The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

***Still in revision***

Rev. L.L. Langstroth, the father of modern beekeeping, was preaching in Dayton, OH on Oct 6, 1895. Because of his age he had to preach sitting down. He opened his sermon with these words, “Today I wish to speak to you about the love of God.” Then he died. As a preacher there would be no better way to go. Maybe the Lord was being merciful, sparing him from a difficult subject. While God’s love might seem simple enough, it is actually a difficult doctrine (not unlike the Trinity, providence or the atonement, etc). 

Part of the problem is that in English we only have one word for love, which is a shame. Other languages, like French, have more than one (adorer, aimer, etc). Greek too has many different words for love (eros [romantic], venus [lust], phileo [brotherly], agape [to prefer]). C.S. Lewis made much of these in The Four Loves (1960). Beyond this there are many contextual senses of God’s love (emphasized and partly summarized in this blog in a short but heady book by D. A. Carson, called, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God [2000]).

One, somewhat obvious point, is that we can’t equate or project our human love upon God’s to define it. This is part of the trouble.

Another difficulty is that in English we only have one word for love, which is a shame. Other languages, like French, have more than one (adorer, aimer, etc). Greek too has many different words for love (eros [romantic], venus [lust], phileo [brotherly], agape [to prefer]). C.S. Lewis made much of these in The Four Loves (1960). Beyond this there are many contextual senses of God’s love (emphasized and partly summarized in this blog in a short but heady book by D. A. Carson, called, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God [2000]).

One difficulty concerns our view of God Himself. Most Christians know John’s words that ‘God is love” (1 Jn 4:8b). However, is His love as simple as it is popularly made out to be? I mean, I hope I wouldn’t mean the same thing if I said, “I love God, I love my wife, I love my neighbour and I love my ATV!” No, God is who is He is, and He isn’t simply love. (John also says that He is ‘light’ and ‘truth,’ etc). God revealed Himself as the great I AM. God simply is. This is called ‘the simplicity of God’ most famously summarized in Ex 34:6–8. Love is a characteristic of God but not the characteristic.

This tendency arose in the mid-1800s when piety replaced doctrine and new liberal tendencies eroded belief in the Bible on the one hand and created modern sensibilities of the goodness of man that made God’s wrath and justice untenable on the other. Christians, even well-meaning evangelicals, retreated into the simplistic belief that God is love—for that is all people found pleasant to hear. All we need to do is receive His love, God’s love is unconditional, God love’s you so much, etc. A loving God couldn’t possibly…, etc. We’ve brought God’s love to a place where it is meaningless; is it any wonder people aren’t bothered by it? There is a great danger in absolutizing one characteristic of God and even one form of His love to the neglect of the others. God’s love ceases to be anything at all when we reduce it to less than it is.

We must understand God’s love in its biblical senses. Discerning these is a further difficulty.  Carson identifies four types, or senses, of God’s love found in the Bible. I’ve categorized them as:

1. Intra-Trinitarian love: God is other focused by nature, being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Focused upon too much it fails to distinguish between different relational forms of love and differentiate between the love God shows His creation.
2. Providential Love/Common Grace: God loves us though we be sinners by causing the rain and sun to fall on the unjust (Lk 13). Taken to an extreme God becomes a sort of good ‘force’ in the universe, vs. a personal God.
3. General Love/Beneficence: God loved sinners enough to provide a Saviour (Jn 3:16) and welcomes all who repent and trust Him (Jn 6). If we sentimentalize God’s love, seeing Him as ‘inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion’ taking great interest in God’s inner emotional life, making love unconditional and therapeutic, it turns God into a rather different god than the awesome transcendent God of the Bible (Carson, 22). He becomes so cuddly (finite) that—like a teddy bear—we can control him and do no wrong.
4. Special/Electing/Covenantal Love: God’s most special love comes upon those whom He chose from eternity past (Eph 1:5). If this is majored upon exclusively His other loves can be neglected, even to the extent of failing to freely call all sinners to repent and believe the Gospel.

Further difficulty comes when God’s love(s) intersect with other Biblical subjects such as the wrath and justice of God, His impassibility, election, the purpose and extent of the atonement, divine sovereignty and human responsibility etc. It can be mind boggling (and certainly humbling).
The different forms of God’s love may be presented as a simple picture to help us:

As ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ (Wesley, 1739) recognizes, “Second Adam from above, reinstate us in thy love.” We need to be adopted into God’s family through faith in Christ in order to receive the greatest form of God’s love, His special love.

While we may live under the more general forms of God’s love, because we are sinners, we actually exist under God’s wrath, or just anger toward sinners. The paradox, is that while He is holy and just in His providential love he displays His mercy by withholding judgement and sending rain. Paradoxically, while sinners, He provided a means of rescue by sending His Son (Jn 3:16). As paradoxically, He appointed His Son to save those He chose from eternity, not based upon works, to unite them to Himself in a covenant relationship for eternity (His special love).
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Overcoming these difficulties helps us understand the love of God is simple but not simplistic, which helps us understand it, receive it and enjoy it.