For the Love of God Pt. 4

Pt. 4

Chp. 4 God's love and God's Wrath

A. The love of God and the Wrath of God

1) The wrath of God; scripture uses "high intensity" language
Isa. 13:4, 6:9
Ezek. 5:11-17
Revelation 14
"Wrath like love, includes emotion as a necessary component. Here again, if impassibility is defined in terms of the complete absence of all "passions'', not only will you fly in the face of the biblical evidence, but you tumble into fresh errors that touch the very holiness of God. There reason is that itself, wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath- but there will always be love in God. Where God in his holiness confronts his image bearers in there rebellion, there must be wrath, or God is not the jealous God he claims to be, and his holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God's wrath is diminishing God's holiness."

2) How can the wrath and love of God relate?
God hates the sinner and the sin- Rom. 1:18, John 3:36
Wrath not blind rage- entirely reasonable and willed response "not generated by the loveliness of the loved"
3) A. Misconception- OT More wrath, NT a "softer" God approaches; not true look at the cross
Wrath- OT temporal categories
Wrath -NT eternal category
B) Misconception- God's wrath mollified by Jesus
Jesus and father one in "project of redemption"
Rom. 3:21-36

B. The Love of God and the Intent on the Atonement
"Limited" is limiting and misleading
Rather say "general" and "definite" over "Unlimited" and "Limited"

"surely is is best not to introduce disjunctions where God himself has not introduced them. If one holds that the Atonement is sufficient for all and effective for the elect, then both sets of texts and concerns [L/UL] and concerns are accomated. As far as I can se, a text such as 1 John 2:2 states something about the potential breadth of the atonement"

"I argue, then, that both Armnians and Calvinists should rightly affirm that Christ died for all, in the sense that Christ's death was sufficient for all and that the Scripture portrays God as inviting, commanding, and desiring the salvation of all our of love[ God's salvinic stance to the world] . Further all Christians ought also to confess that, in a slightly different sense, Christ Jesus, in the intent of God, died effectively for the elect alone, in line with the way the Bible speaks of God's special selecting love [his love for the elect]"

C. The Love of God for the World
John 3:16
1 John 2:15-17

D. The Love of God and the People of God
1) Like a parent to his child (eg. Heb 12:4-11; cf Prov. 4:20)
Jude 21
Ex. 20:6
2) "Love of God is not to be merely analyzed, understood, and adopted into holistic categories of intergrated theological thought, It is to be received, to be absorbed, to be felt." Eph 3:14-21
3" Never, never, underestimate the power of the love of God to break down and transform the most amazingly hard individuals"
Les Miserables

"God's love so transforms us that we mediate it to others who are thereby transformed We love because he first loved us; we forgive because we can stand forgiven"

1) intra-Trinitarian love- ensures plan of redemption
2) Providential love- protects, feeds, clothes and forbears
3) Yearning inviting love, commanding love- displayed on the cross
4) Elective love-enables us to see his sheer glory and power of Christ's vicarious death
5) God continues to love us- with immutable love (romans 8) but with love of a father (jude 21)
Remain in his love John 15:9ff

"All this has transformed us, so that we in turn perceive the sheer rightness of the first commandment- to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. As that is the first and greatest commandment, so the first and greatest sin is not to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. For this there is no remeddy, save what God himself has provided- in love"