I can't really help today but to write once more on the love
of God and its meaning. The love of God is not just a substance but
a process. It is a union and intimacy which for us is forged out of the fires of a
holy jealousy and enmity. We can't know the union that characterizes
the love of God without first knowing the enmity that distances us
from that love.
The descriptor "God is love" has become a shibboleth in the
church at large used to deny key realities of enmity out of which
divine love is fashioned in coming to become man's portion. The
human concept of love cannot cope with the fundamental enmity that
shapes the context of divine love, but rather quashes and condemns
everything and anything marked
by enmity as anathematic to God's love. Consequently, in the
carnal mind, there is in love no enmity, no division, no exclusion.
Love is marked totally and only by harmony, unity and
inclusivity.
(Yet the world itself cannot maintain such a definition for
love. Love among all men is delimited, outside of which men display
enmity, intolerance and hatred. Their condemnation of those who do
not show love is itself unloving by their own standard. Thus they
are hardly in a position to judge the love of God for having such
boundaries.)
If the meaning of "God is love" is what men and the church
say it is--totality of harmony, unity, and unconditional acceptance
of all--then there is no room for nor way to justify all that God
Himself displays toward men contrary to these qualities as recorded
in Scripture. God could never be angry. God could never create or
advocate division among men. God could display no wrath nor
violence.
Yet the Scripture record is that, whatever God is as love, He
is so in the setting of these other negative realities of enmity,
separation from and hostility toward man. You see, whatever God is
as love, He is in the context of holiness, and holiness means
separation, and
separation means enmity.
The love of God is shaped by
the fundamental animus of holiness. And in contemplating the
meaning of "God is love," men ignore that animus at their own
peril.
God's love has two dimensions, to wit:
God's love is first contained within the boundaries of His
holy character. All His union, harmony and intimacy--everything we
like to think of as His love--is found within this holiness, and not
without it. This is the holy
exclusivity of the Father/Son union. There and therein only is
where you find the love of God unconditionally as you like to think
of it.
But secondly, God's love further reaches outside those holy
boundaries if by some means to reconcile to Himself those
at enmity with Who He Is within His holiness. In this way we say
that God loves His enemies. This is His extensionary love. It is a
missional love--the unlike reaching out to unlike.
Yet this extensionary love is itself marked by the same
defining holiness that thus inescapably evokes enmity, division and
anger among those to whom it comes. (The Light shone in the darkness,
and the darkness comprehended it not.) In reaching out toward
men, God unavoidably creates division among men--because God's love does not accept men
for who they are outside the terms of who He Is in Himself. And
so when men taste these bitter fruits of God's love in their midst,
they do not see His love as love at all.
Look what happens when
God shows up! He took my son away from me... He took my wife away
from me... He took my friend away from me. He took my money away
from me.You call that love? If that is what love is, I want nothing
to do with this "God is love" stuff.
(And now we know why there are atheists, and why atheists
reject Scripture as a record of who the true God must be. No One who
is truly God could act toward men the way the God of the Bible acts
toward men...destroying people in a Flood...killing babies in
Canaan...killing His own people with snakes...threatening fire and
brimstone judgment toward people...destroying the whole earth with
plagues and casting people into a lake of fire to the end of His
book. Some loving God.)
And you, Church, have no way to deal with this unless you
accept the reality of the fundamental animus that lies at the heart
of the love of God toward everything outside that love. The
beauty of the love of God is contained within the terms of Who He
Is, and anything outside those terms can only finally evoke the opposite of love from
Him.
Let's look further at this reaching out love of
God.
The extensionary missional love of God is marked by wondrous
other qualities of which we cannot conceive. These are the qualities
of patience, forbearance and longsuffering. That is, they are the
qualities that put up with and endure what we are outside of His
internal love in the course of His reaching out to us to reconcile
us to Who He Is within His Holiness.
Patience, forbearance and longsuffering are the supernatural
coating on God's extensionary love that enable His love to survive
in the hostile environment of sin without naturally destroying what
He came to save:
- These qualities are what have allowed the earth to exist
since the first sin without having been summarily pulverized on the
spot.
- They are what allowed Israel to continue to exist in the
wilderness without having been destroyed on the numerous occasions
God in His holy jealousy was ready to do so.
- They are what allowed Jesus to endure in this world all the
way to the cross among His inferiors to the bitter end.
- And they are what today still allow the angels to hold back
the four winds of destruction on this entire church age in face of
the churchs universal harlotry throughout this age.
Yet men and the church mistake God's patience, forbearance
and longsuffering as His unconditional acceptance of all men for who
they are where they are--and to bolster their misinformed concept of
the unconditional unity, harmony and intimacy of love that "God is
just dying" to pour out on all men everywhere.
But men and the church do not truly comprehend the love of
God. And each generation we get further away from the holiness
revivals of two and three centuries ago only bears this out all the
more.
&&&&&&&
I want to conclude this article by a simple but compelling
look at the life of Christ--the one we all say we adore, and the one
Whom we say we worship as God and to Whose Image we say we want to
be conformed.
Any casual objective look at the life of Christ in scripture
will show us anything but what we today call the love of God.
Instead, we will see all the characteristics that have been outlined
in this article:
We see a Christ whose core love in unity, harmony and
intimacy is reserved exclusively for those on the inside of the
fundamental separation unto Him and His Father. That is what the
entire discourse of John 13-17 is all about--intimate unconditional
love reserved to those on the inside.
We also see a Christ whose extensionary love to those on the
outside of His internal love is nevertheless delimited by the
qualities of fundamental animus eventuating in acrimonious division
from His family, friends, country and the revered religious
leadership of His culture. "I
came not to bring peace, but a sword," said He.
(This animus reaches such heights that by the end of His
ministry Jesus love for His Father is throwing over money tables in
the temple and inveighing excoriating threats of judgment against
both Pharisees and the entire nation in Matthew 23. To all with whom
He entered contention, His love in reaching out could hardly be
taken as such.)
Yet we also see a Christ whose missional love was thoroughly
governed by patience, forbearance and longsuffering. These were the
qualities that enabled Him to become the friend of publicans,
harlots and sinners.
(Come on, people. What do you think was really going on in
this friendship with publicans and sinners? Do you think Jesus was
just "loving on these people" pouring out His intimate secrets to
them? Do you think He was engaging in raucous laughter with them at
all their foul language and bawdy jokes like one of the gang? Is
that what you think was going on?
Or do you think that He was living toward them out of a
higher patience that said through redemptive demeanor, "There is something I value in
you that is right now stronger than my condemnation of the way you
are besmirching Gods holy image through your life"?)
These qualities also enabled Him to put up with the follies
of the attitudes of His own disciples, with whom He nevertheless
could show holy exasperation. And they enabled him to put up with
the repeated antics of a fickle populace who constantly contravened
his directions upon receiving His miracles.
(We also read in His final prayer of John 17 that Jesus
prayed for the same protective coating of sanctified love to
characterize His disciples as He sent them into the world the same
way He had been sent.)
So then, we see both the unconditional and conditional
dimensions to Christ's love for us, pouring out His innermost love
on His select disciples, reaching out in contentious missional love
toward the nation while also acting in conditional restrained love
toward the people under patience, forbearance and
longsuffering.
And all these dimensions are shaped in some way by the
fundamental animus of holiness. God's love is marked by an intrinsic
enmity. And until and unless we account for that enmity, we will
never have a true grasp and embrace of the love of God, and we will
end up prostituting it before the
world.
