For the Love of God-Part 2

Notes and personal commentary on "The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God"(D.A.Carson)
Started 4/8/10- Completed 4/15/10
All "" are direct quotes. Notes are in summary/paraphrased form unless other wise noted. Some titles are directly quoted

Ch. 2 God is love

John 4:8,16
"God is love" means what?

How NOT to proceed

1.The Word for love cannot be tied to anyone word group- "careful diachronic work has been done on Greek words for love"
Word group disintictions and arguments (see book for further understanding)

How to proceed

Text in context

John 5:17- "Sonship' is very often a functional category in the Bible. Because the overwhelming majority of sons ended up vocationally doing what their fathers did, 'like father, like son' was the cultural assumption' -Jesus did what his father did, illustrates Matt 5:9

2. Did God keep the Sabbath? 1st Centuray Jewish Arguement
Yes- God is sovereign and does not work (ie. lift anything higher than shoulders..he is bigger than universe)
No- If he rested creation would unwind and go swirling out of order

How can Jesus be God's son?
He did everything God wanted him to do

1) Did not set himself against God, or enourage ditheism but rather monotheism; Jesus subordinate and entirely dependent on the father
John 5:19-20
"Like Father like Son"
"He can do only what he sees the Father doing (subordination) because he does whatever he Father does (coextensive action). This makes his sonship unique"

2) John 5:20- Why does the Son do everything the Father does?
The Father Loves the Son and shows him all he does "craftsman shop model"
"Jesus is so uniquely and unqualifedly the Son of God that he Father shows him all he does, out of sheer love for him, and the Son, however dependent on his Father, does everything the Father does"

3.A) " The Son by his obediance to the Father doing only what God gives him to say, yet doing such things in funiction of his ablitiy to do whatever the Father does, acts in such a way as to reveal God perfectly"

b) " It is because the Father loves the Son that this pattern of divin self-disclosure pertains"

John 5:23
Romans 8:32

4) The Son's love for the Father
John 8:29, 14:31

5)Father loves the Son and shows him all that he does
John 5:20a
John 5:20b-21
"In the past God occasionally used human agents i the resuctation of someone (e.g., Elijah). Jesus is different. Because the Father has 'shown' him this, Jesus raised the dead as he please, just as the Father pleases"

Some Concluding Synthetic Reflections

"Mark well the distinction between the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. The Father commands, sends, tells, commissions- and demonstrates his love fo the Son by 'showing' him everything- and demonstrates his love for the Son by 'showing' him everything, such that the Son does whatever the Father does. The Son obeys, says only what the Father gives him to say, does only what the Father gives him to do, comes into the world as the Sent One- and demonstrates hi love for the Faher prcisely by such obedience"

John 15

The model of how Jesus loves the Father should be our model in how we should love and obey Jesus

John 14:15
John 15:14-15
John 17

Distinction between slaves and friends

"not once is Jesus or God ever described in the Bible as our friend. Abraham is God's friend; the reverse is never stated."

He has shown us what the Father does and says, revealed this to us, so therefore we are his friends

" The difference of friendship is that the full information has been conveyed. It is an informational difference...of revelation not of obediance"