seen in its fullest expression in the hatred of the Jews to the Son of God in Manhood.

The Jews, and their leaders, in hating and rejecting the Lord Jesus, refused the One upon whom the love of the Father rested. Before going to the cross, the Lord had to say of the Jews, “They have both seen and hated both me and my Father.” They did not care for the moral excellencies of the son that were so delightful to the Father; nor did they accept the Son as the One who had a special place in the affections of the Father.

In 2 Samuel 12 we read regarding the second son of Bathsheba that David “called his name Solomon (Peaceful): and the Lord loved him. And He sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah (Beloved of Jehovah), because of the Lord” (verses 24, 25). Jehovah also said to David concerning Solomon, “I will establish his throne for ever. I will be His Father, and he shall be my son” (1 Chr. 17:13).

From Hebrews 1:5 we learn that what God spoke of Solomon was typical of Christ: it was God’s own Son that was before His mind in referring to Solomon, who was a type of Him that was to come. David’s son pointed forward to God’s own Son, whose kingdom would be established for ever, and it is into this kingdom we have been brought, “the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1:13).

Divine Love

The Love of Christ

When on earth the heart of the Lord Jesus was so often moved with compassion for those in distress and sorrow, as in the case of the widow of Nain. It was a different kind of love that we read of in John 11:5, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” No doubt there was compassion for them, but there was also the complacent love of Jesus for those in whom He found pleasure. There is the same distinction between the compassionate love of God for sinners of which we read in Romans 5:8, the love that God commends to us, and the love of which the Lord speaks to His disciples in John 15:13, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, are both manifested in the death of the cross.

Old Testament Figures

Different aspects of the love of Christ are given to us in some of the beautiful pictures of the Old Testament. In Isaac’s love for Rebekah, we have a lovely picture of Christ’s love for the church (Gen. 24:67). Isaac had, in figure, been into death, and is a type of Christ dead and risen, and it as come out of death that he receives his bride, one that his father deemed suitable to be united to him, and one to whom his father had given all that he possessed. None can surely fail to see in these things that Isaac pointed to Christ, and to the comfort He receives from His assembly on the loss, for the present, of His earthly people, Israel. It is at this present time that the affection of Christ for the church is to be realised.

Jacob’s love for Rachel indicates to us the love of Christ for His earthly people Israel. Leah rather shows the church’s union with Christ, which is also most blessedly brought out in Rebekah: she is the fruitful one, and remains with her husband after Rachel has passed from the scene. How great was Jacob’s love for Rachel as told in the words of Genesis 29:18-20, and how severe and long His service (Gen. 31:41-42) to make her His own. Christ’s love for Israel, and for Jerusalem is seen in the tears that He shed over the city that rejected Him, but measured in its fulness by His death upon the cross.

The Hebrew servant of Exodus 21, who plainly said, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,” is a Servant for the will of God, went to the cross, where he was pierced, in His great love for His God and Father, and to have with Him the objects of His affections. Christ’s great love for His God, for His people Israel, and for the children that God has given Him has made Him a Bondman for ever (1 Cor. 15:28).

Enjoyment of the love of Christ by those who are His is blessedly portrayed in the Song of Songs, and this is seen specially in chapter 2:4 and chapter 5:2.

The Love of the Son to the Father

The love of the Son to the Father was expressed in His perfect obedience to Him, even as the Lord said to His disciples, “He that has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me” (John 14:21). Every step that Jesus took, and every word He spoke evinced His obedience to His Father, and therefore the perfection of His love for Him. None but He could say, “I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29).

There was no need for the Son to tell the Father of His love for Him, it was evident in the words, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). The whole prayer of John 17 breathes the affection of the Son for His Father, as for His own that He was leaving in the world. yet, it was the Son’s desire that the world might know His love for the Father, even as He said, “But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence” (John 14:31).

His obedience in going forward to the cross was the fullest expression of His obedience, for He was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” and this was a testimony to the world of His devoted love to the Father who had sent Him to accomplish His will.

The Lord’s Love for His Disciples

Throughout His public ministry the Lord had cared for the disciples the Father had drawn to Him, and towards the close of His sojourn on earth, when with them at the last Passover Supper, it is written, “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). He well knew that Peter would deny Him, and that all would forsake Him, for He foretold them of these solemn events, but His love for them was unaffected: His love remained the same in spite of all their weaknesses and failures. His love for them on the cross was the same as when He first called them, and as on this night when all that was before Him pressed on His spirit.

What the Son of God did that night, in laying aside His garments, girding Himself with a towel, and washing the feet of His own, manifested how great His love was for them. He took the place of a Servant which amazed Simon Peter, who sought to restrain the Lord from carrying out what seemed to be such a menial service. But there was something beneath this lowly act that the disciples could not then discern: the spiritual preparation of His own for part with Him in the place where He soon would be in the Father’s presence.

Love for the disciples would have them to share His place, and not only in the coming day, but while they were here below and He was above in heaven. In spirit He would have them enjoy the place that He was about to bring them into, knowing His Father as their Father, and His God as their God.

Although the Lord was about to leave His disciples, He desired that they should ever abide in the sense of His love, saying to them, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love” (John 15:9). Could they measure the Father’s love for the Son? If so, then they could measure His love for them. It was an infinite love, and eternal and divine.

