DEPTH OF THE HEART OF GOD

John 11:35 (KJV 1900)

35 Jesus wept.

II] DEPTH OF THE HEART OF GOD

A. HE CRIES WITH US

B. HE CRIES FOR US.

1. (John 11: 33-38) A deeply moved Jesus comes to the tomb.

John 11:33–38 KJV 1900

33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, 34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! 37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? 38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

And He said, “Where have you laid him?”

They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”

And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.

a. When Jesus saw her weeping:

The grief and tears of Mary and Martha moved Jesus.

God sees the tears of the grief stricken and is moved with compassion.

• God sees our tears.

• God is touched by our tears.

• God remembers our tears.

• God acts to dry our tears.

b. And the Jews who came with her weeping:

The Jews of that time and place were not reserved in their expressions of sorrow or grief.

i. “We must remember that this would be no gentle shedding of tears.

It would be almost hysterical wailing and shrieking, for it was the Jewish point of view that the more unrestrained the weeping, the honour it paid to the dead.” (Barclay)

ii. Jesus saw her weeping... Jesus wept:

There is an important contrast between the tears of Mary and the tears of Jesus.

Weeping (the word used for Mary in Joh 11:33) is a word that describes loud wailing.

Wept (the word to describe Jesus’ expression of grief in Joh 11:35) is another word that indicates a quiet weeping.

Jesus was greatly moved, but not out of control.

iii. Morris on Jesus wept: “That used here (and here only in the New Testament) points rather to a quiet weeping.

Jesus did not wail loudly but He was deeply grieved.”

c. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled:

Coming to the scene of Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus intensely groaned in the spirit.

In the ancient Greek, this phrase literally means, to snort like a horse - implying anger and indignation.

i. “The verb rendered ‘groaned’ is an unusual one.

It signifies a loud inarticulate noise, and its proper use appears to be for the snorting of horses.

When used of men it usually denotes anger.” (Morris)

ii. According to Trench, the sense of was troubled is “‘And troubled Himself.’

The phrase is remarkable: deliberately summoned up in Himself the feelings of indignation at the havoc wrought by the evil one, and of tenderness for the mourners.”

iii. “In ordinary classical Greek the usual usage of embrimasthai is of a horse snorting.

Here it must mean that such deep emotion seized Jesus that an involuntary groan was wrung from his heart.” (Barclay)

iv. It means that Jesus wasn’t so much sad at the scene surrounding the tomb of Lazarus.

It’s more accurate to say that Jesus was angry.

Jesus was angry and troubled at the destruction and power of the great enemy of humanity: death.

Jesus would soon break the dominating power of death.

v. “Christ does not come to the sepulcher as an idle spectator, but like a wrestler preparing for the contest.

Therefore no wonder that He groans again, for the violent tyranny of death which He had to overcome stands before His eyes.” (Calvin)

d. Jesus wept: Jesus shared in the grief of those who mourn.

Yet unlike any other, God the Son was able to do something about their grief.

Jesus allowed this sympathetic passion to uniquely do for Lazarus what He will one day do for all the righteous dead.

i. Jesus wept: There are many aspects to these two words.

• Jesus was truly a man.

• There may be no sin or shame in tears.

• Jesus was acquainted with grief.

• Jesus was not ashamed of His humanity.

• Jesus identified with others in their sorrow.

• Jesus loves people.

ii. “Jesus had humanity in its perfection, and humanity unadulterated is generous and sympathetic.” (Clarke)

“He suffered all the innocent infirmities of our nature.” (Spurgeon)

iii. Jesus dignified the tears of others in the Bible who wept, and all who weep.

• Abraham wept when he buried Sarah.

• Jacob wept when he wrestled the Angel.

• David and Jonathan wept together.

• Hezekiah wept over his sickness.

• Josiah wept over the sin of his nation.

• Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.

iv. “Sometimes we are told that if we really believed that our friends would rise again, and that they are safe and happy even now, we could not weep.

Why not?

Jesus did.

There cannot be any error in following where Jesus leads the way.” (Spurgeon)

v. Barclay explains that to the mind of the ancient Greek the primary characteristic of God was apatheia: the total inability to feel any emotion whatsoever.

The Greeks believed in an isolated, passionless, and compassionless God.

That isn’t the God of the Bible.

That isn’t the God who is really there.

vi. Again groaning in Himself:

“The repetition of ‘deeply moved’ (embrimomenos), the present participle of the verb, shows that Jesus was still under the same emotional tension that his first contact with the mourners had aroused.” (Tenney)

vii. See how He loved him!

“And when we see him pouring out his blood and life upon the cross for mankind, we may with exultation and joy cry out, Behold how he hath loved US!” (Clarke)

e. And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”

These seem to be words of genuine sorrow and sympathy.

They thought it truly sad that even Jesus, in all His greatness, could do nothing for Lazarus at this point.

i. “There is no reason for thinking of the words as spoken in mockery.” (Morris)

ii. Yet, these words were not helpful to anyone.

Spurgeon noted that all this “what if” talking is vain, of no use.

“Perhaps the bitterest griefs that men know come not from facts, but from things which might have been, as they imagine; that is to say, they dig wells of supposition, and drink the brackish waters of regret.” (Spurgeon)

iii. “Suppose that Jesus is willing to open the eyes of the blind, and does open them; is he therefore bound to raise this particular dead man?

If he does not see fit to do so, does that prove that he has not the power?

If he lets Lazarus die, is it proven therefore that he could not have saved his life?

