I Found: A God Who Is Love
I Found: A God Who Is Love
C. S. Lewis wrote; ‘We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. How wonderful to be designed and created as objects of God’s love.’
In the past few weeks, we have looked at the holiness and the righteousness of God. Holiness and righteousness are His transcendent nature- our inability to compare with God are evident in His holiness and righteousness. Yet we also discovered that a God who is knowable and who wants to know us. Why would a God who is Holy and Righteous what to know us and be known by us? In Deuteronomy 7 we are introduced to a God of love. God’s immanent nature, or the reason why He wishes to draw near is evident in His love for us.
The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers,.. Deut 7:6-7 ESV
In Hebrew, the word for love is ‘ahab’. It carries about the same range of meaning as our English word. It can be affection, concern for someone well being or even just plain natural attraction. As with the English the word for ‘love’, this meaning is too imprecise to describe God’s love for us. Is the love for a movie, a candy bar or a colour, the same as a mother’s love for her child? Not many people would willingly give their life for a candy bar!
It’s not until the New Testament that we have a greater revelation of God’s true love for us, in the person of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit took a rarely used word, ‘agape’ and adopted it to describe the highest form of love- the love God has for us.
One of the few examples of ‘agape’ being used in ancient Greek, was on an inscription for an army officer who was held in high esteem. Perhaps similar to how soldiers become devoted to a beloved general and would do anything for them, even to the point of laying down their lives for him. The Holy Spirit took a word that had been used to describe unfailing and affectionate devotion and used it to describe God’s nature and his love toward us. God’s ‘agape’ love for us is an unselfish devotion to our wellbeing, motivated purely from His affection towards us.
There is a folk story about Thomas Eddison and his mother that illustrates ‘agape’ love. Eddison, one of history’s greatest inventors was homeschooled by his mother after being removed from school as a child. The story goes that Thomas bought a note home from school for his mother. After she read it, he asked her what it said. She replied, “It’s saying you are too smart for school, could I arrange to teach him yourself.”
Following his mother’s death, and after inventing light bulbs, the telegraph, phonographs, alkaline batteries and so on, Thomas discovered the letter in his mother's possessions. It read, ‘Your son is addled (mentally incompetent), He is unable to come to school anymore.” Apparently, Edison cried for hours and wrote in his memoirs: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, raise by a hero mother and became the genius of the century.”
Eddison’s mother willingly laid down her life for her son. Her concern was for his welfare, she was ready to believe the best in him and for him. She had ‘agape’ love for him.
Likewise, God’s love in action has been revealed to us in giving His son to die for us (John 3:16); in his faithfulness to us (Duet 7:8); in sending the Holy Spirit to dwell with us (john14:15-16, 16:7); by placing us in the Body of Christ (Eph 5:25-27), through bodily healing (James 5:14-16) and the means by which we can live a victorious Christian life (Romans 8:35-39).
Of everything that is true, that God, the Holy and Righteous God, would declare His love for us is surely the most profound and life changing. Through the scripture and especially in Jesus, God body declares His love for us.
The Apostle John, who as a seventeen year old, slept with his head on Jesus’ chest, shared how God’s love had transformed him. “I came to know and believe the love which God has for me. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with me, so that I may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so am I in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and is I’m afraid, I’m not perfected in love.” (personalised from 1 John 4:16-18)
Our response to God’s love was beautifully versed in 1707 by Isaac Watts
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all
