I am taking a class entitled, "The Attributes of God". Our teacher is Brian Broderson and the book we are studying through is "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer. Today's topic of study was "The Love of God". What a vast topic.
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and rounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height- to know the Love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
-Eph. 3:14-19
My heart is rattled a bit. In the light of God's pure love, my filthy and self-seeking love is exposed. Do I even love? Of myself, I know that the answer is, "no". I don't love; I can't love of myself. Yet I find myself faking love or trying to use my own love. I know that is a deep confession, but it is true. I try to, out of my own goodness, show goodness to others and when I'm not feeling good, I'm not being good to others. I beat up those who are most precious around me, falsely claiming that I still love them.
View my life and you will see a sinner. View my journal pages and you will hear selfish requests. Why would God choose me? Why would He still want to use me? Why would I still be worthy of pure, jealous, sincere love?
"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
-Ephesians 2:4-13
When Jesus was praying to God right before He was going to be tried in court for His claims to be God, he prayed this:
"I do not pray for these alone [people that already believed that He was the Messiah and Son of God], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one; I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved me before the foundation of the world."
-John 17:20-24
God has loved us from before the foundations of the World, just like He loved His one and only begotten Son, God in flesh. He's really loved us like He's loved Himself I suppose. Didn't Paul exhort husbands also to love his wife like he loves himself; like he nourishes and takes care of himself? And doesn't Paul also say that husbands are to lay down their lives for their wives like Christ laid down His life for us?
I do believe this entry contains a theme of a previous entry... Selfless love. I suppose it is an unescapeable theme.
How can God so equate with us? Why does He? Why did He choose to become so much lower than His glory to equate with sinful sinners, such as us? Why has wanting oneness with us?
Love.
J.I. Packer says this:
So the love of the God who is spirit is no fitful, fluctuating thing, as human love is, nor is it a mere impotent longing for things that may never be; it is, rather, a spontaneous determination of God's whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed. There are no inconsistencies or vicissitudes in the love of the almighty God who is spirit. His love is "as strong as death" (song 8:6). "Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away" (song 8:7). Nothing can separate from it those whom it has once embraced (Rom 8:35-39).
God loves because He has solidified that choice, and nothing can revert it. How foreign to us, who so often receive and give fluctuating love. My love can be so based on emotion, circumstance and surroundings. God's love is so opposite of that. I need Him to love through me. Oh, how I need God to supernaturally and miraculously love through me.
"For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus; that if One died for all, then all died; and he died for all, that those who lives should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again."
2 Cor. 5:14 & 15
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