What would be your reaction if you discovered that the god you worship is one you created in your own imagination and not the God of the Bible? Would you be willing to change your perspective or would you defend the god you created, the one you prefer, the one you're comfortable with, the one that asks little of you, the one who loves you just the way you are without any hint of transforming you into an instrument of holiness?
How do we know this? From His Word: "But the LORD was pleased to crush Him," that is, Jesus, "putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand" (Isa. 53:10). This is a prophetic passage in the Old Testament looking forward to the time when God the Father would pour out His wrath upon God the Son--and this is the one and only way that salvation could be granted to sinners (Gen. 22:8; John 1:29). But the Son of God did not suffer the wrath of the Father unwillingly (John 10:17, 18). If your god does not reflect the God of Scripture then you believe in a false god--a god you imagined or a false god you were taught to trust.
THE WORD OF GOD
Even people who claim to believe in the Bible as the Word of God qualify that declaration by arguing that there are errors in Scripture and those errors of interpretive perspective, deriving from cultural appropriations within their own ancient contexts, confuse the attributes of the God of Israel sometimes as angry, wrathful, commanding the slaughter of pagans when, in fact, those people were mistaken. God did not really command such slaughter, they confidently argue, and He did not then--and does not today--display anger and wrath; and, so, when we happen upon such texts, so some say, we must realize that those people during those times do not rightly represent the god of love we are supposed to trust today. We are so much more enlightened than they and we must read Scripture historically, contextually, within their own respective cultural perspectives.
What is true is that we really do need to read Scripture within its own historical-grammatical context. But does that make God's Word any less the Word of God? No. So many troubling and even heretical issues today within the Church all begin with a faulty view of Scripture. If we maintain a faulty view of the Word of God then we will, without a doubt, create faulty views of the God of the Word. What did Jesus believe about Scripture? Because if we cannot trust what Jesus says about the Word of God then we have nothing else to discuss. In effect, then, we cannot embrace any less, any lower, a view of Scripture than that of Jesus Himself. His Name, His Divine Identity, is even called the Word of God (John 1:1, 14; Rev. 19:13).
Regarding the irrefragability of Scripture, Jesus said to the unbelieving Jewish leaders, "If those people to whom the Word of God came were called 'gods' [i.e., judges who act on behalf of YHWH, God] (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say about the One whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?" (John 10:35-36 NET). The NET Bible study note teaches us: "In this context, He does not explain precisely what is meant by 'broken,' but it is not too hard to determine. Jesus' argument depended on the exact word used in the context of Psalm 82:6. If any other word for 'judge' had been used in the psalm, His argument would have been meaningless. Since the scriptures do use this word in Psalm 82:6, the argument is binding, because they cannot be 'broken' in the sense of being shown to be in error."
Jesus Himself prays thusly to His Father: "Sanctify them [all His disciples] in the truth; Your Word is truth" (John 17:17 ESV). I trust that Jesus knows whether or not God's Word is truth, as God contextualizes divine truth, for He is the God of Truth (Ps. 31:5; Isa. 65:16), since His eternally-divine nature renders Him incapable of lying (Titus 1:2 NASB; Heb. 6:18), and Christ Jesus Himself is Truth Incarnate (John 1:14; 14:6). We choose to believe that Jesus, the eternal Son of God (John 1:1 NLT), the one and only rightful Representative of God (Heb. 1:3), knows what He is talking about.
The apostle Paul, under the direct influence and inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, writes: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17 ESV). Immediately the enlightened liberal will argue that the apostle Paul did not write 2 Timothy (or at least six other books historically attributed to him). Let us for a moment concede. Does knowledge of the author of 2 Timothy verify the inspiration of this passage? No, not necessarily, for we do not know for certain the true author of Hebrews and, yet, early believers recognized the fingerprints of God on the pages. Even the author of 2 Timothy acknowledges that what is inspired is not necessarily the author but the γραφὴ, the graphē, the Scripture.
