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- [00:01]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of God, Part 20. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been studying the moral attributes of God and have concluded the section on God's holiness. Today we want to turn to the other facet of God's moral character, and that is God's love. If God were simply a God of justice and not a God of love, then we would be in deep trouble. So we're very grateful to be able to study not only the holiness and the justice of God, but also God's wonderful love. So let's look at some scriptural data concerning God's love. First of all, the Scriptures indicate that God's nature is loving. God is essentially loving. First John, chapter 4, verses 7 to 211 John 4721 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God. For God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. In this is love perfected within us that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And he who fears is not perfected in love. We love because he first loves loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him that he who loves God should love his brother also. Notice that according to John the love of God is not something that is adventitious to God, a contingent property that God simply happens to exhibit. It belongs to the very essence of God. God is love. So love is of the divine nature and is manifested toward us. So God is not only a God of holiness and justice, but he is also a God of love. And as one author has said, thank God for God that God is like that. Secondly, God's love is unconditional. That's already indicated in the passage that we just read that God loves us not because we loved him, but because he first loved us. So God's love is not contingent upon our loving him first. His love is unconditional. But this isn't a New Testament peculiarity. This is also true of of God's love expressed in the Old Testament toward His people Israel. Look at the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verses 7 and 8. Deuteronomy, chapter 7, Verses 7 and 8, where God describes why he chose Israel as his own. He says in verse seven, it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Here the Lord says, it's not something about Israel that made them particularly lovable or worthy. It's simply God's sovereign choice. He simply has chosen them. He loves them. And there wasn't anything about Israel that made it particularly worthy of God's love. God's love is unconditional, and this same truth is taught in the New Testament. For example, look at Ephesians, chapter 2 and verses 4 and 5, Paul's letter to the church of Ephesus, chapter 2, verses 4 and 5. Paul says, But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved. Here Paul says, even when we were spiritually dead in our sins, God loved us with this great love and then made us alive in Christ. And this is an expression of his grace, his unmerited favor toward us. It is God's unconditional love. And finally, look at the letter to Titus, chapter three, verses three to five, one of the richest passages in the New Testament, I think. Titus, chapter three and Verses three to five. There Paul says, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. Notice what Paul says here. That the goodness and loving kindness of God is exhibited toward us not because of deeds of righteousness that we had done, but simply in virtue of his own mercy. It's simply an expression of the unconditional love of God. And the word here for loving kindness is philanthropia, from which we get our word. Philanthropic philanthropia. It's the will or the love of God toward people. God loves people and therefore he has sought to extend his grace to us and save us. So the first quality that we want to highlight of God's love is its unconditional nature. Secondly would be God's love is immutable. It is changeless. God is not going to withdraw his love from you at some point in the future. Jeremiah 31 and verse 3 speaks of God's unchanging love. Jeremiah chapter 31 and verse 3. There the Lord says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. So God is not going to get tired or fed up with us and withdraw his love. His love will not grow old and stale. It is an everlasting love that he's extended to us. And finally, God's love is universal. It is not extended just to some persons, but it is universally extended. John 3:16. John 3:16. Jesus says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And notice that the object of God's love here is not his people. It's not the church, it's not the elect, it is the world. It is the unbelieving world of people that Christ has come to save that God loves so much that he sent his only Son to die for them. So this is a universal love that is extended to every person person that God creates. So God's love is unconditional, it is immutable, it is universal. Any discussion or comment about that scriptural data concerning God's love? All right. Well, what might we say about the love of God? I think what we want to say is that God's love is a peculiar type of love which the New Testament authors refer to as agape love. This is not the ordinary sort of love that human beings exhibit one toward another. This is a word that is used to describe God's love, which is this unconditional, impartial, universal love that is extended to humanity. And God's character is such that he is as loving as he is holy. Neither of these can be compromised. They are equally attributes that belong to the very essence or nature of God. God is as loving as he is holy. And this of course leads to a great paradox. It means that God loves the sinner just as intensely as he hates his sin. God hates his sin because