May there not be some other reason?

Does Omnipotence always exert its power?

Does it ever exert all its power?” (Spurgeon)

Jesus wept.John 11:35

John 11:35 KJV 1900

35 Jesus wept.

The word is different from that used to express weeping in

Joh 11:33; but this latter is used of our Lord in Luk 19:41.

John 11:33 KJV 1900

33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,

Luke 19:41 KJV 1900

41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

The present word means not the cry of lamentation, nor the wail of excessive grief, but the calm shedding of tears.

Men have wondered When they find in the gospel, which opens with the absolute concrete declaration of the Divinity of our Lord, Then at a moment when that Divinity was about to be fully manifested , these words, which point them still to human weakness.

But the central thought of St. John’s Gospel is

“The Word made flesh,” and He is for us the Resurrection and the Life,

because He has been manifested to us, not as an abstraction which the intellect could receive,

but as a Person, living a human life and knowing its sorrows, whom the heart can grasp and love.

A “God in tears” has provoked the smile of the stoic

and the scorn of the unbeliever;

but Christianity is not a gospel of self-sufficiency,

and its message is not merely to the human intellect.

But an appeal to the very Heart.

It is salvation for the whole man and for every man;

and the sorrowing heart of humanity has never seen more clearly the Divinity of the Son of Man than when it has seen His glory shining through human tears. (Archdeacon Watkins.)

Christ’s tears

(Text, and Luk 19:41; Heb 5:7):—It is a commonplace to speak of tears; would that it were a common practice to shed them.

Luke 19:41 KJV 1900

41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

Hebrews 5:7 KJV 1900

7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

Whoever divided the New Testament into verses seems to have stopped in amazement at the text, making an entire verse of two words.

There is not a shorter verse in the Bible nor a larger text. Christ wept thrice.

The tears of the text are as a spring belonging to one household; the tears over Jerusalem are as a river, belonging to a whole country; the tears on the cross

(Heb 5:7) are as a sea belonging to all the world; and though, literally, these fall no more into our text than the spring, yet because the spring flows into the river and the river into the sea, and that wheresoever we find that Jesus wept we find our text, we shall look upon those heavenly eyes through this glass of His own tears in all these three lines.

Hebrews 5:7 KJV 1900

7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

Christ’s tears were

I. HUMANE, as here. This being His greatest miracle, and declaring His complete Divinity, He would declare that He was man too.

1. They were not distrustful inordinate tears. Christ might go further than any other man, both because He had no original sin within to drive Him, and no inordinate love without to draw Him when His affections were moved.

Christ goes as far as a passionate deprecation in the passion, but all these passions were sanctified in the root by full submission to God’s pleasure.

And here Christ’s affections were vehemently stirred (Joh 11:33); but as in a clean glass if water be troubled it may conceive a little light froth, yet it contracts no foulness, the affections of Christ were moved but so as to contract no inordinateness.

But then every Christian is not a Christ, and He who would fast forty days as Christ did might starve.

2. But Christ came nearer to excess than to senselessness.

Inordinateness may make men like beasts, but absence of affection makes them like stones.

St. Peter tells us that men will become lovers of themselves, which is bad enough, but he casts another sin lower—to be without natural affections.

The Jews argued that saw Christ weep, “Behold how He loved him.”

Without outward declarations who can conclude inward love?

Who then needs to be ashamed of weeping?

As they proceeded from natural affection, Christ’s were tears of imitation.

And when God shall come to that last act in the glorifying of man—wiping all tears from his eyes

—what shall He have to do with that eye that never wept?

3. Christ wept out of a natural tenderness in general; now out of a particular occasion—Lazarus was dead.

A good man is not the worse for dying, because he is established in a better world: but yet when he is gone out of this he is none of us, is no longer a man.

It is not the soul, but the union of the soul that makes the man.

A man has a natural loathness to lose his friend though God take him.

Lazarus’s sisters believed his soul to be in a good estate, and that his body would be raised, yet they wept.

Here in this world we lack those who are gone: we know they shall never come to us, and we shall not know them again till we join them.

4. Christ wept though He knew Lazarus was to be restored.

He would do a great miracle for him as He was a mighty God; but He would weep for him as He was a good-natured man.

It is no very charitable disposition if I give all at my death to others, and keep all my life to myself. I may mean to feast a man at Christmas, and that man may starve before in Lent.

Jesus would not give this family whom He loved occasion of suspicion that He neglected them; and therefore though He came not presently to His great work, He left them not comfortless by the way.

II. PROPHETICAL—over Jerusalem.

His former tears had the spirit of prophecy in them, for He foresaw how little the Jews would make of the miracle.

His prophetical tears were humane too, they rise from good affections to that people.

1. He wept in the midst of the acclamations of the people.

In the best times there is ever just occasion of fear of worse, and so of tears.

Every man is but a sponge.

Whether God lay His left hand of adversity or His right hand of prosperity the sponge shall weep.

Jesus wept when all went well with Him to show the slipperiness of worldly happiness.

2. He wept in denouncing judgments to show with how ill a will He inflicted them, and that the Jews had drawn them on themselves (Isa 16:9).

If they were only from His absolute decree, without any respect to their sins, could He be displeased with His own act?

Would God ask that question, “Why will ye die?” etc., if He lay open to the answer, “Because Thou hast killed us”?

3. He wept when He came near the city: not till then.

If we will not come near the miseries of our brethren we will never weep over them.

It was when Christ Himself, not when His disciples, who could do Jerusalem no good, took knowledge of it.