But I intend to push the argument further still: the real reason why those who deny the authority, inspiration, and inerrancy of Scripture is due to a deficiency within them and not with the Word of God in all of its perfection and beauty (Ps. 19:7, 8, 9, 10, 11). Face the fact: we are not surprised when unconverted liberals spew out suspicion, derision, and hatred for the Word of God. The Word does not penetrate the stony heart of the non-believer but, rather, deflects the inerrant Seed. They willfully do not receive the Word of the Holy Spirit and they cannot receive the Word (1 Cor. 2:14). But to the born-again believer, who has received the Seed of the Word of God (Luke 8:11-18; James 1:18; 1 John 3:9), Scripture is "living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and [is] able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). The born-again believer loves the Word of God because it derives from the God of the Word.
THE GOD OF THE WORD
If God had not revealed Himself to us in His Word, informing His (especially Old Testament) servants to write to us, then we today could not know the God of the Word. In this Word of God we have, revealed to us, the God of the Word. Is God a God of perfect love? Yes (1 John 4:8)! Is God also a God of Wrath? Yes (Ezek. 22:21; Rev. 6:16)! This is because God is also a God of Justice (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 89:14; Acts 17:31) and Justice requires the punishment of, or due penalty for, sin (cf. Rom. 1:18, 19, 20, 21, 32; 5:12, 18, 19). God is also a God of perfect hate (Ps. 5:4, 5; 7:11; 11:5).
If you confess to worship a God of love, but also insist that God "wouldn't send anyone to Hell," I can only reply with the words of Jesus: "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell" (Matt. 10:28). Is Jesus wrong and you right? Or perhaps, in order to perpetuate your false god of love, you insist that the writer did not accurately portray Jesus here. I have heard this argument before. Because one universalist liberal did not like me quoting the words of Jesus as recorded by John, "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6), he insisted that Jesus never said those words because they, in his mind, contradict his own view that God will save everyone regardless of faith in Jesus Christ (and regeneration and justification).
So, then, when I quoted John again to him, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:36 NKJV), he argues that those words are not true. I asked him, "By what standard are they not true? How do you know this?" He had no word for an answer. How could he? If we get to pick and choose which words are inspired and which words are in error then the obvious question remains: How do we determine which words are God's inspired words and which words are the errors of the writer? When we deny or reject the Word of God as the Word of God then we reject the God of the Word (1 Thess. 2:13). This is His Word.
We must determine first that the Bible, in the words of B.B. Warfield, is the Word of God in such a way that, when the Bible speaks, God speaks. We must then determine to glean from God's Word the character and attributes of the God of the Word. Otherwise you create for yourself a false god of your own making. God is perfect love, yes, but God is also just--and His justice demands satisfaction. This is why Jesus came to save sinners. By saying that your god is a god of love, and never sends anyone to Hell or never hates or punishes anyone, then you deny our need for a Savior. The very reason that our God is a just God of love is demonstrated by the incarnation of Jesus (John 1:1, 14, 18; 3:16), His perfect and holy life (2 Cor. 5:21), His crucifixion (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26) and resurrection (Rom. 10:9, 10), and His ascension and current role as Intercessor and Mediator (Rom. 8:34; 1 Tim. 2:5). Once you embrace the Word of God as the Word of God (1 Thess. 2:13) then you will know, in truth, the God of the Word.
GOD IS LOVE
Is our God not a God of love? Of course He is a God of love for God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Love is what motivated God the Father to save sinners (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10). But that verb--the verb is--is the key interpretive mark: God does not have love for others as do we, and God does not feel love for others as do we, but God actually is love. God defines and gives context to love. But God is also just (Deut. 32:4). The word just refers to justice, right judgment, righteousness, rightness, uprightness. So God is not only love but also just--among a host of other attributes: eternal, holy, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. "God is a righteous judge and a God who has [or feels, ESV] indignation every day" (Ps. 7:11 NASB): or He "shows His wrath every day," CSB; or He "is angry throughout the day," NET]--the KJV and NKJV read: "God is a just judge and God is angry with the wicked every day." The italics indicate helping the reader understand what God is angry at every day but those words are absent in the Hebrew. Yet, what of this verse, and others like it (Ps. 5:4, 5)? "The LORD tests the righteous but His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence" (Ps. 11:5 ESV). Does this Word of God fit your loving description of God? Can He hate and love? What is love? What is biblical love?