it violates the holiness of God. And yet God loves the person who is perpetrating and guilty of that sin. So Romans 5:8 says the following, Romans 5:8 and verse 8. God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is the remarkable thing about God's love is that it's extended not toward those who are redeemed, who are his people who have sought his grace. It's extended to the enemies of God, to people who are sinners and who have their faces opposed to God. It is those that God loves so much that he sends Christ to save them. And I think that we have a tendency to soft pedal this. We don't understand this kind of love. We think, well, surely there must be something about us that makes us lovable, that we prompt God to love us. And so we tend to portray lost people as little lost lambs that are wandering from the fold of God. And God reaches out to bring back these little lost lambs that are innocently straying from the fold. We don't understand that in the scriptural view we're not innocent lost victims. We are hateful rebels who have opposed God to His face, who shake our fists in his face in opposition to Him. And that's why Paul refers to us as enemies of God. When we were enemies of God, Christ came and died for us. And yet that is the tremendous truth in this paradox, that as sinful and opposed to God as we are, as unworthy worthy of his love as we are, nevertheless God loves us just as intensely as he hates our sin. And so it is the love and justice of God together which prompt his redemption and which motivate us to seek God and to find Him. I remember very well as a non Christian when I first heard that the Gospel of Christ, I was overwhelmed by the message of God's love The thought that the God of the universe could love a worm down there on that speck of dust called planet Earth like Bill Craig just overwhelmed me. It staggered me to think that the God who created the entire universe could love me. And yet at the same time I realized that as a sinner whose heart was black, that I stood under the condemnation and the wrath of this holy and just God who loved me. And so together these brought me to Christ. The love of God drew me, but the justice and holiness of God impelled me into Christ's arms. So the love and justice of God work together to bring people to Christ. Is there any comment or discussion on that understanding, then, of God's love and nature?
- [15:24]
Kevin
Dr. Craig I've listened to many Roman Catholic theologians talking about God's love, and sometimes they talk as if when they say they quote first John saying God is love. And they'll say that God is what God is like at his very core in essence. And everything else flows out of that. So God's holiness flows out of the fact that God is love. God's power flows out of the fact that God is love. God's knowledge flows out of the fact that God is love. So God is the foundation, and all the other attributes are kind of the outgrowing or the flower of that. I just want to know what you would think.
- [16:05]
Dr. William Lane Craig
I don't see that at all in the passage. Kevin I think what John is saying is that love belongs to the essence of God. But clearly the property of being loving is not the same as the property of being holy or just. In fact, they would seem to be opposites in many ways. A person who is perfectly, implacably just will not show mercy or love. They are in one sense opposed to each other, and that is why we have this paradoxical situation. Similarly, there are other properties of God, like His spirituality or his incorporeality or his omniscience or his eternality, that are not expressions of his love. These are just different properties. So I would say that God has quite a number of essential attributes that belong to his very nature, and it's overly simplistic to try to reduce them all to one attribute and see the others as flowing out of it. Yes, I was going to get your response to we say God's love is unconditional, but how is that not universalism, for example? And how can we say that it's unconditional when salvation is conditional upon faith? For example, when I say it's unconditional, I mean that there are no conditions that a person has to meet in order for God to love Him. And I think that is straightforwardly true. God loves not only the elect, he loves the damned as well. He loves those who reject him and reject his grace and separate themselves from him forever. I do not think we should compromise the love of God by saying, well, God doesn't really love the non elect or he doesn't really love the people who reject him and separate themselves from him forever. It seems to me that the testimony of the New Testament is that God loves the world and as the Scripture says, He's not willing that any should perish, but that he wants all persons to come to a knowledge of Himself. So I think his love is unconditional. Now salvation has conditions on it. That's true. Salvation requires a response of faith on the part of the person who has to accept God's grace. But that's not to say that God's love is conditional for that person. So don't confuse those two. I would say yes, James, I was
- [18:57]
Taylor
just going to make a comment about God's love. It is also very clear in Scripture that He disciplines those he loves. If you read In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 7, it is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as the sons. For what son is there whom His Father has not disciplined? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and sons. So I think that it's clear though that we get a. I don't know, this is probably not the best word to use, but a judgment of sorts by God, at least in this life, in order to discipline us.
