Amazing Love! How Can It Be?
In mercy, God vents his just wrath on Christ as our substitute and does not give us what our sins deserve saying, “‘whosoever believes in Him shall not perish,’ for Christ perished in your place!” Though mercy is a gospel all by itself, worthy of the endless praises of men and angels, in Christ, God gives more grace saying, “whosever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life!” You see, if mercy is not receiving what is deserved, then grace is receiving that which is undeserved.
One day, during my senior year of high school, I noticed someone in the gym I’d never seen before. He was a juggernaut of a man I assumed to be a trainer, brought in to work with the football team. Turns out, he was brought in to work with the team but as the new quarterback. It was a 16-year-old named Timmy Tebow. Nobody knew him then, but we all know him now! We know him for championships, broken records, Heisman trophies, NFL highlight reels, and bestselling books.
But I think his greatest feat took place on January 8th, 2009, when he led the Gators to a championship victory with “John 3:16” written in silver sharpie on his eye blacks. He later told reporters that he chose John 3:16 because it was “the essence of our Christianity and the essence of our hope.” Astonishingly, 94 million people Googled “John 3:16” during the game and read the good news for themselves: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Luther agreed, hailing John 3:16 as “the Gospel in miniature,” and Spurgeon called it “the North Star of Scripture.” It’s one of the first verses we teach our children at the start of life and one to which we cling at life’s end. We see it everywhere from billboards to bumper-stickered tailgates and tattooed forearms. But frequent handling causes callouses. Perhaps, John 3:16 has become to you like the patinaed engagement ring with a dusty diamond, worn everyday but scarcely looked at. How beneficial then, to shine the gem and remind our forgetful hearts that God gave his Son for us because he loved us.
The God of Love “For God so loved the world…”
This good news wasn’t trumpeted by Jesus during a mountain-top sermon but late one night after Jerusalem’s Passover crowds had ceased, to a pharisee named Nicodemus. To Pharisees, God was chiefly a master who commands, an inspector who scans, a judge who renders a verdict, an executioner who punishes, not a Father who loves. But the love of God and the God of love was first and foremost in the heart of Jesus.
There are four Greek words translated as “love”: philia, the love of friends; storge, the love of family; and eros, the romantic love of a spouse. But here, Jesus chose the greatest, agape love to express God’s divine motivation in the salvation of sinners. The Bible says God’s agape love is: a sovereign love in which, “God predestined us for adoption to himself” before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:5); an unbreakable love which “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” can sever (Romans 8:38-39); a great love by which he “made us alive together with” Christ when we were dead in sin and trespasses (Ephesians 2:4); an infinite love whose breadth, length, height and depth surpass all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19); and an unconditional love shown in that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).
There are two tragic mistakes we make regarding God’s love. First, we misprioritize God’s love and see it as one grape in the cluster of his attributes, forgetting that “God is love” (1 John 4:8 & 16). Harry Ironside said, “[Love] is his very nature. We can say that God is gracious, but we cannot say that God is grace. We can say that God is compassionate but we cannot say that God is compassion. God is kind, but God is not kindness. But we can say, God is love.” Can you say that? Or have you exchanged the Bible’s God of love for the cold, grey deity of the pharisee? Yes, we must press on to know God’s eternal power, holiness, and justice but we must remember that it is only by God’s love that he is these things for us! God’s love is the bridge by which he comes to us to rescue us from our sins for himself.
We also misplace the love of God, putting love at the end of the salvation equation as a product; believing that Jesus bled and died for our sins to make God love us. But Christ puts God’s love at the beginning of the equation as the chief factor, saying, “For God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son.” That means the cross of Christ is not the place God started loving his people, but the ultimate sign of his love for them which had been burning in his breast for all eternity. “Love,” wrote Thomas Watson, “made Christ suffer for us, love was the chain that fastened him to the cross.” This love Spurgeon said, “flows from its own secret source in the eternal Deity, and it owes nothing to any earth-born rain or rivulet; it springs from beneath the everlasting throne, and fills itself full from the springs of the infinite. God loved because he would love.”
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If You Don’t Believe in Hell
No one takes joy in the doctrine of hell, not even God. Jesus said his Father doesn’t want any children to perish (Matt. 18:14). He wants all to repent and find themselves in him (2 Pet. 3:9). But people still have a free will. They can choose not to repent and follow God. And Scripture is clear about the eternal consequence of that decision—despite its ugliness and terror. Based on that same free will, people can choose to reject the doctrine of hell. The problem is twofold. One is the ripple effect. The other is that many Christians have lost all sense of authority beyond the self, and that’s precisely where they’ve given way to secular culture, which prioritizes self above all else.
Beliefs ripple. But we make a concerted effort to ignore that. Especially within the system of Christian faith, people can be tempted to pick and choose which doctrines they are “okay with” and which ones they leave behind. The problem lies in the ripples. Christians don’t always see how disbelief in one thing affects belief in another. In this article, I want to use disbelief in the existence of hell as an example. Universalism has made a comeback, especially since the work of people like Rob Bell. Maybe the initial conservative horror at what he said in Love Wins has worn off after a decade. Maybe some Christians are favoring moral practicality or inner feelings over the authority of God’s Word. I don’t know.
But what I set out below leads to a troubling conclusion: as a Christian, if you don’t believe in hell, there’s a very good chance you’re lost and having a hard time identifying both who God is and who you are. And you may be drifting towards that ever-growing “religious-nones” category.