Jesus said: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). His disciple John wrote: "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). So love, biblical love, is self-sacrificial. Love costs us our very lives--everything that we are in all our humanity. Love cost God the Father the incarnated life of God the Son so His own enemies could be reconciled to Him (Rom. 5:1, 26, 8, 10; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19). So, though God can hate wicked people--and that includes every single sinner ever to be born--He can also love His enemies, as He calls us also to do (Matt. 5:44). God is the One who is most offended by our sins. We might even rightly suggest that He is infinitely offended because He is infinite. Yet He loves us still--intentionally and from all eternity (cf. Jer. 31:3).
I mentioned above that love by biblical definition is self-sacrificial. Some people parse out the varying Greek words for our English word love and take the issue too far. None of that is ultimately helpful because we cannot and we must not confuse what we know about love, humanly speaking, with the eternal and infinite love of God. Dr. D.A. Carson writes: "we cannot begin to fathom the nature of the love of God by nothing more penetrating than methodologically flawed word studies."1 For instance, we often speak of the mutual love of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in an eternal triune fellowship. That love is unfathomable. We know next to nothing of the essence of that love. Again, Dr. Carson writes, "There has always been an other-orientation to the love of God. All the manifestations of the love of God emerge out of this deeper, more fundamental reality: love is bound up in the very nature of God. God is love."2 God's love is not even opposed to His wrath or sovereignty.
I think too often we have a tendency to think of God as a jolly old grandfather who smiles a lot, gives us treats and money, and would never say a cross word at us--not even to correct us. But that is not love. Ask any parent if correcting a child's behavior originates in his or her love for the child. Correcting or even punishing a child for terrible behavior and wicked choices is the very heartbeat of love. Otherwise the parent will end up raising a nightmare of a human being, one who is unduly spoiled, and feels entitled to whatever his or her wicked heart desires. We have at least one, maybe two, generations of that kind of people currently and it is an epidemic; and, so, such people have thought that love is allowing a child to do whatever he or she wants to do, to not interfere, to allow the child to believe and to feel and to imagine him- or herself anything that enters their young minds. That is not love. That is pure insanity. Love even allows a loved one to experience extreme difficulty, stress, and great pain.
Take the life of Joseph by way of example. He is given dreams and visions and gifts of God Himself but it costs him greatly. His own brothers betray him. When he is sold into slavery, he is then sold again, and enters into servitude. But God was with him. He rises to great heights in a foreign Kingdom. But then he is betrayed again and thrown into prison. But God was still with him. In the end he rises again to great heights in the Kingdom, even saving his own family from starvation during an extreme famine in the land, and he concludes that each and every event was orchestrated by the loving sovereignty of God (Gen. 50:20). But that love and that sovereignty, not mutually exclusive but concurrent together, came at a great price during some extremely difficult days in his life. God does not always deliver us from great difficulty, stress and anxiety, but allows us to go through those days with His help. Some people's view of love does not include difficulty whatsoever. That is not a biblical view of love.
CONCLUSION
Let God be God--even when you don't entirely understand Him. He has revealed Himself and what we need to know in His Word. Let His Word be His Word. If you cannot find a way to harmonize what you know about God then just live with your lack of understanding. You cannot begin to fathom the depths of God's knowledge. We cannot explain how God has always existed. I cannot fathom never again having an end after my death. I will forever live with my Creator, my Redeemer, my God and King. I don't know how except by faith. If you have God all figured out then you have created a false god of your own imagination--an idol you worship that reflects you and not the God of the Bible--meaning that you worship yourself. The God of the Word has revealed Himself in His Word. Immerse yourself in His Word, prayerfully asking Him to help you understand Him more, and He will be faithful to answer that prayer. Come at Him with your own perverse ideas, forcing Him to fit that mold, and He will turn away from you. His love and His justice demands that He do so. I mean, who are you to challenge your own Creator, as though you know better? Humble yourself, acknowledge His sovereignty, and begin to learn from His Word. Smash that idol and worship the true God of Scripture.