- [19:38]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes, it says that his discipline is because of his love. If he didn't discipline us, then he wouldn't be a loving parent. A loving parent is the one who lets the child just run rampant and doesn't try to shape that child to have a moral, mature character. So that's a good reminder. And it also reminds us, I think, of the fact that suffering is not incompatible with God's love. I had thought that that would be something that one might raise in connection with this lesson, though I chose not to. Namely, the problem of suffering. If you say God loves us in the way you've described, then how can he allow such horrible suffering to come into the lives of people and even his own children? And I think your reminder is a good one, that love is not inconsistent with suffering at all. That there may be discipline that needs to be taken by God as a loving heavenly Father that will ultimately be for our good if we respond to it in the right way.
- [20:50]
Taylor
Alderman, make one more quick comment about as far as the universality of his love. I don't know which verse it is. I believe it is in the Gospel of Matthew, though, where God says that the rain. I mean, when Christ says the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
- [21:03]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes. I'm going to say something about that verse later in the application section. Right behind you there, Taylor. Oh, Elizabeth, I didn't recognize you. So good to see you back. Yeah, wonderful.
- [21:17]
Elizabeth
I graduated, so I'm back. So I was thinking about sort of the problem of distinguishing a Christian who really is acting morally because of being receptive to God's grace versus the Christian who is not, who is just acting decently because they have a decent nature, but aren't really in submission to God.
- [21:45]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yeah.
- [21:46]
Elizabeth
And so I was to kind of parse those two. I was thinking about what makes the Christian receptive to grace in a way that a non Christian who has loved and who has seen evidence of God in the world, but doesn't consciously rebel, but simply doesn't believe or is of a different religion or something like that. What separates these.
- [22:13]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yeah, that's very difficult to answer with respect to Christians, at least, there's this poignant saying by Jesus that he who has been forgiven much loves much. And those who have been saved out of a life of conscious sin will often have a sort of love for God that is deeper than the person who, as you say, is just sort of always dutifully lived the externals of the Christian life. And I think that's one reason that having a healthy, robust doctrine of sin is really very helpful for us spiritually, because we're all wretched, miserable sinners, even the best of us. So all of us ought to fall under that category of he who has been forgiven much. But we often don't realize it because we think we're rather decent chaps. After all, if we haven't done gross sins. But a robust doctrine of sin should help us to respond to God with a deeper love and devotion if we really understand how much we've been forgiven. Now, with respect to the non believer, why is it that the nonbeliever doesn't have that deep sense of sin and need of forgiveness? I think if the unbeliever really did grasp how morally wretched he is, and then that God has sent Christ to die to forgive him, that that might evoke in that person a deeper sense of the love of God. But without that deep Consciousness of sin. I doubt that people will really come to know Christ and serve Him. You've got to have that sense of your own need first. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says that God sends the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And unfortunately, some people resist the Holy Spirit. They allow him to convict their hearts. They suppress or repress the Spirit. I was just reading this week Stephen's speech in the Book of Acts prior to his martyrdom. And he said of the Jewish leaders of his day, you hard necked people, you always resist the Holy Spirit. And that seems to be what many unbelievers do. And so they do not have this deep sense of need or of the love of God for them that would evoke love in their own hearts. That's about the best I can do in response to that question.
