Articles
The Love of God
To the world, which doesn’t think a lot about God, the statement “God loves you” can sound trite, a meaningless platitude of a deluded mind vainly searching for a spiritual father figure. But for those who have truly come to terms with their flawed humanity, and who have seriously contemplated the glory, perfection and infiniteness of their Creator, “God loves you” is an stunning realization seemingly too good to be true.
Consider these three observations in Ephesians of the love of God:
1. God’s Great Love – Eph 2:4-5: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved …)”. Three words immediately stand out: mercy, love and grace. First, note the “but” at the beginning. This alerts us to a contrast, but what has Paul previously established?
In the immediate context, Eph 2:1-3, Paul has charged that both Jews and Gentiles alike, as a class, had departed from the ways of God to walk “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, and spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.” This basically means that over past eons of time successive generations of mankind had forsaken God and lived in rebellion. Worse, they had transferred their allegiance to the devil. Whereas God our Father had brought us into being and created a world to bless and benefit us, we repaid Him by defecting to His arch-enemy, Satan.
In doing this, we chose death; we committed spiritual suicide. Though the consequences of sin have been made plain, every morally responsible person from Adam and Eve till now has made the same choice to transgress God’s will and obey the one who only wreaks misery and destruction in our lives.
A common Old Testament analogy of this Israel’s adultery against God. Ezekiel 16 is a graphic passage describing God’s nurture of a helpless, abandoned child whom He then takes in marriage in her adulthood (16:6-14). However, Israel forsook God and “trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot … and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it … You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from My gold and My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them … Such things should not happen, or be” (16:15-17). Though this particular context speaks of fleshly Israel, it also reflects the abandonment of God by mankind as a whole.
In spite of our unfaithfulness, God stepped in to revive and reclaim us as children rescued from the clutches of our accursed enemy. God did not punish us as we deserved (rich in mercy). Motivated by “great love” He extended grace (undeserved favor and blessings) to us in our helplessness. Not only is this a wondrous thought, it is so implausible that it is hard to wrap our minds around. Why should God be so kind and considerate to me when I deserve death?! This leads to Paul’s later observation …
2. The Love of Christ Passes Knowledge – Eph 3:19. Paul is so overwhelmed by the very thoughts he is writing here that his sentence structure goes askew. The section of 3:14-21 is a doxology, a passage of praise to God. Paul kneels before God “from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (3:15). This refers to God’s spiritual family which Paul mentioned back in 2:19, the family of both Jew and Gentile believers who have put their appreciation for God above their ethnic differences and prejudices. As he contemplates the “eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” and the resultant “boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him” (3:11-12), Paul is awestruck. As the psalmist said, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (139:6).
When Paul further contemplates the spiritual dynamic – “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (3:17) – he urges the Ephesians to be “rooted and grounded in love.” And then it appears that Paul attempts to chart the expanse of that love: “to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge …” (3:17-19). However, Paul is so agog at this truth that he can’t even finish his sentence; he breaks it off to express how incomprehensible the whole thing is. God’s love not only restores spiritual life but extends the full fellowship of Christ’s indwelling by faith. Thus God is said to reside a temple of humanity – a holy temple, a habitation of God in the Spirit (cf. Eph 2:20-22). Which leads to his final thought on God’s love in Ephesians …
3. Christ’s Self-sacrificial Love – Eph 5:2. Paul here says that the love of Christ should be our model. After discussing the Christian “walk” – the practical outgrowth of our faith and belief in God – he summarizes the life of a Christian this way: “Be followers of God as dear children” (5:1). This extends the aforementioned family metaphor. We were spiritual renegades who had been captured by the ultimate trafficker of human souls, only to be adopted back to the Father we ran away from. What does our Father now expect? That we should cling to and love Him as dear children and pattern our lives after the very character of the One who saved us: “Walk in love, as Christ also has loved us …” (5:2a).
What defines Christ’s love for us? He has “given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (5:2b). Christ did not love us from a distance or in detached principle. Rather, His love was demonstrated in leaving heaven and entering the material world and living as one of His creatures. This is astounding and raises many complex issues, but the bottom line is that Jesus not only suffered the indignities and limitations of human life, He was willing to suffer a cruel, demeaning, excruciating death to save us from our own self-imposed demise.
In what way was Jesus’ sacrifice a “sweet-smelling aroma” to God? In Mosaic imagery of animal sacrifice, God’s judicial wrath against sin was satisfied. That is, Jesus’ death on our behalf was sufficient to appease God’s judicial punishment and cancel the sentence of death: “He has made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph 1:6-7). God’s love can only be fully appreciated by the exercised mind.