__________
1 D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000), 29-30.
2 Ibid., 39.
3 R.C. Sproul, Jr., Almighty Over All: Understanding the Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 108.
The most fundamental, foundational sin in our fallen, corrupt nature [argues the late R.C. Sproul in a sermon on Romans 1:18-32] is the sin of idolatry--the sin of refusing to honor God as He is [cf. Rom. 1:21]. We want to strip Him of His attributes [and] turn Him into a god made in our image, a god we can live with, a god we can be comfortable with. The little old lady, after every time I preach this, will raise her hand and say, 'But, my God is a God of love, not a God of wrath.' [He responds:] 'Then your God, who is incapable of wrath, is not the God who is. Because the God of love who is revealed in Scripture is also the God who is angry with sin, who is the God of justice and righteousness, who is the God of holiness; and you can't just take those attributes of God that you are comfortable with and embrace them while rejecting the rest. When you do that, you join the throng of humanity that suppresses the truth of God and refuse to honor Him as God' (mark 2:20:40-2:22:01).When I hear someone begin a sentence with "Well, the god I worship" I usually prepare myself for hearing all manner of heresy, as that god usually reflects the cherished values of the one speaking--and usually this so-called god is little else but a creation of a fallen imagination. Because of our sinful nature, we inherently and inevitably reject the true God (Rom. 1:18-26), the only living and true God (1 Thess. 1:9). We like a god of love, affirmation and harmony, a god that doesn't judge us but leaves us in our sins but will save us just the same. But we heartily reject a God who will judge our sins, even though this same God offers us salvation from those sins, having poured out His own divine wrath on His one-and-only Son. But even there we have a problem: most people today would say that "God pouring out His divine wrath upon His one-and-only Son" is nothing shy of divine child abuse. You see, then, that their unbiblical god is one they have created in their own imagination and not the God of the Bible.
How do we know this? From His Word: "But the LORD was pleased to crush Him," that is, Jesus, "putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand" (Isa. 53:10). This is a prophetic passage in the Old Testament looking forward to the time when God the Father would pour out His wrath upon God the Son--and this is the one and only way that salvation could be granted to sinners (Gen. 22:8; John 1:29). But the Son of God did not suffer the wrath of the Father unwillingly (John 10:17, 18). If your god does not reflect the God of Scripture then you believe in a false god--a god you imagined or a false god you were taught to trust.
THE WORD OF GOD
Even people who claim to believe in the Bible as the Word of God qualify that declaration by arguing that there are errors in Scripture and those errors of interpretive perspective, deriving from cultural appropriations within their own ancient contexts, confuse the attributes of the God of Israel sometimes as angry, wrathful, commanding the slaughter of pagans when, in fact, those people were mistaken. God did not really command such slaughter, they confidently argue, and He did not then--and does not today--display anger and wrath; and, so, when we happen upon such texts, so some say, we must realize that those people during those times do not rightly represent the god of love we are supposed to trust today. We are so much more enlightened than they and we must read Scripture historically, contextually, within their own respective cultural perspectives.
What is true is that we really do need to read Scripture within its own historical-grammatical context. But does that make God's Word any less the Word of God? No. So many troubling and even heretical issues today within the Church all begin with a faulty view of Scripture. If we maintain a faulty view of the Word of God then we will, without a doubt, create faulty views of the God of the Word. What did Jesus believe about Scripture? Because if we cannot trust what Jesus says about the Word of God then we have nothing else to discuss. In effect, then, we cannot embrace any less, any lower, a view of Scripture than that of Jesus Himself. His Name, His Divine Identity, is even called the Word of God (John 1:1, 14; Rev. 19:13).
