text pertaining to the love of God
October 10th, 2008 — Theology
I found an interesting paradox in Joel Beeke’s commentary on The Epistles of John. He is speaking about God’s character:
“His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. He sees every wicked way in us.”
How can He not look at sin and yet see the wickedness in us? How would you explain this?
October 10th, 2008 — Application, Personal, Theology
I will often ask God to reveal my sin to me. I want to see my pride so that I can repent of it and walk in humility. In my desire to be a humble man, I know that I must turn from my prideful ways, but I cannot do that until I see where the pride is to turn from it. So I pray that God, the One who see everything in my heart, would reveal the pride.
Then He does this. He allows me to completely fall on my face and pride is totally revealed and I don’t like it. It is painful. It reflects poorly on me. I have to apologize to people. It is just ugly and I don’t like it.
But did not God give me what I asked for?
It is strange to me that I am so eager to ask for my sin to be revealed, and then think that when God does that, it will be easy. But I think this true-ism could rightly be said of the process of turning from pride to humility:
Humility cannot come without the revelation of sin.
Sin must be exposed if we want humility to be cultivated in our lives. There are no shortcuts. It would be nice if I was humble simply by choosing to walk obediently, but the reality is that I don’t. I naturally choose my own wicked, deceitful, self-serving ways.
So, I am learning (again) that being a godly, humble man does not mean that I simply live that without ever doing the opposite. It means that I see the opposite ways more often and I turn back to the cross and there gain the correct perspective.
June 3rd, 2008 — Application, Quotations, Theology
When tragedies occur, such as some one dying from a heart attack or a serious injury from a car crash or we hear of a huge weather phenomenon that wipes out thousands of people, we often turn our attention to death. We think about eternity and what will happen when we die. We are reminded of the fragility of human life and thus are thankful that we are still alive. Many deep feelings and thoughts that we do not often have, overtake us. I even recently have such thoughts when a dear 17-year-old friend went into cardiac arrest.
Calvin speaks of these type of thoughts. He says that God has made things on this earth to teach us that “human life is nothing but a vapor or shadow.” But then he says:
“But there is scarcely anything which we more carelessly consider or sooner banish from our memory; for we go about everything as if we want to make ourselves immortal.
If we watch a funeral or walk among the graves (or see a friend laying lifeless in a hospital bed), and thus clearly see the image of death before our eyes, we philosophize, I confess, about the vanity of life.
And even that does not happen every day, for often we are not moved at all.
But when we are, our philosophy is only short-lived; it vanishes as soon as we go away and does not leave the smallest trace behind.
It passes out of existence like the applause for an entertaining program.
We not only forget death, but the fact that we are mortals, as if no word concerning this has ever reached us, and we continue our foolish dream that we are to live forever.
If any man in the meantime reminds us of the proverb that man is only a creature of the day, we are willing to acknowledge this truth, but with such lack of attention that the idea of perpetual life keeps on lingering in our minds.
Who, then, can deny that we need to be warned not only by words, but that we should be convinced by every possible evidence that the present life is full of miseries!
For even if after we have become convinced of this, we hardly know how to stop our perverse and foolish admiration of it, as if life were nothing but one great accumulation of blessings.
But if it is necessary for us to be taught by God, it certainly is also our duty to listen to him when he speaks and arouses us from our sluggishness, that we may turn our backs upon this world and and try to meditate with all our heart on the life to come.
Calvin’s comments are incredibly insightful. He is basically saying that we may think about the brevity of life during certain situations, but as a whole we live as if we will live forever. I daily need to be reminded and taught about the empty, passing world that I live in because I am far too fascinated with it. May God continue to pull His bride’s affections heavenward.
December 31st, 2007 — Theology
During the four hour drive from Portland to Marysville, I was sharing with Audrey how I lack sympathy when talking to people, but how Christ sympathized perfectly because He was tempted in every way that we were tempted. Audrey then made the statement that it was interesting Christ could sympathize with women even though He was a man. That was something that I had never thought about before.
For all of time, men have been trying to understand women, but they have never scratched the surface. But Jesus understood women perfectly. He knows how they think and what they feel. For the same reason that Jesus didn’t need to be tempted with gambling at casinos to understand the temptation of greed, so He didn’t need to be a woman to sympathize with them.
When I was at ETS I listened to a seminar about the impeccability of Christ and part of that issue deals with how Jesus was tempted. Bruce Ware, the presenting scholar, mentioned how Christ was not tempted in every single way that we were, but He was tempted in the same core areas as we. His temptations then may not have been specifically the very things that we are tempted with today, but they struck at the same desires of the human heart.
All that to say, even though Christ wasn’t a woman, he can sympathize with them, just as He can sympathize with men because He was tempted to love things on this earth more than God.
December 8th, 2007 — Theology
I have done much thinking and studying on this issue in the last few months. I want to share with you my findings because most people do not know what the Bible says regarding the emotions of God and for me, the study has deepened and broadened my view of the biblical God. When we see Him in light of all that Scripture says regarding Him, He is awesome and majestic. From this study, I have gained a deeper intimacy with God as I stand humbled at His greatness.
