God so loved

The Gospel of God.

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Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. – Romans 1:1-7 ESV

Paul wrote his letter to the church in Rome from the city of Corinth during the winter of A.D. 56-57. It would be another three years before Paul actually set foot in Rome and, when he did, he would do so as a prisoner of the Roman government. It is not clear how the church in Rome got started. Paul obviously played no role in it, having never been there before. And there is no indication that any other apostle had ever made it to the Roman capital to share the gospel. But nevertheless, the gospel had arrived, perhaps as a result of some who had been eyewitnesses to the events that took place at the Feast of Pentecost. Regardless of how the church was started, it had gained a world-wide reputation and Paul acknowledged it. “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world” (Romans 1:8 ESV). No doubt, Paul wrote his letter to the church in Rome, under the influence of the Holy Spirit and with the desire to provide them with a solid understanding of the doctrine of the gospel of God. He knew the incredible influence this church would have because of its location within the capital of Rome, the most powerful nation in the world at the time.

Paul began his letter with an introduction of himself, even though the believers in Rome would have been well-acquainted with him. He referred to himself as a servant of Christ Jesus. He did not operate on his own initiative, but as a willing slave to the one who had saved him. He served as an apostle, having been called to that role by Jesus Himself. And he acknowledged that he had been set apart or appointed for a singular purpose: the gospel of God. The entire letter of Romans will elaborate on the remarkable significance of the gospel of God, the good news concerning His Son. Paul boldly and unapologetically claims both the deity and full humanity of Jesus, “who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God” (Romans 1:3-4 ESV). Paul emphatically declares that Jesus was resurrected from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was that one miraculous reality that had made salvation possible and the grace of God available to sinful mankind. The resurrection of Jesus is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Without it, we have no hope, which is what led Paul to write, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17 ESV).

Paul never missed an opportunity to share the gospel, but he also took advantage of every chance he was given to strengthen the local church. He not only wanted to see people saved from sin, but he desired greatly to see them grow up in their salvation. In verse seven, Paul refers to his readers as saints, which means “set apart or holy ones”. In Paul’s mind they were positionally holy, but they were also to be practically holy in their behavior. They had been “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and so their actions and attitudes should reflect that calling. A big part of what Paul writes to them in this letter has to do with what practical holiness looks like. They are to live as if dead to sin and alive to God. They are to live by faith and not by works. They are to live according to the power of the Spirit of God and not the flesh. They are to recognize their position as heirs of God. They are to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God and are not to be conformed to this world. The gospel of God does not stop with our salvation, but carries on throughout our lives as God continues His work of sanctification in our lives, “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5 ESV).

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are loved by God. The very fact that He sent His own Son to die in our place is the greatest expression of God’s love He could have shown us. But not only are we loved by God, we are called by Him to be saints – set apart ones. We are to live our lives in the power of His Holy Spirit and allow Him to continually transform us into the likeness of His Son. It is His miraculous transformation of us that gives proof of His Son’s salvation of us. Not only have we been saved, we are being changed. We are being conformed to the image of Christ. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29 ESV). The transformation of our lives by God is one of the greatest testimonies to the reality of the risen Christ and the power of the gospel of God.

Love Is Of God.

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So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. – 1 John 4:16 ESV

1 John 4:7-21

Love is a feeling. Love makes the world go round. All you need is love. Love is a many splendid thing. There are as many sayings about love as there are definitions as to what it is. But John wants us to understand that love is of God. In fact, God is love. Everything about love emanates from God. And because man was made in the image of God, all men have the capacity to love. It is a part of God’s common grace bestowed upon all mankind. But only those who truly understand the love of God as expressed in the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, can even begin to grasp the true nature of what love really is. Left to our own devices, we will tend to redefine love in our own terms, focusing on ourselves and seeing love as something designed to fulfill us or bring us satisfaction. Which is why we tend to fall in and out of love. We have turned loved into little more than a feeling that can come and go based on whether we have the motivation to love the other person or the persuasion that they are loving us in the way we demand. Like everything else God has so graciously given us, we can somehow find a way to make it all about us. But true love is about God. Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His Son. Yes, God loved us while we were yet sinners. But what we have to remember is that God’s love had nothing to do with our loveliness or lovableness. We did not deserve His love. We had not earned His love. Yes, we were the recipients of His love, but for no reason whatsoever on our part. And until we understand the significance of that reality, we will never understand the love of God.

John ties loving others and knowing God together. He writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7 ESV). Our capacity to love others the way God commands is directly tied to our knowledge of God. And what is it we are to know about God? His love. As believers in Jesus Christ, we have a unique perspective on the love of God because we have experienced it firsthand. At one point in our lives we were told about the love of God manifested or shown through the arrival of His Son here on this earth. Jesus was God in human flesh, sent by His Father to bring salvation to man by His death on the cross. “God sent his only Son into the world” (1 John 4:9 ESV), “to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 ESV), and “to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14 ESV). And John sums it all up with the words, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us” (1 John 4:16 ESV). We have come to know and believe in Jesus. It is through our acceptance of God’s love as expressed through Jesus that we truly come to know who God is and what love is. Even as an old man, John was blown away by this kind of love. “What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are.” (1 John 3:1 MSG).