Regarding the irrefragability of Scripture, Jesus said to the unbelieving Jewish leaders, "If those people to whom the Word of God came were called 'gods' [i.e., judges who act on behalf of YHWH, God] (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say about the One whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?" (John 10:35-36 NET). The NET Bible study note teaches us: "In this context, He does not explain precisely what is meant by 'broken,' but it is not too hard to determine. Jesus' argument depended on the exact word used in the context of Psalm 82:6. If any other word for 'judge' had been used in the psalm, His argument would have been meaningless. Since the scriptures do use this word in Psalm 82:6, the argument is binding, because they cannot be 'broken' in the sense of being shown to be in error."
Jesus Himself prays thusly to His Father: "Sanctify them [all His disciples] in the truth; Your Word is truth" (John 17:17 ESV). I trust that Jesus knows whether or not God's Word is truth, as God contextualizes divine truth, for He is the God of Truth (Ps. 31:5; Isa. 65:16), since His eternally-divine nature renders Him incapable of lying (Titus 1:2 NASB; Heb. 6:18), and Christ Jesus Himself is Truth Incarnate (John 1:14; 14:6). We choose to believe that Jesus, the eternal Son of God (John 1:1 NLT), the one and only rightful Representative of God (Heb. 1:3), knows what He is talking about.
The apostle Paul, under the direct influence and inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, writes: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17 ESV). Immediately the enlightened liberal will argue that the apostle Paul did not write 2 Timothy (or at least six other books historically attributed to him). Let us for a moment concede. Does knowledge of the author of 2 Timothy verify the inspiration of this passage? No, not necessarily, for we do not know for certain the true author of Hebrews and, yet, early believers recognized the fingerprints of God on the pages. Even the author of 2 Timothy acknowledges that what is inspired is not necessarily the author but the γραφὴ, the graphē, the Scripture.
But I intend to push the argument further still: the real reason why those who deny the authority, inspiration, and inerrancy of Scripture is due to a deficiency within them and not with the Word of God in all of its perfection and beauty (Ps. 19:7, 8, 9, 10, 11). Face the fact: we are not surprised when unconverted liberals spew out suspicion, derision, and hatred for the Word of God. The Word does not penetrate the stony heart of the non-believer but, rather, deflects the inerrant Seed. They willfully do not receive the Word of the Holy Spirit and they cannot receive the Word (1 Cor. 2:14). But to the born-again believer, who has received the Seed of the Word of God (Luke 8:11-18; James 1:18; 1 John 3:9), Scripture is "living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and [is] able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). The born-again believer loves the Word of God because it derives from the God of the Word.
THE GOD OF THE WORD
If God had not revealed Himself to us in His Word, informing His (especially Old Testament) servants to write to us, then we today could not know the God of the Word. In this Word of God we have, revealed to us, the God of the Word. Is God a God of perfect love? Yes (1 John 4:8)! Is God also a God of Wrath? Yes (Ezek. 22:21; Rev. 6:16)! This is because God is also a God of Justice (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 89:14; Acts 17:31) and Justice requires the punishment of, or due penalty for, sin (cf. Rom. 1:18, 19, 20, 21, 32; 5:12, 18, 19). God is also a God of perfect hate (Ps. 5:4, 5; 7:11; 11:5).
If you confess to worship a God of love, but also insist that God "wouldn't send anyone to Hell," I can only reply with the words of Jesus: "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell" (Matt. 10:28). Is Jesus wrong and you right? Or perhaps, in order to perpetuate your false god of love, you insist that the writer did not accurately portray Jesus here. I have heard this argument before. Because one universalist liberal did not like me quoting the words of Jesus as recorded by John, "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6), he insisted that Jesus never said those words because they, in his mind, contradict his own view that God will save everyone regardless of faith in Jesus Christ (and regeneration and justification).