It was not when those judgments drew near; yet Christ did not ease Himself on account of their remoteness, but lamented future calamities.

III. PONTIFICAL—accompanying His sacrifice. These were expressed by that inestimable weight, the sins of all the world.

And if Christ looking on Peter made him weep, shall not His looking on us here with such tears make us weep.

1. I am far from concluding all to be impenitent who do not actually shed tears.

There are constitutions that do not afford them. And yet the worst epithet that the best poet could fix on Pluto himself was “a person that could not weep.”

But to weep for other things and not for sin, this is a sponge dried into a pumice stone.

Though there be good tears and bad tears, yet all have this degree of good in them that they argue a tender heart; and the Holy Ghost loves to work in wax not in marble.

God made a firmament which He called heaven after it had divided the waters: after we have distinguished our tears worldly from heavenly then is there a firmament established in us, and a heaven opened to us.

2. I might stand long upon the manifold benefits of godly tears, but I contract all into this, which is all—godly sorrow is joy. (J. Donne, D. D.)

Christ’s tears

In our recoil from Socinianism ( belief that jesus only Divine but Not human) we are apt to go too far to the other extreme.

This accounts for our surprise at reading that Jesus wept.

We are not surprised that Jeremiah wept, or that Paul or Peter wept.

Why be surprised to hear that Jesus wept, except that we do not acknowledge His manhood?

On three occasions Jesus wept.

To each of these I wish to call your attention.

I. TEARS OF SYMPATHY.

Three thoughts are suggested.

1. It is not sinful to weep under afflictions.

2. The mourner may always count on the sympathy of Jesus.

Jesus thought not of these sisters alone.

There sounded in His ears the dirge of the ocean of human misery.

The weeping of Mary and Martha was but the holding of the shell to His ears.

That tear of love is a legacy to every Christian.

3. When our friends are mourning we should weep with them.

The truest tenderness is that which distils in tears.

When the heart feels most keenly, the tongue refuses to do its bidding, but the tear expresses all.

The tear is never misunderstood.

II. TEARS OF COMPASSION (Luk19:41).

Luke 19:41 KJV 1900

41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

He was about to enter Jerusalem over Mount of Olives.

Before His vision, instead of the fair scene, He saw the legions of Rome, etc. “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” etc.

It was baffled affection.

1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews and neglected.

Who shall say what glory had been Jerusalem’s had she heard the prophets and Jesus?

All hearers of the Word have privileges and visitations.

2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost. He saw that the chance to save was past forever. He abandoned the effort in tears.

III. TEARS OF PERSONAL SUFFERING (Heb 5:7).

Hebrews 5:7 KJV 1900

7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

The tears Paul speaks of very probably referred to Gethsemane.

1. Think not because you suffer that you are not chosen.

As Christ was made perfect in His work, through His suffering, so are we thus to be led.

2. Nor are we to think that we are not Christians because we feel weak.

Tears are liquid emotion pressed from the heart.

It is not murmuring in you to feel the sting of suffering.

Yet the undercurrent must always be, “Thy will be done.”

Patience is not apathy.

Rest sure of this, the prayer cable is not broken.

The Gethsemane angel has gone on many a strengthening mission since that day in Gethsemane. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

The tears of Christ

I. HE WEPT FROM VERY SYMPATHY WITH THE GRIEF OF OTHERS.

It is of the nature of compassion to “rejoice with those,” etc.

It is so with men, and God tells us that He is compassionate.

We do not well know what this means, for how can God rejoice or grieve?

He is hid from us; but it is the very sight of sympathy that comforts the sufferer.

When Christ took flesh, then, He showed us the Godhead in a new manifestation.

Let us not say that His tears here are man’s love overcome by natural feeling.

It is the love of God, condescending to appear as we are capable of receiving it, in the form of human nature.

II. HE WEPT AT THE VICTORY OF DEATH.

Here was the Creator seeing the issue of His own handiwork.

Would He not revert to the hour of Creation when He saw that all was very good, and contrast man as He was made innocent and immortal, and man as the devil had made him, full of the poison of sin and the breath of the grave?

Why was it allowed?

He would not say.

What He has done for all believers, revealing His atoning death, but not explaining it, this He did for the sisters also, proceeding to the grave in silence, to raise their brother while they complained that he had been allowed to die.

III. HE WEPT AT HIS OWN IMPENDING DOOM.

Joseph could bring joy to his brethren at no sacrifice of his own.

The disciples would have dissuaded Christ from going into Judaea lest the Jews should kill Him.

The apprehension was fulfilled.

The fame of the miracle was the immediate course of His seizure.

He saw the whole prospect—Lazarus raised, the supper, joy on all sides, many honouring Him, the triumphal entry, the Greeks earnest to see Him, the Pharisees plotting,

Judas betraying, His friends deserting, the cross receiving.

He felt that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus had left. (Cardinal Newman.)

The tears of Jesus

I. CAUSES OF CHRIST’S SORROW.

1. The possession of a soul.

When we speak of the Deity joined to humanity we do not mean to a body, but to manhood, body and soul.

With a body only Jesus might have wept for hunger, but not for sorrow.

That is the property not of Deity or body, but of soul.

The humanity of Christ was perfect.

2. The spectacle of human sorrow.

(1) Death of a friend (John 11:36).

John 11:36 KJV 1900

36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

Mysterious!

Jesus knew that He could raise him.

This is partly intelligible.

