Abundant Love
Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, March 4, 2022
By adoption in Christ, every believer shares in this divine love of complacency. It is the love enjoyed by Jacob, but not by Esau. This love is reserved for the redeemed in whom God delights—not because there is anything inherently lovely or delightful in us—but we are so united to Christ, the Father’s Beloved, that the love the Father has for the Son spills over onto us. God’s love for us is pleasing and sweet to Himself—and to us.
Love of Complacency
In his monumental biography of Jonathan Edwards, George Marsden cites a passage from Edwards’ Personal Narrative:
Since I came to this town [Northampton], I have often had sweet complacency in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. (p. 112)
If we take note of Edwards’ language, his choice of words to describe his enraptured delight in the glory of God, we observe his accent on the sweetness, loveliness, and excellence of God. He reports of enjoying a “sweet complacency” in God. What does he mean? Is not the term complacency a word we use to describe a certain smugness, a resting on one’s laurels, a sort of lazy inertia that attends a superficial sort of satisfaction? Perhaps. But here we see a vivid example of how words sometimes change their import over time.
What Edwards meant by a “sweet complacency” had nothing to do with a contemporary dose of smugness. Rather, it had to do with a sense of pleasure. This “pleasure” is not to be understood in a crass hedonistic, or sensual, sense but rather a delight in that which is supremely pleasing to the soul.
The roots of this meaning of “complacency” are traced by the Oxford English Dictionary (vol. 3), where the primary meaning given is “the fact or state of being pleased with a thing or person; tranquil pleasure or satisfaction in something or some one.” References are cited for this usage from John Milton, Richard Baxter, and J. Mason. Mason is quoted, “God can take no real complacency in any but those that are like him.”
I labor the earlier English usage of the word complacency because it is used in a crucial manner in the language of historic, orthodox theology. When speaking of God’s love, we distinguish among three types of that love—the love of benevolence, the love of beneficence, and the love of complacency. The reason for the distinctions is to note the different ways in which God loves all people, in one sense, and the special way He loves His people, the redeemed.
Love of Benevolence
Benevolence is derived from the Latin prefix bene, which means “well,” or “good,” and it is the root for the word will. Creatures who exercise the faculty of the will by making choices are called volitional creatures. Though God is not a creature, He is a volitional being insofar as He also has the faculty of willing.
We are all familiar with Luke’s account of the nativity of Jesus in which the heavenly host praises God declaring: “Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:8–14 NKJV).
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How to Raise a Worthless Child
He honored his sons above God by refusing to restrain them from their blasphemous life described above (1 Sam 2:29; 3:13). In fact, he joined their sins by fattening himself with the meat that his sons so wrongfully took (1 Sam 2:29). Hophni and Phinehas would answer for their own sins, but Eli would answer for letting them live unrestrained.
The book of 1 Samuel begins with a contrast between Samuel and the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Whereas Samuel would grow to be a godly boy and young man (cf. 1 Sam 1:28; 2:11, 18–21, 26; 3:19–4:1), Hophni and Phinehas were very sinful.
Notice the sins of these sons. They were generally “worthless men” and “did not know the Lord” (1 Sam 2:17). They showed themselves irreverent bullies and gluttons by eating sacrificial meat with its fat and taking it by force (1 Sam 2:13–16; cf. 2:29; Lev 3:17; 7:22–27). They slept with the women who helped at the tabernacle (1 Sam 2:22). They refused to listen to rebuke (1 Sam 2:25). As it was still Israel’s era of rule by judges, perhaps the lawless spirit of the day encouraged their sins as well (cf. Judg 21:25). It is no surprise, then, to find their sin described as “very great in the sight of the Lord” and that “it was the will of the Lord to put them to death” (1 Sam 2:25). As promised, they died on the same day, and God exterminated Eli’s descendants from the priesthood altogether (1 Sam 4:1–22; cf. 2:27–36; 1 Kgs 2:26–27, 35).
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3 Ways God Preserves the Human Race
The ongoing effects of the Fall are devastating. But when people curse and deny God they are lashing out at the One who sustains them, preserves them, and stays His wrath against them.
There are a few verses that show our need for Christ more than Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” We know where the story goes from here, God destroyed the world with a flood and He saved Noah, his family, and humanity from utter destruction. God made a covenant with Noah that He would never again destroy the earth and all who lived on it (Gen 8:20-22). And since the reason He destroyed the world was humanity’s unabated wickedness, He instituted three guardrails to hold back human depravity following the Flood. These three protective acts are not about the special redemption God has for His people, rather they are related to His common grace that prevents humanity from being as universally wicked as the Genesis 6:5 generation. God’s threefold preservation of humanity is that He reduced lifespans, restrained creation, and regulated justice.
He Reduced Lifespans
Before the flood, God decreed He would limit human life expectancy. He proclaimed that “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years” (Gen 6:3). We know that this didn’t take place immediately because Noah lived to 950 and 350 of those years were post-Flood (Gen 9:28-29). But, when we get to the list of Shem’s descendants (Gen 11:10-26) we see a downward trend in lifespan. Shem lived 600 years, his son lived 500 years, and so on to Abraham’s father, Terah, who lived to be 205. The average lifespan today hovers around 73 years.
There is a short narrative at the end of Cain’s family tree in Genesis 4 that shows why God limited the lifespan of humanity, “Lamech said to his wives, ‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold” (Gen 4:23-24). Essentially, Lamech is bragging about killing a young man for insulting him. Lamech was powerful, established, and had likely lived a long life by this point. He grew so wicked that he bragged about murdering a young man (possibly even a child). Someone doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to murder someone and then brag about it. No, this type of evil is built over years of rejecting the Lord and reveling in sin. God limited our lifespan to give our evil nature less time to percolate.
It’s telling of human nature that one of the most effective ways God has hedged our evil is by making it so we die at a younger age. The longer sinners live, the more sinful they become. Living a long life of rebellion leads to worse forms of rebellion. When people were living for hundreds of years they didn’t become wiser, better, or less likely to commit sin, they became wicked beyond comprehension. They earned the Flood over long, wicked, lives. And without this divine intervention, we would too.
A shortened life is an extreme mercy for wicked people. By limiting our lifespan He gave us less time to grow in our sin. God promised He would never again destroy the world as He did because humanity would never have the individual ability, or time, to grow as wicked as our longlived forefathers. God preserved humanity by limiting how long humans live because apart from Christ we only get worse with age.
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The Assurance of Sin
When John writes his epistle to those who believe in the name of the Son of God to assure them of eternal life (1 John 5:13), he includes awareness of sin. The unbeliever who walks in darkness may not perceive his sin or be pained by it, but the believer will be gripped by his sin and grieve over it with a godly sorrow.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8, NKJV)
Isaiah was never more acutely aware of his sin than when he stood in the presence of the glory of God. While the seraphim joined in heavenly chorus, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isa. 6:3), the prophet of God cowered in painful recognition of his sin and peril in the presence of the holy God. “Woe is me, for I am undone” (Isa. 6:5). Yet while Isaiah was powerless to do anything to save himself, God acted on his behalf so as to declare, “Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged” (Isa. 6:7).
Our sin is never more glaring, never more grievous, never more hideous than it is in the light of the glory of God. The closer we draw to God, the more painfully aware we will become of our sin and shame. That realization is what lies behind John’s assertion: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
Truth is in accord with the light. It testifies to the way of God and the glory of the gospel.
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