So, then, when I quoted John again to him, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:36 NKJV), he argues that those words are not true. I asked him, "By what standard are they not true? How do you know this?" He had no word for an answer. How could he? If we get to pick and choose which words are inspired and which words are in error then the obvious question remains: How do we determine which words are God's inspired words and which words are the errors of the writer? When we deny or reject the Word of God as the Word of God then we reject the God of the Word (1 Thess. 2:13). This is His Word.
We must determine first that the Bible, in the words of B.B. Warfield, is the Word of God in such a way that, when the Bible speaks, God speaks. We must then determine to glean from God's Word the character and attributes of the God of the Word. Otherwise you create for yourself a false god of your own making. God is perfect love, yes, but God is also just--and His justice demands satisfaction. This is why Jesus came to save sinners. By saying that your god is a god of love, and never sends anyone to Hell or never hates or punishes anyone, then you deny our need for a Savior. The very reason that our God is a just God of love is demonstrated by the incarnation of Jesus (John 1:1, 14, 18; 3:16), His perfect and holy life (2 Cor. 5:21), His crucifixion (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26) and resurrection (Rom. 10:9, 10), and His ascension and current role as Intercessor and Mediator (Rom. 8:34; 1 Tim. 2:5). Once you embrace the Word of God as the Word of God (1 Thess. 2:13) then you will know, in truth, the God of the Word.
GOD IS LOVE
Is our God not a God of love? Of course He is a God of love for God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Love is what motivated God the Father to save sinners (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10). But that verb--the verb is--is the key interpretive mark: God does not have love for others as do we, and God does not feel love for others as do we, but God actually is love. God defines and gives context to love. But God is also just (Deut. 32:4). The word just refers to justice, right judgment, righteousness, rightness, uprightness. So God is not only love but also just--among a host of other attributes: eternal, holy, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. "God is a righteous judge and a God who has [or feels, ESV] indignation every day" (Ps. 7:11 NASB): or He "shows His wrath every day," CSB; or He "is angry throughout the day," NET]--the KJV and NKJV read: "God is a just judge and God is angry with the wicked every day." The italics indicate helping the reader understand what God is angry at every day but those words are absent in the Hebrew. Yet, what of this verse, and others like it (Ps. 5:4, 5)? "The LORD tests the righteous but His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence" (Ps. 11:5 ESV). Does this Word of God fit your loving description of God? Can He hate and love? What is love? What is biblical love?
Jesus said: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). His disciple John wrote: "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). So love, biblical love, is self-sacrificial. Love costs us our very lives--everything that we are in all our humanity. Love cost God the Father the incarnated life of God the Son so His own enemies could be reconciled to Him (Rom. 5:1, 26, 8, 10; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19). So, though God can hate wicked people--and that includes every single sinner ever to be born--He can also love His enemies, as He calls us also to do (Matt. 5:44). God is the One who is most offended by our sins. We might even rightly suggest that He is infinitely offended because He is infinite. Yet He loves us still--intentionally and from all eternity (cf. Jer. 31:3).
I mentioned above that love by biblical definition is self-sacrificial. Some people parse out the varying Greek words for our English word love and take the issue too far. None of that is ultimately helpful because we cannot and we must not confuse what we know about love, humanly speaking, with the eternal and infinite love of God. Dr. D.A. Carson writes: "we cannot begin to fathom the nature of the love of God by nothing more penetrating than methodologically flawed word studies."1 For instance, we often speak of the mutual love of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in an eternal triune fellowship. That love is unfathomable. We know next to nothing of the essence of that love. Again, Dr. Carson writes, "There has always been an other-orientation to the love of God. All the manifestations of the love of God emerge out of this deeper, more fundamental reality: love is bound up in the very nature of God. God is love."2 God's love is not even opposed to His wrath or sovereignty.
