Thursday, February 28, 2013

What do you mean when...

What do you mean when you say that God is love?  Don Carson in his little book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, says that the love of God is misunderstood.
First, if people believe in God at all today they believe that He is a loving being.  However, what they mean is not what the Bible says.  Because we live in such a self centred world we believe that God loves us because we are lovely.
Second, they are quick to believe one thing about God but not other attributes.  What about the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, etc.  God is not one dimensional.  If He is a God of love, which He is, then He is also sovereign, holy, just, etc.
Third, people believe that the only heresy today is that we believe that there is heresy.  Since God is love then all paths lead to God so to call something heresy is just your opinion and is that any different than anyone else's opinion.  The problem here is that it is what the Bible says.  Jesus said that there is only one way to God and even though God is love He has said that we must believe in truth.
Fourth, though we believe that God is love that does create difficulties when we see the hatred in this world and the sufferings in this world.  As Christians this is where we have difficulty because how can we tie God's love to God's justice?
Finally, the love of God is not the simplistic doctrine we make it out to be.  "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."  God's love can only be truly understood through the cross.

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