For the Love of God pt. 3

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

Chp. 3 God's love and God's Sovereignty

The Affective Element in God's love
Hosea 11
The emotional intenstity
God is a jeolous God
Abounds in love and faithfulness- shown to Moses Ex. 34:6
God grieves Ps. 78:40; Eph. 32:10
Pities (Ps. 103:13)
Everlasting love (Isa. 54:8, Ps. 103:17)

1 John 4:7-11
'Dear Friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another' (4:11)
Model and incentive

The impassiblity of God?

The Soverignty and Transcedence of God
1) God is utterly sovereign, transcendent, and omnipotent
Jer. 32:17
2 Cor. 6:8; Rev 1:8
Matt 19:26
Prov. 16:23
Heb. 1:3
Eph. 1:11
Prov. 21:1
Romans 9;21

Enjoys all Knowledge
Matt. 11:20-24
1 Sam. 23:11-113
Job 37:16
Ps. 90:4
2 Peter 3:8
Isa 57:15

2) His Sovereignty extends over election
Rom. 9:11
Acts 13:48
Eph 1:4-5 cf. Rev. 13:7-8, 17:8
2 Thess. 2:13
Election over angels -1 Tim 5:21
Chosen race - 1 Peter 2:9

Electing love- immutable John 6:37- 40

3) Christians are not fatalists- "compatablism"
Gen. 50:19-20
(speaking about this story) " in one and the same event, God was operating and his intentions were good, and the brothers were operating and their intentions were evil"
Acts 4:23- 29
Pilate, herod, gentiles, Jews in evil act; on other hand God's appointing events

Not to stress either too much

4) God's immutability; unchangeableness
Ps. 02:27
Mal 3:6
Isa 46:8-11
Ps 33:11, cf. Matt 13:35; 25:3; Eph 1:4, 11:1; 1 Peter 1:20
"God's immutability is enormously imporatant, It engenders stability and elicts worship"

5) The sketch of God coming under attack - "open" view of God
Some scriptures to defend each postion

"Sooner or later on retreats into the recognition that, so far as we are concerned, there are some mysteries in the very Being of God The deepest of these, I think are tied to the fact that Go as he has disclosed himself in Scpriture is simultaneously soverign/transcendent and personal"

Ways to unpack that quote-
No personal level illustration of soverigenty and transcendence
"personal" in our being- attached to finite things; God is not "finite"

C. A Rightly Constrained Impassibility
Love in line with his will
Sets his affections on elect no "falling in love"
emotional but not sentimentalized love

"God loves, whomever the object, because God is love...God exercises this love in conjunction with all his other perfections, but his love is no less love for that..his love emanates from his own character; it is not dependent on the loveliness of the loved, external to himself"

"because we have been transformed by the Gospel, over love is to be self-orginating,not elicted by the loveliness of the the loved
1John 4:19
Rom. 5:8
John 4:10