I think too often we have a tendency to think of God as a jolly old grandfather who smiles a lot, gives us treats and money, and would never say a cross word at us--not even to correct us. But that is not love. Ask any parent if correcting a child's behavior originates in his or her love for the child. Correcting or even punishing a child for terrible behavior and wicked choices is the very heartbeat of love. Otherwise the parent will end up raising a nightmare of a human being, one who is unduly spoiled, and feels entitled to whatever his or her wicked heart desires. We have at least one, maybe two, generations of that kind of people currently and it is an epidemic; and, so, such people have thought that love is allowing a child to do whatever he or she wants to do, to not interfere, to allow the child to believe and to feel and to imagine him- or herself anything that enters their young minds. That is not love. That is pure insanity. Love even allows a loved one to experience extreme difficulty, stress, and great pain.
Take the life of Joseph by way of example. He is given dreams and visions and gifts of God Himself but it costs him greatly. His own brothers betray him. When he is sold into slavery, he is then sold again, and enters into servitude. But God was with him. He rises to great heights in a foreign Kingdom. But then he is betrayed again and thrown into prison. But God was still with him. In the end he rises again to great heights in the Kingdom, even saving his own family from starvation during an extreme famine in the land, and he concludes that each and every event was orchestrated by the loving sovereignty of God (Gen. 50:20). But that love and that sovereignty, not mutually exclusive but concurrent together, came at a great price during some extremely difficult days in his life. God does not always deliver us from great difficulty, stress and anxiety, but allows us to go through those days with His help. Some people's view of love does not include difficulty whatsoever. That is not a biblical view of love.
God's ways are not our ways [Isa. 55:8, 9]. He has not revealed to us exactly how He is glorified in all that takes place [Exod. 14:4, 17; Prov. 16:4; Rom. 9:17, 18]. Neither has He revealed to us how all the hardships we face work together for our good [Rom. 8:28]. We don't have to know. The hows are some of the 'things not seen' which make up the meaning of faith [Deut. 29:29]. Faith is believing God. We are, like children, to believe what he chooses to reveal, without insisting He reveal all things to us. In fact, in those many circumstances in which we can see neither how He is glorified nor how the circumstances work toward our good, even that ignorance glorifies Him and is good for those that are His.3When people suggest that their god is a god of love, and that He would never do / inflict / allow harm in any sense imaginable to anyone, I know immediately that they did not derive that view of their false god from Scripture. But why should they when they don't view the Bible as the Word of God? They will, then, never know the God of the Word. Nor do they truly want to know Him. "So then He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires" (Rom. 9:18). Some people force their notion of love onto a god, an idol, of their own creation to appease their own sinfully guilty consciences. The only people, in their minds, who are true enemies of God are conservatives who actually believe and trust the Bible, who actually believe what the Word of God says about the God of the Word, and then they make us their own enemies as well. Do they love their enemies as God commands in His Word? If they do then I certainly don't feel that love. I feel their disgust at my biblical worldview. I feel their silence when excluded from their fellowship. But I don't feel any love. May the LORD be gracious to them and shower them with His love and mercy. May He gift them a heart to love Him and to embrace the Bible for what is--the Word of God that reveals the God of the Word (1 Thess. 2:13).
CONCLUSION
Let God be God--even when you don't entirely understand Him. He has revealed Himself and what we need to know in His Word. Let His Word be His Word. If you cannot find a way to harmonize what you know about God then just live with your lack of understanding. You cannot begin to fathom the depths of God's knowledge. We cannot explain how God has always existed. I cannot fathom never again having an end after my death. I will forever live with my Creator, my Redeemer, my God and King. I don't know how except by faith. If you have God all figured out then you have created a false god of your own imagination--an idol you worship that reflects you and not the God of the Bible--meaning that you worship yourself. The God of the Word has revealed Himself in His Word. Immerse yourself in His Word, prayerfully asking Him to help you understand Him more, and He will be faithful to answer that prayer. Come at Him with your own perverse ideas, forcing Him to fit that mold, and He will turn away from you. His love and His justice demands that He do so. I mean, who are you to challenge your own Creator, as though you know better? Humble yourself, acknowledge His sovereignty, and begin to learn from His Word. Smash that idol and worship the true God of Scripture.
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1 D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000), 29-30.
2 Ibid., 39.
3 R.C. Sproul, Jr., Almighty Over All: Understanding the Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 108.
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