LOVE OF GOD It is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would of thought) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of His love to call it forth. Nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked and uncaused. God loves people because He has chosen to love them and no reason for His love can be given except His own sovereign good pleasure. Paul writes to the Thessalonian Christians, “We are bound to give thanks always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you (selection) from the beginning (before creation) to be saved (the appointed end), through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth (the appointed means).” The exercise of God’s love toward individual sinners in time is the execution of His purpose to bless those same sinners, a purpose which He formed in eternity. God’s love to sinners involves His identifying Himself with their welfare. Such an identification is involved in all love. It is, indeed, the test of whether love is genuine or not. If a father continues cheerful and carefree while his son is getting into trouble, or if a husband remains unmoved when his wife is in distress, we wonder at once how much love there can be in their relationship, for we know that those who truly love are only happy when those whom they love are truly happy also. So it is with god in His love for us. God was happy without humans before they were made, he would have continued happy had He simply destroyed them after they had sinned, but as it is He has set his love upon particular sinners and this means that, by His own voluntary choice, He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till He has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity His happiness shall be conditional upon ours. God’s love to sinners was expressed by the gift of His Son to be their Savior. The measure of love is how much it gives and the measure of the love of God is the gift of His only Son to become human and to die for sins and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God. No wonder Paul speaks of God’s love as great and as passing knowledge! Was there ever such costly munificence? Paul argues that this supreme gift is itself the guarantee of every other: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” the New Testament writers constantly point to the cross of Christ as the crowning proof of the reality and boundlessness of God’s love. If love is simply placing your happiness in someone elses hands, then, in God’s hands, I believe, would be a good place to place your happiness!
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