Conceptions strongly presented produce effects like reality, e.g., we wake dreaming, our eyes suffused with tears—know it is a dream, yet tears flow on.

Conception of a parent’s death.

Solemn impression produced by the mock funeral of Charles V.

The sadness of Jesus for His friend is repeated in us all.

Somehow we twine our hearts round those we love as if forever.

Death and they are not thought of in connection. He die!

(2) Sorrow of His two friends.

Their characters were diverse: two links bound them together: love to Lazarus, attachment to the Redeemer.

Now one link was gone. His loss was not an isolated fact.

The family was broken up; the sun of the system gone; the keystone of the arch removed, and the stones lose their cohesion.

For the two minds held together only at points of contact.

They could not understand one another’s different modes of feeling: Martha complains of Mary.

Lazarus gave them a common tie. That removed the points of repulsion would daily become more sharp.

Over the breaking up of a family Jesus wept. And this is what makes death sad.

II. CHARACTER OF CHRIST’S SORROW:

Spirit in which Jesus saw this death.

1. Calmly.

“Lazarus sleepeth” in the world of repose where all is placid.

Struggling men have tried to forget this restless world, and slumber like a babe, tired at heart.

Lazarus to his Divine friend’s imagination lies calm.

The long day’s work is done, the hands are folded.

Friends are gathered to praise, enemies to slander, but make no impression on his ear.

Conscious he is, but not of earthly noise.

But “he sleeps well.”

2. Sadly. Hence, observe

(1) Permitted sorrow. Great nature is wiser than we.

We recommend weeping, or prate about submission, or say all must die: Nature, God, says, “Let nature rule to weep or not.”

(2) That grief is no distrust of God—no selfishness. Sorrow is but love without its object.

3. Hopefully—“I go,” etc.

(Joh 11:11). “Thy brother” (Joh 11:23).

John 11:11 KJV 1900

11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

John 11:23 KJV 1900

23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

4. In reserve.

On the first announcement Jesus speaks not a word.

When He met the mourners He offered no commonplace consolation.

He is less anxious to exhibit feeling than to soothe.

But nature had her way at last.

Yet even then by act more than word the Jews inferred His love, There is the reserve of nature and the reserve of grace.

We have our own English reserve.

We respect grief when it does not make an exhibition.

An Englishman is ashamed of his good feelings as much as of his bad.

All this is neither good nor bad: it is nature. But let it be sanctified and pass into Christian delicacy.

Application. In this there is consolation: but consolation is not the privilege of all sorrow.

Christ is at Lazarus’s grave, because Christ had been at the sisters’ home, sanctifying their joys, and their very meals.

They had anchored on the rock in sunshine, and in the storm the ship held to her moorings.

He who has lived with Christ will find Christ near in death, and will find himself that it is not so difficult to die. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The import of Jesus’ tears

The weeping was preceded by groans.

After the groans come tears—a gentle rain after the violent storm.

Jesus in this, as in all things, stands alone.

1. Different from Himself at other times.

2. Very unlike the Jews who came to comfort the two sisters, and

3. unlike the sisters themselves. Jesus’ tears imply

I. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE MIND (Lam 3:51).

Lamentations 3:51 KJV 1900

51 Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city.

Tears are natural.

The relation existing between matter and mind is inexplicable.

Yet it exists.

From this fact we can reason to the relation existing between God and the material universe.

II. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE.

Here we have a proof of His humanity.

What more human than weeping?

Following this manifestation of humanity is the manifestation of divinity.

We should guard against the old errors concerning the constitution of Christ’s person; for they appear from age to age under new forms:

1. Arianism—denying His proper Divinity.

2. Appolinarianism—denying His proper humanity.

3. Nestorianism—dual personality.

4. Eutychianism—confounding the two natures in His person.

III. THE RELATION BETWEEN CHRIST AS MEDIATOR AND HUMANITY, IN GENERAL, IN ITS MISERY, AND HIS PEOPLE, IN PARTICULAR, IN THEIR AFFLICTIONS.

1. The question, why He wept? is here answered.

(1) He was sorrowful because of the misery caused by sin.

As Jerusalem was before His eyes when He wept over it, so here humanity in its sin and all its misery passed in review before His face.

(2) His weeping was a manifestation of His sympathy.

No comparison between His consoling, comforting tears and those of the Jews.

2. The intercessory work of Christ as our High Priest in heaven is here implied.

He is the same there as when here upon earth (Heb 13:8).

Hebrews 13:8 KJV 1900

8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

Has the same heart beating with ours.

He is our sympathizing Friend and Brother there.

APPLICATION:

1. Have you wept on account of your sins?

They have caused, and are still causing, Jesus to weep.

2. Do you realise Christ’s friendship for you?

3. Let us learn from His example to sympathise with the sorrows of our fellow men. (T. E. Hughes.)

A unique verse

I have often felt vexed with the man whoever he was, who chopped up the New Testament into verses.

He seems to have let the hatchet drop indiscriminately here and there; but I forgive him a great deal of blundering for his wisdom in letting these two words make a verse by themselves, “Jesus wept.”

This is a diamond of the first water, and it cannot have another gem set with it, for it is unique.

Shortest of verses in words, but where is there a longer one in sense?

Let it stand in solitary, sublimity and simplicity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Embodied sympathy powerful

“Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them.

They pass athwart us in this vapour and cannot make themselves felt.

But sometimes they are made flesh, they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft, responsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones.

They are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love.

Then their presence is a power, and we are drawn after them with a gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame.” (George Eliot.)