- [25:03]
Bruce
Yes, Bruce, you might say God's love is expressed even to the unbelievers because he doesn't annihilate them. They have a life. They get to be their own God into eternity and suffer that alienation. Because when Satan said to Adam, Eve in the garden, you'll be like God, you'll know good and evil. Part of that was true, but he didn't tell them that the result of that was there was no separation. God knew separation first when he separated Satan and the angels from himself. So they get the full circle of that situation, but they're not annihilated. And so that was one thought that came to mind on this. And then I was also. I had another one, but evaporated.
- [25:50]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yeah, okay, that's fine. We'll talk more about the fate of the damned after death. Some people believe in annihilationism and they would think that that would be an extension of God's mercy actually to annihilate the damned rather than allow them to suffer forever. So we'll come back to that question when we get to the state of the soul after death and the doctrine of the last things. I'm inclined to see the doctrine of hell as an expression of God's justice and holiness rather than an expression of his love. I see heaven and salvation as the expression of God's love and hell as the expression of his wrath and justice and holiness. Any other comment or question?
- [26:38]
Bruce
The other thought I had that came back to mind was if we say, say that, and I agree that God's love is an attribute rather than something substantial. Because if we say God is love, then as Tozer pointed out, then the flip Side would be love is God. And that's not true.
- [26:55]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Substantially, yeah. It's not an identity statement. Right. The word is here is not an is of identity. As Clinton says, it all depends on what the meaning of the word is. So for example, you could say Cicero is Tully. That is to say that's an identity statement. Those were two names of the same person. But if you say Cicero is the greatest Roman orator, that's not an identity statement. That's a predication. It's a script, a property, an attribute to Cicero. And similarly here, as Bruce says, when John says God is love, he's not making an identity statement. He's making a predication that God has the property of love. Essentially it belongs to the nature of God. Any other comments? Yes, over here.
- [27:54]
Kevin
Hoping I can put this in the right words here. So I'm trying to understand this whole love thing. So going to the very beginning when there was nothing except God, I'm trying to understand the point of love. Is there really a point to it? So as I think through it, well, there's the triune God. It goes around. So it's my understanding now the triune God always existed. Because I'm looking at verses where Christ was begotten. It sounds to me like there was a beginning to triune God.
- [28:34]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Did you say it sounds like there was?
- [28:36]
Kevin
There was a beginning, yes.
- [28:37]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Oh no. The classic doctrine of the begetting of the sun is that it is eternal. It's like the sunshine from the sun. The sun never exists without its rays. Obviously the sun doesn't come from the rays, the rays come from the sun. And so similarly, the church fathers said that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father.
- [29:06]
Kevin
I guess that's what I needed to be reminded of.
- [29:08]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Okay, thank you. We'll talk about this when we get to the doctrine of the Trinity. Because this is a very important point that has been made here. If I'm right that love is of the very essence and nature of God, then when there was nothing, when there were no human beings to love, then whom did God love? There isn't anybody else to love other than God.
- [29:31]
Kevin
That's what I was trying to understand. If there was no Trinity and there's just God the Father, then what is the point of love?
- [29:38]
Dr. William Lane Craig
And this is, I think, a very good argument for a place plurality of persons within God over against Unitarianism, which says that God is just one person. For example, Islam is a form of Unitarianism. There's just the one person that is God. But if God is essentially loving. It's of the nature of love to give oneself away to the other. And a Unitarian God cannot do that, cannot be essentially loving. So this gives, I think, a very persuasive reason for thinking there's a plurality of persons within God himself. So that within the Godhead there are eternal love relationships that have existed forever and now are manifested toward human beings with the creation of the world. So we'll get back to that when we get to the Trinity. But I think you've seen a very, very important implication of the notion that God is essentially loving. It suggests a doctrine of the Trinity. Well, next time we will look at some practical application of this attribute of God's being loving to our own lives. In the meanwhile, let's bow our heads and receive the benediction. May the Lord rescue you from every evil and save you for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. The copyright for the content of this recording is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.