"He Hath Loved Us!"
I John 4:10
We rejoice to know that "God is
love" (I John 4:8, 16).Love is an attribute of God. But that does not mean
that God loves all men.Any reasonable person,whose
mind is not perverted by the influence of Arminian,free-will religion, must
recognize that fact. Did God love those multitudes whom
he swept off the earth in the flood? Did God love the degenerate Sodomites,
upon whom he rained fire from heaven? Did God love Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and
their followers whom he swallowed up into hell? Anyone who imagines that God
loved those multitudes might well pray to be forever hidden and excluded from
the love of God! But the Scriptures nowhere assert,or
even imply,that God's love is universal,that it extends to all men. The
Scriptures say ,"He loved us!" And the
"us" whom he loves are all believers, past, present, and future.
"He loved us," who are chosen, redeemed, and called by his almighty
grace. John tells us four things about the love of God in this text.
1. God loves sovereignly. "Herein is
love, not that we loved God but that he loved us." There is nothing that
compels God to love any of his creatures. But in his infinite goodness, God
says, "Jacob have I loved." Our God is infinite, immutable, and
sovereign, and so is his love. He loves whom he will, because he will, and he
loves them eternally.
2. God loves sinners. "He loved
us." I preach fully, without reservation, unlimited love, unbounded mercy
to the vilest of men.We have nothing in us worthy of consideration. We deserve
the utmost extremity of God's wrath. But "he loved us!" Who can
express the infinite magnitude and fulness of these words?
3. God loves sacrificially. He "sent
his Son." God gave his darling Son to suffer and die upon the cursed tree
to save the multitudes of his elect, whom he loved with an everlasting love.
4. God loves savingly. God loved his elect
before the world began. But in order for us to be reconciled to God,justice had to be satisfied. Therefore, our loving heavenly
Father made his Son to be the sin-atoning, justice-satisfying
"propitiation for our sins." Through the substitutionary death of
Christ, all the sins of God's elect were washed away. "Herein is
love!" The love of God is more than a helpless passion. It is his saving
commitment and determination toward his elect.
Don Fortner