I understand that if you have continued to read this far, you just want a brief overview with a summary conclusion. You probably don’t want the full paper that I wrote on the issue. But some of you may want the full treatment. So, I am going to fulfill the desires of the curious and then give you an opportunity to read the paper if you want to. At the end, I will give you some great resources online to read about the issue.
In order to help you catch the vision of this subject, let me ask some questions:
Does God “feel” anything? When the Bible says that God loves, is that describing an emotion or an attribute? When the Scriptures say that the anger of the Lord was kindled, does that mean He switched from His love to His anger, and thus changing?
More personally, what does God feel when you sin? Is He angry at you or does He forgo His anger and only shower love on you? If you only shows His love, does that mean He doesn’t get angry at sin?
These are only a few of the questions that help introduce this issue. We must find the biblical solution or we will heretically fall on one side or another, and thus diminishing God. First, we will look at those two erroneous extremes and then we will look at the biblical treatment.
In an attempt to view God as personal and intimately acquainted with His creation, many people today have described God as possessing strong passions. They look at the description of God and then conclude that if God did not have emotions then He could not actually love us like the Bible says. They say that without emotion we would be going to a cold, disinterested God and that is not the God of the Bible. This view is typically held by open theists or process theologians and thus they are satisfied to say that God’s emotions change. They see Him as a moody God who changes moods depending on the actions of men.
The problem with this view is that they are creating God in their own image. They see how humans relate and then they apply those same characteristics to God. God is no longer the majestic, sovereign God, but He is the big buddy in the sky who suffers pain like you and with you. This view has robbed God of His fullness and His holiness.
On the other hand, in reaction to the emotional view, some hyper-Calvinists say that God is not like His creation and thus is cold, detached, and uncaring. They want to uphold the immutability of God and so to attach any emotional quality to Him would imply change.
This view diminishes God’s compassion and love which is all over the Bible. They see Him as the God of stone, disinterested in human affairs and only cares for His own sovereign will, which does not take us into account. The Bible tells the story of how God in heaven has been involved with mankind since He created them.
Upon evaluating the biblical data on the issue, we must understand two things.
First, we must understand that God is knowable. He didn’t give us His Word to further confuse us on who He is, rather to give us a clear declaration of His person. Second, we must understand that God is not fully knowable. He is not human and thus is not limited to the human mind. Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Traditionally, the church fathers held to the doctrine of impassibility. This doctrine stated that God could not be moved by an external source; He moved all things, but could be moved by nothing. This view has been held by the majority of theologians and pastors from the inception of the church until long after the Reformation.
When looking at this, we must affirm several key attributes of God.
First, God is self-existent. He does not rely on anyone or anything. Everything necessary for Him exists in Himself. God does not reveal or express one of His attributes at the expense of another one, for He is a whole being. He does not throw out His love in order to show His wrath, but both operate simultaneously. In this way, God is completely self-contained.
Second, God is omniscient. He knows what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Nothing takes Him by surprise. All events in eternity past, present, and future have, are, and will take place as a direct result from God knowing and willing them to happen.
Lastly, God is immanent. This doctrine deals with the nearness of God. Job wrote, “What is man that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every moment and test him every moment?” (Job 7:17-18). The New Testament is also filled passages which declare God’s abounding, gracious love toward believers. From these examples, it is clear that God is not distant from His creation. He isn’t cold and uncaring, insensitive and lacking understanding. Rather He is near, He knows, and He cares.
The question still remains, “How do we understanding the Scripture language that seems to indicate that God has emotions and changes those emotions?”. In order to understand these passages, we need to understand anthropopathisms. We are familiar with anthropomorphisms, which are physical human characteristics applied to God, such as “the finger of God” (Luke 11:20), the mighty hand and outstretched arm of the Lord (Deut. 5:15), and “the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). Likewise, when Scripture ascribes emotions or affections to God, they are to be understood as anthropopathisms, which are emotional human characteristics applied to God, such as “the anger of the Lord” (Ex. 4:14), “the steadfast love of the Lord” (Ps. 89:1), and the grief of the Lord (Gen. 6:6). These “emotions” did not come about in reaction to human events. God is not forced to react a certain way because of how humans might live. He is the divine initiator, not the divine responder.
He knows what man will do and how He will act according to those actions. He chooses how He will display His character at that moment in time and we see that specific attribute highlighted. So, when we read in Scripture about how God has compassion on someone, we should not think that means He set aside His hatred of sin, rather He chose to reveal Himself to man specifically in that way at that time.
Does God have emotions? In order avoid confusion, it would be best to say that He doesn’t have emotions, but rather than His character is expressed in language that resembles human passion for the purpose communicating an infinite God to finite creatures. He doesn’t have mood swings, but He is forever constant, never changing. But this does not mean that He is uncaring or disinterested in His creation, rather He is immanent and involved in human history, with the Scriptures as testimony. Our God is fully active in this world and yet remains completely transcendent over it.
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