Jesus sympathizes with all who suffer

If a man be found weltering by the roadside, wounded, and a stranger comes along, he will pity him, for the heart of man speaks one language the world over.

But if it were a near neighbour or strong personal friend how much more tender the pity.

That of the man’s own father far transcends those.

But the noblest heart on earth is but a trickling stream from a shallow fountain compared with the pity of God, which is wide as the scope of heaven and abundant as all the air. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christ satisfying the instinct of sympathy

There is a word in our language—the iron Roman had to arrange many circuitous approaches to it—we borrow it straight from the plastic, responsive Greek—the word sympathy

I. THE INSTINCT.

The word has gone through one process since it left its root “to suffer,” which root does not mean suffering in our common sense, but “being affected.”

So sympathy does not mean fellow suffering, but community of affection. It may be

(1) A community of congruity.

There is sympathy between two persons where there is such a likeness of disposition that they are mutually drawn to each other.

(2) A community of contagion.

You sympathize with a person when in some particular sorrow or joy you share the feeling arising out of circumstances not your own.

1. As a community of disposition, sympathy is

(1) The spring of all love.

We see in the soul which looks through those eyes, its windows, the very counterpart and complement of our own.

Even beauty acts through sympathy.

It is not the flesh, grace, colour, etc., but the idea or promise of beautiful qualities which wins the heart.

Another may be more comely, but we are not attracted because we read not the disposition which ours craves.

We blame ourselves for not loving. Why do we not love?

For the lack of that sympathy of congruity represented by the word “liking.”

(2) The inspiration of eloquence.

What is there in that insignificant figure, uncomely countenance, unmusical voice which nevertheless sways multitudes as the orator lists.

An empire has hung in suspense while one man has talked to 10,000.

Why?

Because of the charm of sympathy.

(3) The secret of power in poetry and fiction.

What is it which draws tears from eyes which know they are Witnessing imaginary sorrows?

It is the skill with which genius draws upon the resources of human feeling.

The moment the tragical passes into the artificial, the tear dries of itself.

(4) The explanation of all magnificent successes

A want of sympathy accounts for the failure of men possessed of every gift but one.

You see it in oratory: there is learning, industry, etc., but the audience is unimpressed because there was no heart.

You see it in action: there is education, character, opportunity, etc., but coldness of temperament chilled the touch of friendship.

(5) This sympathy has its excesses.

It is so charming and remunerative that some men are guilty of practising on good impulses, and become insincere, and destroy others by means of the soul’s best and tenderest affections.

2. Sympathy of contagion, too, is an instinct.

To feel is human; we call a man unnatural, unhuman who cannot pity.

But some men feel without acting, and consequently feeling is deadened.

Others keep away from them what will make them feel, and waste the instinct.

To this kind of sympathy belong all those efforts by which we throw ourselves into another’s life for benevolent influence.

This alone renders possible an education which is worthy of the name, the teacher sharing personally the difficulties, games, weaknesses, etc., of the taught.

II. CHRIST SATISFYING THIS INSTINCT.

1. He presented Himself to us in one thrust, as possessing all that beauty which has a natural affinity to everything that is noble and true.

(1) He appeals to the instinct in its form of likeness.

We must be cautious here, a not confuse the ruined will, the original temple.

Still there is no one who has no response in him to that which is lovely and of good report.

The instinct finds not its rest here below. Some profess to be satisfied: they have what they want.

They are happy—might it but last; were there no storms and eventual death.

But for the rest care, toil, ill-health, bereavement have forbidden it, or they have not yet found the haven of sympathy.

The first movement of such in hearing of Christ satisfying the wants of the soul is one of impatience: they want something substantial.

What they really want is community of affection.

There is offered to them a perfect love.

(2) Christ guides and demands sympathy.

He makes it religion, which is sympathy with God; “liking” the drawing of spirit to spirit by the magnet of a felt loveliness.

“I drew them with cords,” etc. Without this religion is a burden and bondage.

2. Christ satisfies the sympathy of contact.

We might have thought that the Creator would shrink from the ugly thing into which sin has corrupted His handiwork.

But He never heard the lepers cry without making it a reason for drawing nigh.

Again and again He went to the bereaved, and it was to wake the dead; and this not officially, as though to say, “This proves Me the Christ.”

Jesus wept.

There was no real peril or want with which He did not express sympathy.

He loved the rich young man; He wept over Jerusalem with its unbelief and hypocrisy; He was in all points tempted, and so is able to sympathize with our infirmities.

What He sympathized with was poor sin-spoilt humanity, and for that He died.

Conclusion:

What Christ did He bids us do not in the way of condescension, but as men touching to Him, not loving the sin, yet loving the sinner.

Lonely people cease to be alone. “Rejoice with them that rejoice,” etc. (Dean Vaughan.)

The tears of the Lord Jesus

I. JESUS WEPT; FOR THERE WAS CAUSE WORTHY OF HIS TEARS.

The finest, noblest race of God’s creatures dismantled, sunk in death before Him, all across earth and time from the world’s beginning.

Tears, we know, show strongest in the strongest.

When you see the strong man broken down beside his sick babe you cannot but feel there is a cause.

Whatever else there may be in the man, you see that he has a heart, and that his heart is the deepest, is the Divine part of him.

As the father’s tears over his child testify the father’s heart, so the tears of Jesus testify that He has a heart which beats with infinite love and tenderness toward us men.

For we are His, and in a far more profound and intimate sense belong to Him, than children can to an earthly parent.