Rippling Doctrines
In a recent podcast series, Kevin DeYoung and David Briones talked about liberal Christianity of the early 20th century and its relation to what’s commonly called “progressive Christianity” today. DeYoung made a passing observation that doesn’t get near enough attention. In referring to the doctrine of hell as a staple of orthodox Christian faith, he noted how rejecting that doctrine requires that you redefine every other doctrine, too. This is what we might call the ripple effect of belief. And if people knew about this, I don’t know that they’d be as quick to dismiss a biblical doctrine that has guided and steered the faith of the church for over two thousand years.
Here’s what the ripple effect looks like. If there’s no hell, then you have to revisit the doctrine of sin, since not repenting of sin is what lands people in hell (Matt. 7:23; 25:41; Mark 9:43; 2 Thess. 1:9). But then you have to look at the doctrine of Christ, since Christ came to “save” the world from sin (Matt. 1:21; John 1:29; Acts 2:38; Rom. 3:23; 5:8; 6:23; 1 John 1:7; 2:2). And if sin doesn’t actually put anyone in hell, because hell doesn’t exist, then why did Christ come? What did we need saving from if not sin? Or—dare you think it—did we even need saving.
The ripples keep coming. If we redefine Christ’s mission, and Christ is the Son of God, then we have to redefine our doctrine of God, especially the notion of God’s holiness. Who is this God that sent himself to a humanity that didn’t need saving from a hell that doesn’t exist? If holiness isn’t an attribute of God, then what can we say about who God is? And if we’re leaving behind Scripture as the authority on who God is, do we simply associate God with anything that we feel is loving, beautiful, or mysterious?
And lest you thought this was all speculation about supernatural ideas, we also have to revisit the doctrine of man, of who we are. If we were formerly understood as creatures made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), but we no longer have a clear understanding of who God is in terms of holiness, then who are we? What makes a human a human? As Christians, we can’t answer that question without an understanding of who God is. The doctrines of God and man are inextricably linked; whatever you believe about one has direct implications for the other. That is, if you’re still claiming to be a Christian. (More on that in a moment).
The ripple effect should be evident now.
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Read God’s Law for Maximal Application
Written by William B. Fullilove |
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
The Divines provide us a powerful biblical training that forbids us from adopting a merely privatized faith. Their call on our lives is to emulate their patterns of interpretation and to apply God’s law to every area of life. This is what godliness looks like.When we confess our sins in worship, we confess both the wrong we’ve done and the good we’ve left undone. In so doing, we follow a long Christian tradition that deeply considers the full implications of God’s commandments, reading them expansively—never narrowly—to search out both the positive and negative implications of each commandment for the Christian life.
It’s this maximal reading of the law, a thirst to apply the principles—not merely the letter—of God’s commands into every area of life, that we see modeled throughout the Bible and with great depth in our Reformed tradition.
In the Law Itself
We see this model envisioned in the way Leviticus 6 works out the implications of the eighth commandment:
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the LORD by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby—if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt” (Lev. 6:1–5).
Leviticus makes clear that “stealing” is far more than simply taking something from your neighbor.
Deception in issues of a deposit, oppression of another, finding something lost and avoiding returning it, misleading others —all these, and by implication even more, would count as violations of the spirit of the eighth commandment. The law itself indicates the commandments should be read expansively, not narrowly.
By Our Savior
We see the same model in the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:
And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions (Matt. 19:16–22).Christ’s point, of course, was that the young man’s piety was not as exemplary as he would have hoped. True piety doesn’t simply end with avoiding sins of commission, being able to say, “These I have kept.” Keeping the law includes avoiding sins of omission as well.
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The Consequences of Plagues and Pandemics (Part 2)
Contributing to the rise of unlimited government as a result of the pandemic were the above bailouts. For the first time, the government gave vast amounts of money directly to its citizens, extending the social safety net not just to the disadvantaged but to everyone. Again, maybe this was necessary and a good policy, a compensation to businesses for being shut down and to the public for not being allowed to go to work. I’m just saying that this largesse, justified or not, greatly expanded the role of government, as well as the willingness of citizens to accept that expanded role.
Yesterday we discussed how the Black Plague of the 14th century contributed to the rise of economic and political freedom. Today I want to discuss how the COVID pandemic is contributing to the loss of economic and political freedom.
Again, the Black Death led to a massive labor shortage, which drove up the economic power of individual workers, and to the decimation of the feudal elite, which led to the decentralization of power, with peasants and city-dwellers electing their own leaders.
COVID, which is far less fatal, has also led to a labor shortage and to the consequent rise of wages. But notice the difference. The labor shortage this time is caused not by the death of millions but by people leaving the workforce, either voluntarily or because of government-imposed lockdowns. We now face the additional prospect of the labor shortage getting even worse because of vaccine mandates, either from governments or from private companies, as large numbers of workers in key sectors are vowing to quit their jobs rather than get vaccinated.
But the wage gains from the labor shortage are being cancelled by the surge of inflation. According to the Econ 101 textbook explanation, inflation comes from too much money chasing too few goods. Productivity is down because of the world-wide lockdowns, as well as the labor shortage. But the government has been pouring money into the economy, beginning with $4 trillion-dollar bailouts and continuing with the recently-passed trillion dollar infrastructure bill, with an additional $2 + trillion social infrastructure bill waiting in the wings.Incredibly, President Biden is describing his infrastructure bills as inflation fighters because they will put more money in people’s hands.
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