I love how the apostle Paul puts difficult concepts into language most of us can understand. Speaking of God’s amazing love, he writes, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation” (Romans 5:6-9 NLT). You and I might be willing to sacrifice our lives for someone especially good. We might take a bullet for our spouse or one of our children, but we’d probably have to think long and hard about anyone else. Yet God loved us enough when we were at our worst to send His own Son to die in our place. Jesus took the bullet for us. D. A. Carson has this to say about the love of God: “Do you wish to see God’s love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see God’s wrath? Look at the cross.” The love of God shines brightest when seen against the dark backdrop of the cross. The cross was and is a symbol of man’s sin, guilt and just condemnation. It represents what we so justly deserved as usurpers of God’s authority and rebels against His will. And yet, it is at the cross that we truly come to know God. We see His justice, wrath, righteousness, patience, mercy, grace, and love on display through the life of His Son. Because of His love, we are His children. Because of His love, we are forgiven. Because of His love, we abide in Him and in His love – constantly. Because of His love, we have His Spirit within us. Because of His love, we have our future determined for us. Because of His love, we can love others. But only as long as we remember how He has loved us. If we don’t love, we don’t know Him. That doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t saved. It can simply mean we don’t recognize and appreciate the unbelievable nature of the love with which He has loved us. To know God is to know God’s love for us. Whenever we forget, all we need to do is look at the cross.

God Loved.

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Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. – 1 John 4:11 ESV

1 John 4:7-21

How did God love us? John makes three very clear statements in answer to that question. The first is in verse 9: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” God’s love of us was made known through His sending His only Son into the world. And John has already made it quite clear earlier in his letter that Jesus becoming human (incarnation) is a non-negotiable aspect of the gospel. In the very next verse, John gives us the reason “we might live through him.” “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Jesus was sent by God to be means for satisfying His own just and righteous judgment against sin. Jesus alone, as God in human flesh, could satisfy (propitiate) the Father’s wrath against sin. This is the part that so many get uncomfortable with the biblical view of God. They can’t accept that God can be loving and wrathful at the same time. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, seems to speak on behalf of those who refuse to accept a God who is loving and yet required to punish sin because of His holiness. “Most people I know would never torture another human being under any conditions. Yet people believe in a god who not only tortures, but tortures for all eternity. That is bitter vengeance by anyone’s definition. Why would anyone want to be alone with such a testy and temperamental god? Why would anyone go on the great mystical journey into divine intimacy with such an unsafe lover? Why would anyone trust such a god to know how to love those who really need it? I personally know many people who are much more generous and imaginative than this god is. We have ended up being ourselves more loving, or at least trying to be, than the god we profess to believe! Such a religion is in deep trouble—at its core (Richard Rohr, My Problem With Religion, http://www.tikkun.org).” It seems to me that Richard Rohr is attempting to judge God based on human terms. He wants to establish the definition of love and, based on that definition, hold God to his standard. For Richard and others like him, love is the absence of wrath or judgment. But it is interesting that John gives us a different definition of love. In his third statement regarding the love of God, he says: “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14 ESV). Out of love, God sent His own Son to give us life, to be the propitiation for our sins, and to be the Savior of the world. As John wrote in his gospel, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).

And what is fascinating is that God’s love required His own Son to die. In order for Jesus to give us life, satisfy His Father’s judgment against sin, and fulfill His role as the Savior of the world, He had to die. He had to bear the sins of man and the judgment of God – in our place. Peter writes, “He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed” (1 Peter 2:24 NLT). Paul tells us the same thing: “Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said” (1 Corinthians 15:3 NLT). Paul had in mind the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah. “But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed” (Isaiah 53:5 NLT). And all of this was done out of love. “He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God” (Romans 4:25 NLT). God sent His Son to die so that we might be made right with Him. It was the only way. You see, God is love, but God is also holy. His love does not and cannot trump His holiness. His love is a holy love. His judgment as a holy God required that the penalty for man’s rebellion against Him be paid for. His love provided His own Son as the solution. Our problem is that we only want a god who loves. But that would not be the God of the Bible. God did not love man the way that man desired. Even when Jesus came, His entire life’s mission was focused on His coming death. That was why He came. And yet, everyone around Him wanted to Him to do more miracles, heal more people, provide them with more bread, turn water into wine, overturn the Roman government, make their lives better and easier. But Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45 NLT). This famous statement of Jesus came right after James and John had asked Jesus, “When you sit on your glorious throne, we want to sit in places of honor next to you, one on your right and the other on your left” (Mark 10:37 NLT). They wanted Jesus to show His love for them by making them powerful and prominent. They wanted Jesus to “bless” them on their terms. But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?” (Mark 10:38 NLT). Jesus was going to show His love for them by dying for them. He had come to fulfill His Father’s desires, not theirs. But in doing the will of His Father, Jesus was loving them in ways they could never have imagined. He was going to do for them far greater things than they could have ever have desired. He was going to love them to death – His own.