And the relation into which the Lord Jesus has come with our humanity is closer and tenderer than that of earthly parent.

We speak of Him as our Brother, our Elder Brother; but the truth is, Christ’s relation to us is Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Husband, Friend, all in One.

But He knew—further—that a sadder thing than death and its miseries lay behind, even sin.

This touched and affected Him most, that we were a fallen and dishonoured race, and therefore death had come upon us and overshadowed us.

Why else should we die?

The stars do not wax old and die, the heavens and the earth remain unto this day, though there is no soul or spirit in them.

Why should the brightness of an immeasurably nobler and more exalted creature like man wax dim?

Stars falling from heaven are nothing to souls falling from God.

The one are but lights going out in God’s house, the other the very children of the house perishing.

Jesus wept then for the innermost death of all death, the fountain misery of all miseries But while in His Divine thought and sorrow He penetrated to the root and source of that evil and of all evil, the mighty attendant suffering awoke in Him the truest and deepest compassion and sympathy.

He wept, then, with each one of us; for who has not been called to part with some beloved relative, parent, partner, companion, guide, or friend?

With all sorrowing, desolate hearts and homes of the children of men He then took part.

Again, the Lord Jesus felt how much the darkness and sorrows of death were intensified and aggravated by the state of ignorance and unbelief in which the world lay.

How mournful to His spirit at that hour the realization of the way in which the vast bulk and majority of the human race enter the world, go through it, leave it

for He knew, better than any other that has been on earth, man’s capability of higher things and of an endless life and blessedness.

“Like sheep they are laid in the grave,” says the writer of the 49th Psalm, What a picture! Like that abject, unthinking, and helpless animal, driven in flocks by awful forms, cruel powers, they can neither escape nor resist, to a narrow point and bound, where all is impenetrable darkness.

II. Let us consider “THE TEARS OF JESUS” AS REVEALING THE DIVINE HEART.

Are we to believe that He out of whose heart have come the hearts of all true fathers and mothers, all the simple, pure affections of our common nature and kinship, of the family and the home; are we to believe, I say, that God has no heart?

Some one may say, There is no doubt God can love and does love—infinitely; but can He sorrow?

Now, my friend, I pray you, think what is sorrow but love wanting or losing its objects, its desire and satisfaction in its objects, and going forth earnestly in its grief to seek and regain them?

Sorrow, suffering, is one of the grandest, noblest, most self-denying, and disinterested forms and capabilities of love, apart from which love could not exist, whether in nature or in name.

III. THE TEARS OF JESUS ARE THOSE OF A MIGHTY ONE HASTENING TO AVENGE AND DELIVER.

They are not the tears of one whose pity and sympathy can only be thus expressed, but who has no power—whatever may be his willingness and desire—to help.

The tears of Jesus are those of a hero over his native country and kingdom laid waste by an enemy whom he hastens to meet and avenge himself upon.

There is hope, there is help for our world; Jesus Christ weeps over it, and He “will restore all things” of which we have been robbed and spoiled.

IV. HENCE WE LEARN OUR TRUE SOURCE OF COMFORT, HELP, AND RESTORATION.

He who wept and bled and died for man has proved Himself to be our great Deliverer.

Do we ever feel we can go anywhere else but to Him when sickness and death threaten and invade us and ours? (Watson Smith.)

C. WE ARE LOVED BY GOD

The Love of God

DEFINITION

The love of God is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow both physical and spiritual benefits upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace), the most exalted of all such benefits is God’s selfless gift of himself to his creatures in Jesus Christ.

SUMMARY

The love of God is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow benefits both physical and spiritual upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace).

We see the love of God most clearly in that he gave himself to us in his Son, through which God gave us the most enthralling, beautiful, and eternally satisfying experience possible, that is, the knowledge and enjoyment of God himself.

Although the love of God can be discussed in at least five different ways, this is the love of God in its particular, sovereign, and saving form.

This eternal love of God for his people is what secures the adoption of the saints into the family of God, the loving discipline of the Father for his children, and the presence of the Spirit of love in their lives as Christians. Of all that we are justified in saying about God, perhaps the most foundational truth of all is that he is love.

Love doesn’t simply come from God. It is more than what he does.

As John states so clearly, “God is love” ( 1 John 4:8

1 John 4:8 KJV 1900

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

). Carl F.H. Henry rightly declares that love “is not accidental or incidental to God; it is an essential revelation of the divine nature, a fundamental and eternal perfection.

His love, like all other divine attributes, reflects the whole of his being in specific actions and relationships” (see Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, Volume VI: God Who Stands and Stays, 341).

Sadly, though, “love” is one of the least understood and most widely abused concepts in our world, even in the church.

What, then, does it mean to say that God is love?

Love is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow benefits both physical and spiritual upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace).

The most exalted of all such benefits is God’s selfless gift of himself to his creatures.

The preeminent expression of love is when the lover, at great personal cost, gives or imparts to the beloved the most enthralling, beautiful, and eternally satisfying experience possible.

The latter, of course, would be the knowledge and enjoyment of God himself.

So, when Jesus prays that the Father would glorify him so that he in turn might glorify the Father, he is demonstrating his love for us ( John 17:1 ).

John 17:1 KJV 1900

1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

He is asking the Father to give us that one experience that alone can satisfy our souls forever, far beyond any other gift or sight or experience.

Seeing and savoring and being satisfied with the glory and majesty of God is the most loving thing God could ever do for us.