The Lord’s Love for the Individual

The Apostle John knew the Lord’s love for him as one of His own, and four times over speaks of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23; 19:26; 21:7, 20). When Jesus spoke to His disciples of the betrayer, the disciple whom Jesus loved was lying “on Jesus’ bosom” (John 13); when Jesus was hanging on the cross, the disciple whom Jesus love was “standing by,” and the care of the Lord’s mother was entrusted to him. In chapter 21, when the Lord spoke to His disciples who had returned to their fishing, the disciple whom Jesus loved was the one that recognised Him; and when Peter asked the Lord what “this man” would do, the Lord indicated the special ministry He would give to John when he said, “If I will that he tarry till I come…”

Paul also knew the blessedness of the Lord’s personal love for him, writing, “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). He had met the Lord on the way to Damascus, and the Lord had, in His grace, committed the apostleship of the Gentiles to him, but it was not in this that Paul saw the manifestation of the love of the Son of God to him, but rather in His giving Himself on the cross to put away his sins and bringing him into the circle of divine favour among His own.

Christ’s Love for His Saints

In exhorting the saints to walk in love, Paul presents the love of Christ as an example for us, saying, “as Christ also has loved us, and has given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” (Eph. 5:2). Christ’s love for the individual and for the saints collectively, has been measured by the giving of Himself. Nothing less than this would have met the claims of God for our sins, and nothing less could measure the fulness of Christ’s love for those upon whom His affections had been set. In the type of the man who found the treasure in the field, and the merchant that sought the goodly pearls, we see Christ giving “all that He had,” but here He gives more, and more than this He could not give, for He gave Himself.

What expressed the fulness of the love of Christ for His own yielded infinite delight to the heart of His God and Father. It arose to Him “a sweet-smelling savour,” like the burnt offerings on Noah’s altar (Gen. 8:20-21), and the burnt offerings, meat offerings and peace offerings in the sacrificial system of the tabernacle. All these sacrifices pointed forward to the delight that God would have in the perfections of Christ, manifested in the giving of Himself in love.

If the love of Christ has been made known in His death, it is a love that remains unchangeable, even as the Apostle John wrote, “Unto Him that loves us, and has washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father” (Rev. 1:5-6). Nothing could deter Jesus from expressing His great love in death. The awfulness of what death would mean to Him was fully entered into in Gethsemane, yet He said, “The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). In spite of all the cross meant to Him, His love remained, like Himself, “The same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” Christ’s love has been seen in what He has done in washing us from all our sins, and by bringing us before God as a kingdom of priests.

Christ’s Love for the Church

Paul had written to the saints at Galatia of the love of the Son of God for him personally, and had written to the saints at Ephesus of the love of Christ for His saints collectively; to this latter assembly he wrote, “Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Eph. 5:25). In each of these Scriptures, Christ’s love is manifested and measured in the giving of Himself, and the more we meditate on the death of Christ the more shall we enter into the wonders of His love.

Before Adam could have his Eve he had enter into a deep sleep and have her taken from his side; so also was it with Christ. To have the church as His Bride, Christ must needs enter into death, which Adam’s sleep prefigured. It requires all the Old Testament figures put together to give some feeble picture of Christ and the church. The brides of Adam, Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Boaz and David, all contribute to this end, but all are but a faint foreshadowing of what is brought out in Ephesians 5, and in the book of the Revelation concerning the Bride of Christ.

Love, made known in death, is still active in preparing the church for the day when Christ shall “present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). The church could only be united to Christ if suitable for His companionship, and Christ’s present work and ministry towards her is all towards this end. In the day of the marriage of the Lamb, the church will be found in heaven having the nature and character of Christ Himself, every spot belonging to this world having been removed by His present care for her. Christ’s love will be satisfied in that day, when the results of His work on the cross, and during the present time, will be displayed before the hosts of heaven, and later, displayed before the whole universe.

The Character of Christ’s Love

After Paul had written to the saints at Ephesus about the purpose of God, and spoken of the mystery of the church, he bowed his knees in prayer to the Father, desiring that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may…know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:14-19). It was the love of Christ that made possible the fulfilling of the purpose of God. His love for His Father, and His love for those the Father gave to Him, demanded that He should give Himself, and lay the basis in redemption for the securing of all God’s will. The love of God’s Son made Him willing to endure all that the cross meant for Him, and shows it to be a “love that passes knowledge.”

How wonderful it is that we can know this love which, in its fulness is beyond all knowledge. None can know the intimacy and affection that are peculiar to the Godhead, but still, there are the divine affections that we can and do know, and these have been made known in the Son incarnate and in His wondrous death. Christ’s love has been measured in the depths into which His holy soul entered on the cross, when He sustained and exhausted the righteous judgment of God; but they are depths into which the mind of man can never enter. The love and the depths are unfathomable, yet we can know the love, and do know it in communion with Him who gave Himself for us.

If the love of Christ passes knowledge, it is also a love from which nothing can separate His own, even as Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:35). The trials, distresses and persecutions of every kind may be used of the enemy in his endeavour to separate us from Christ’s love, but through His grace and care these things are used by Him to make us “more than conquerors.” Such things bring us nearer to Christ, so that we know Him better, and give us to know His love better. This is normal to the Christian; to those who know what it is to live with Christ and for Him.