God = Love.

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So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. – 1 John 4:16 ESV

1 John 4:7-21

John has already told us that God is light (1 John 1:5). Now he lets us in on another significant reality about God’s divine character. He is love. He doesn’t just love. He is love. It is His very nature. In fact, all that He does is done as an expression of His love. But that raises some interesting and somewhat mind-boggling contradictions for us as human beings. It causes us significant confusion because we have a hard time reconciling the images of God’s wrath, judgment, and punishment as revealed in the Bible. These seeming contradictions raise questions that usually begin with the words, “But how could a loving God …” We wrestle with stories from the Old Testament that picture God as demanding the annihilation of entire groups of people. We struggle with the concept that God would punish people by condemning them to an endless existence in a place of perpetual torment. Trying to comprehend these two extremes has caused many to either reject God altogether or to attempt to rationalize and reconstruct their image of God. Many believers, uncomfortable with the concept of God as a judge who metes out justice and judgment, have simply re-imagined Him, eliminating His less-attractive characteristics and recreating Him as the all-loving, all-accepting, all-inclusive, all-for-us, all the time God. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and popular author and speaker, represents many who have chosen to rethink their view of God. “We must get this clear, together, to see real progress. Is God good? Is He Loving, Peaceful? Does God look like Jesus, who forgave 7×70 times, even to the point of death, and lived a non-violent, non-retributive life? Or… Is God angry? Is He violent and warring? Does God look like the god portrayed in the Old Testament, commanding wars, genocide and destruction? Does He look like a retributive, end-times Jesus who will ‘kill millions upon His return,’ seemingly having a cut-off point’ to His own teaching on forgiveness?” Unable to reconcile the two seeming extremes of God as portrayed in the Scriptures, Richard Rohr and others have simply chosen to construct their own view of God. They prefer to camp and count on the all-loving version. Why? Because they are uncomfortable with what they refer to as the schizophrenic God of the Bible. They say, “He cannot be a warring, genocidal maniac, and then a loving servant Savior who forgives and includes all – especially the most undesirable – and finally a bloodthirsty, horse-riding, sinner-slayer who enacts ‘justice’ in ‘the end.’” So they recreate Him in their own image. But doing so requires that they view the Sciptures no longer as God’s revelation of Himself to man, but as man’s attempt to reveal their marred and somewhat immature understanding of God. The Bible becomes nothing more than a collection of human stories revealing mankind’s growing and progressively enlightening view of God. And Jesus becomes no longer a Savior from sin, but a seer who helps man see the truly loving side of God.

But the problem with all this is that John and the other apostles tell us, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 ESV). John is not afraid to talk about sin. And he is most certainly not afraid to testify that mankind needs a Savior from sin. In fact, as far as John was concerned, the greatest expression of God’s love for mankind was the selfless, sacrificial, undeserved death of His own Son. The brutal execution of Jesus was God’s love on display. Hard to understand? Difficult to comprehend? You bet. Sounds harsh and barbaric doesn’t it? It assaults our sensibilities. But just because we can’t reasonably rationalize how a loving God could require the brutal death of His own Son in order to pay for sins He didn’t even commit, doesn’t mean we should totally reconstruct the scenario to better suit our sensibilities. Jesus Himself told us, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 ESV). Death as an expression of love. It is God’s holiness, righteousness, and justice that make His love all that more incredible. Paul reminds us, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV). Our sin separated us from God. Our sin required a just and holy God to do the right thing and mete out judgment and the deserved punishment. But God loved. When man couldn’t live up to the holy standards of a righteous God, He stepped in and did something about it. He loved us when we were at our worst. But His love didn’t overlook our sin. He didn’t just dismiss our guilt and ignore our debt. To do so would have required Him to be less than God. No, God remained just, holy, and righteous while loving us at the same time. But to do so, someone had to die. Someone had to pay the penalty. His own Son. The sinless Son of God. And it is that remarkable act of LOVE that should motivate and inspire our love for others. We don’t make God more loving by attempting to make Him less judgmental. For God to ignore our sin would not have been loving, anymore than a father to ignore the rebellion of a child. God’s love shines greatest when we see man’s sin at its darkest. Man is sinful. Sin is rebellion against God. The penalty for sin is death – eternal separation from God. But God loved. He paid the penalty by sending His Son to die – out of love. As an expression of His love. Because He loves. Love is at its most beautiful when juxtaposed against a backdrop of unloveliness and undeservedness. Loving the unlovely isn’t just hard. It’s impossible. Without the love of God.