The Characteristics of God’s Love

D. A. Carson identifies five distinguishable ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God (see D.A. Carson, “On Distorting the Love of God”).

There is, first, the peculiar love of the Father for the Son ( John 3:35 ; John 5:30 ) and of the Son for the Father ( John 14:31 ).

John 3:35 KJV 1900

35 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.

John 5:30 KJV 1900

30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

John 14:31 KJV 1900

31 But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.

Second is God’s providential love over all of his creation.

Although the word “love” is itself rarely used in this way, there is no escaping the fact that the world is the product of a loving Creator (see the declaration of “good” over what God has made in

Gen 1:3, 10, 12, 18,21,25,31 .

Genesis 1:3 KJV 1900

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Genesis 1:10 KJV 1900

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:12 KJV 1900

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:18 KJV 1900

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:21 KJV 1900

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:25 KJV 1900

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:31 KJV 1900

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Third is God’s saving love toward the fallen world (John 3:16).

John 3:16 KJV 1900

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Then there is, fourth, God’s particular, effectual, selecting love for his elect. The elect may be the nation of Israel, or the church, or specific individuals (see esp. Deut 7:7-8 , 10 ,14-15 ; Eph 5:25; 1 John 3:1).

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 KJV 1900

7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: 8 But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 14–15 KJV 1900

1 Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. 2 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth. 3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing. 4 These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat, 5 The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois. 6 And every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall eat. 7 Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you. 8 And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase. 9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat: 10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you. 11 Of all clean birds ye shall eat. 12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, 13 And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind, 14 And every raven after his kind, 15 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, 16 The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan, 17 And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant, 18 And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat. 19 And every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you: they shall not be eaten. 20 But of all clean fowls ye may eat. 21 Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. 22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. 23 And thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always. 24 And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee: 25 Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose: 26 And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household, 27 And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee. 28 At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates: 29 And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest. 1 At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. 2 And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the Lord’s release. 3 Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release; 4 Save when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it: 5 Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day. 6 For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. 7 If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: 8 But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. 9 Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. 10 Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. 11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land. 12 And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. 13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: 14 Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. 15 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day. 16 And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; 17 Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise. 18 It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest. 19 All the firstling males that come of thy herd and of thy flock thou shalt sanctify unto the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep. 20 Thou shalt eat it before the Lord thy God year by year in the place which the Lord shall choose, thou and thy household. 21 And if there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame, or blind, or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the Lord thy God. 22 Thou shalt eat it within thy gates: the unclean and the clean person shall eat it alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart. 23 Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof; thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water.

Ephesians 5:25 KJV 1900

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

1 John 3:1 KJV 1900

1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Finally, the Bible speaks often of God’s love toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way.

Carson points to how the experience of God’s love is portrayed as something that is conditioned upon obedience and the fear of God. This doesn’t have to do with that love by which we are brought into a saving relationship with God but rather with our capacity to feel and enjoy the affection of God ( Jude 21; John 15:9-10; Psalms 103:9-18).

Jude 21 KJV 1900

21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

John 15:9–10 KJV 1900

9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.

Psalm 103:9–18 KJV 1900

9 He will not always chide: Neither will he keep his anger for ever. 10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is his mercy toward them that fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. 13 Like as a father pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 14 For he knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust. 15 As for man, his days are as grass: As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more. 17 But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, And his righteousness unto children’s children; 18 To such as keep his covenant, And to those that remember his commandments to do them.

Love as Grace

Our focus here is on the fourth expression of God’s love, namely, the affection he displays toward his elect people, the beloved of God.

We must remember that, insofar as not all of God’s creatures receive and experience his love in precisely the same manner or to the same degree, one cannot speak of the love of God without qualification.

It seems inescapable, both from Scripture and experience, that we differentiate between the love of God as manifested in common grace and the love of God as manifested in special grace.

The love of God as manifested in common grace is the love of God as creator which consists of providential kindness, mercy, and longsuffering.

It is an indiscriminate and universal love which constrains to the bestowing of all physical and spiritual benefits short of salvation itself. It is received and experienced by the elect and non-elect alike (see Matt 5:43-48 ; Luke 6:27-38 ).

Matthew 5:43–48 KJV 1900

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Luke 6:27–38 KJV 1900

27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, 28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. 29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. 30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. 31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. 32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. 33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. 34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. 36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. 37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: 38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

The love of God as manifested in special grace is the love of God as savior, which consists of redemption, the regenerating grace, and the irrevocable possession of eternal life.

It is a discriminate and particular love that leads him to bestow the grace of eternal life in Christ.

It is received and experienced by the saved.

Therefore, like grace, the saving love of God is undeserved.

The love of God for sinners, which issues in their salvation, finds no obstacle in their sin. God loves us while we were yet sinners precisely in order that the glory of his love might be supremely magnified.

It was when we were still “weak” (or powerless) that “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6 ).

Romans 5:6 KJV 1900

6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Indeed, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8 ).

Romans 5:8 KJV 1900

8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The sole cause of God’s saving love for sinners is God himself!

Love and the Death of Christ

This love of God, then, is the source or cause of the atoning work of Christ.

God does not love people because Christ died for them; Christ died for them because God loved them.

The death of the Savior is not to be conceived as restoring in people something on the basis of which we might then win or merit God’s love.

The sacrifice of Christ does not procure God’s affection, as if it were necessary, through his sufferings, to extract love from an otherwise stern, unwilling, reluctant deity.

On the contrary, God’s love compels the death of Christ and is supremely manifested therein.

In a word, the saving love of God is giving. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).

John 3:16 KJV 1900

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Again, as Paul states, “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20; see also Eph 5:1-2,25; 1 John 4:9-10)

Galatians 2:20 KJV 1900

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Ephesians 5:1–2 KJV 1900

1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; 2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

Ephesians 5:25 KJV 1900

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

1 John 4:9–10 KJV 1900

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Love as Sovereign

The saving love of God is also sovereign.

John Murray explains as follows:

Truly God is love.

Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be.

He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally.

As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love.

Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects.

It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the “I am that I am” (see Redemption: Accomplished and Applied, 10).

Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say it is distinguishing.

It is, by definition as saving love, bestowed upon and experienced by those only who are in fact saved (i.e., the elect).

Although there is surely a sense in which God loves the non-elect, he does not love them redemptively.

If he did, they would certainly be redeemed. God loves them, but not savingly, else they would certainly be saved.

All this is but to say that God’s eternal, electing love is not universal but particular.

Love and Adoption

The love of God is what accounts for our adoption as sons.

It was “in love” that God “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” Eph 1:5; cf. 1 John 3:1).

Ephesians 1:5 KJV 1900

5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

1 John 3:1 KJV 1900

1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

This love of God is rightly described as “great.”

It was because of the “great love with which he loved us” (Eph 2:4) that God made us alive together with Christ.

Ephesians 2:4 KJV 1900

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

It is a great love because it can never be exhausted, its depths never plumbed, its purpose never thwarted by the sin of man (Eph 2:4-5).

Ephesians 2:4–5 KJV 1900

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

Love as Eternal

The saving love of God is eternal. It was “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4-5) that he set his saving love upon us and predestined us unto adoption as sons (cf. 2 Thess 2:13 ).

2 Thessalonians 2:13 KJV 1900

13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

Ephesians 1:4–5 KJV 1900

4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

Charles Spurgeon describes this eternal love:

In the very beginning, when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes awoke the solitudes; before the mountains were brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through the sky, God loved His chosen creatures.

Before there was any created being; when the ether was not fanned by an angel’s wing, when space itself had not an existence, where there was nothing save God alone — even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved with love for His chosen.

Their names were written on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul.

Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the world — even from eternity! and when He called me by His grace, He said to me, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee (

This love is not only eternal in its conception, it is irrevocable in its purpose.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:35).

Romans 8:35 KJV 1900

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Nothing! The Apostle Paul can speak of such confident hope on no other ground than that God has loved us in Christ.

It is because he loved us when we were yet his enemies, a love demonstrated by the sending of his Son, that his love for us now that we are his friends is unshakeable (see Rom 5:8-11).

Romans 5:8–11 KJV 1900

8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. 11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

J.I. Packer sums up well both the eternal and irrevocable nature of this divine love:

To know that from eternity my Maker, foreseeing my sin, foreloved me and resolved to save me, though it would be at the cost of Calvary; to know that the divine Son was appointed from eternity to be my

Saviour, and that in love he became man for me and died for me and now lives to intercede for me and will one day come in person to take me home; to know that the Lord ‘who loved me and gave himself for me’ and who ‘came and preached peace’ to me

through his messengers has by his Spirit raised me from spiritual death to life-giving union and communion with himself, and has promised to hold me fast and never let me go – this is knowledge that brings overwhelming gratitude and joy

(see “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Celebrating the Saving Work of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, 1:158-59).

Love as Discipline

The sanctifying discipline of our heavenly Father, no less than the eternal life he bestows, is a product of divine love: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb 12:5-6).

Hebrews 12:5–6 KJV 1900

5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

The Hebrew Christians to whom these words were addressed had mistakenly come to think that the absence of affliction was a sign of God’s special favor and, therefore, that suffering and oppression were an indication of his displeasure.

On the contrary, so far from being a proof of God’s anger or rejection of us, afflictions are evidence of his fatherly love.

Discipline, writes Philip Hughes, “is the mark not of a harsh and heartless father but of a father who is deeply and lovingly concerned for the well-being of his son” (see his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 528).

God’s Love and the Christian Life

The eternal and irrevocable love which God has for his people also secures far more than merely the reconciliation of estranged sinners.

The love that God has for us also makes possible our love for one another: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12; see also 1 John 2:5).

1 John 4:12 KJV 1900

12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 2:5 KJV 1900

5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.

Finally, the love of God for his people is not simply a doctrine to proclaim but a vibrant affection in the heart of God that he wants us to experience.

Therefore, Paul prays: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thess 3:5).

2 Thessalonians 3:5 KJV 1900

5 And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.

If we are to experientially enjoy being loved of the Father, it is the Father himself who must (and will) act to remove every obstacle and clear away every encumbrance to that inexpressible experience.

God’s love for us has been “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5.

Romans 5:5 KJV 1900

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

Paul’s effusive language points to the unstinting lavishness of God’s gift.

As Charles Hodge put it (quoting Philippi), God’s love “does not descend upon us as dew drops, but as a stream which spreads itself abroad through the whole soul, filling it with the consciousness of his presence and favour” (see his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 210).

God wants our hearts to be inundated by wave after wave of his fatherly affection.

This is why Paul can pray that we might “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19).

Ephesians 3:18–19 KJV 1900

18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

FURTHER READING D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God Gerald Bray, God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology J. I. Packer, “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Celebrating the Saving Work of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Pack

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series.

All views expressed in this essay are those of the author.