[Living Word] Love of God - Part 6

“ Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword. Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the LORD have spoken in my zeal. ”

- Ezekiel 5:11-17

A dear friend once shared with me a personal experience which left much impact on her and also, vicariously, on me. At that time, she was in a long-distant relationship (with also another close friend of mine) for a particular period of time. During this time, she was under much stress at work and under the influence of her colleagues, picked up certain bad worldly habits. She, however, was quick to realise her sin and stopped herself; yet, she did not tell her boyfriend about it. When she flew over to visit him, she broke the news about it.

At this point when she was narrating the story, I stopped and thought about what he would do; he’d probably meditate for a while before saying to her, “it’s alright. But please don’t do it again.”

I was wrong. He went into a fit of anger that he even kicked down a short brick wall at the porch outside! I remember her recounting what he had said to her – “anyone else can do it, but not you! By doing it, you have defiled yourself, cheapened yourself to the lowest, basest level…!”*

Now, I can vouch that they love each other very, very much. Anyone who knows this couple can attest to that too. And I must add a caveat that this ‘thing’ she did was really, in my opinion, not a very ‘bad thing’ – at least not enough to warrant kicking down a broken brick wall with his foot! But does the guy’s love for my friend mean that he should not have gotten so angry over the matter? Does the show of anger mean that he does not love her?** Is love mutually exclusive from wrath and vice-versa?

Wrath is defined by the Oxford American Dictionary as extreme anger. In the Bible, ‘wrath’ is exemplified as God’s righteous anger. The anecdote above illustrates rather clearly something I believe most of us can understand or relate to; that is, because we love someone, we expect certain standards from him or her, that when they fail our expectations, we not only become disappointed, but also, angry. Did you think God had a very ‘cool’ persona? Did you think Jesus was a very ‘cool’ guy? You’re very wrong. He’s probably one of the most emotional persons in the Bible***.

In fact, God loves His children so much that when He pours out His wrath, it is very, very nasty. The great flood that Noah survived wiped out the entire world. The Israelites were horribly devastated by the Assyrians and Philistines, not because God was powerless but because He wanted to teach His own chosen nation a lesson (Isaiah 10:5). Check out Ezekiel 5:11-17 (above). Read Revelation 14. The imagery of blood flowing out of the winepress, as much as one may argue is metaphorical, is used not to show us that God is a ‘cool’, singularly loving person who’d just go, “okay, we’ll let these people off… with detention.” It was meant to describe God’s wrath on those who reject Him; and from what I can comprehend of it, it will be nasty.

Yes, God hates the sin, loves the sinner; but the sinner who continues to live in sin and rejects God will ultimately bear His wrath at Judgment. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.” (John 3:36) Yes, God loves the sinner. So much that He gave His Son for the sinner, but He is also holy and just: He shall not tolerate evil, not an iota of it. Ultimately, the sinner must account for his refusal to repent. And God’s wrath upon him will be spilled.

Yet, some of us carry a notion that the God of the OT was a wrathful God – always sending plagues, floods, wars, and even striking down seemingly innocent people – while the God of the NT is a such a gentle, loving God – after all, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, and you can get this impression simply by counting the number of times the word “love” is used in the NT. This is a rather skewed misconception that crept in from agnostic commentators – I have read about such analyses in the writings of many popular agnostic thinkers. Didn’t Scripture tell us “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)? If you haven’t noticed, the Jesus who rattles on and on about ‘love’ is the same Jesus who tells us about the blood pouring from winepress and about eternal damnation, the very same God who pours out seven bowls of wrath in Revelation 16; and they sure sound nasty.

So, does all this talk about God’s wrath negate the love that we have been talking about at length before this? Of course not. How then is this reconciled? Look to the Cross! The Father and the Son are both in this stately plan of redemption. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the Father is hesitant to redeem and the Son ultimately wins Him over; this is definitely not the case because it is the Father who loves us so much that sends His Son and the Son who loves His Father and also us, thus, in obedience, fulfils the plan.

Look to the Cross. The Cross is where God’s cup of wrath is poured onto His Son – every drop of it, for every single sin that every human being has committed, across all time. The Cross is where God’s love for us is crystallised, with His Son shielding us from the Father’s wrath.

Look to the Cross, because there is no other way. There is no other way that God’s wrath for the whole world can ever be appeased. If He should relent and write off His wrath, He would then become not the holy, perfect God that He is. He also cannot allow any compromise – even one small blot of ink on a perfectly white canvas is still a blot – for if He does, then His holiness and perfection is compromised.

Truth be told, I wish that I could wish there was a backdoor of some sorts for my unbelieving family and friends to pass through; for the unbelieving victims of Cyclone Nargis, and those of the 2004 tsunami to pass through the gates of His kingdom. But I cannot even wish this, because to do so would make me believe in an imperfect, unholy God.

Our Lord is holy and perfect. We humans have always insisted on a God who is absolutely perfect. It has become rather axiomatic: He must be perfect, otherwise, He is not God. In the same breath, we seem to not be able to accept His holiness and perfection. We demand for compromise. We bend and twist His word to suit our purposes. We demand our own notions of love and justice. But why are we the ones demanding when we are the ones who have fallen; we the ones who are imperfect, and unholy; we the ones who have a distorted understanding of good and evil. It brings us back to the forbidden fruit in Eden, doesn’t it?

I wonder why He has to be this holy and perfect. After all, doesn’t it seem a little pompous to remain on that moral high horse, knowing that we can never attain His standards? It does remind me of the Shakespearean Julius Caesar’s arrogance when he said, “I am constant as the Northern Star”. But God is different.

Firstly, He deserves to be this insistent about His holiness because He is God, and Creator, the Alpha and Omega. He is perfect. None of us are. Nothing else is.

Secondly, He has to be, because He loves us. He has planned the best for us. He created the world perfect, and called it good (Genesis 1:31); then sin came along. But He has also already prepared a perfect place for us (John 14:1-3). He has prepared to restore the world to perfection. Like a brilliant architect and builder, He has chosen the best materials, the best craftsmen, the best workers, and nothing but the best to build this new home for us.

Sounds great! Can I then let my unbelieving best friend in? Unfortunately, no. Because this friend of mine is still steeped in sin. With his sin comes a threat to the perfect home that God has prepared. I groan and protest, but I know it is only right. Instead of insisting that I introduce sin into the picture all over again, tainting and corrupting the perfect beautiful home, I should be trying my best to get rid of that sin – by turning my best friend to Jesus so that Christ will wipe out my friend’s blemishes, so that he can gain entry and share the beautiful perfect home with me. Because I love my friend, I want him to enjoy nothing but the best. Because God loves us, He wants nothing but the best for us. And the best means only the perfect and holy standards of God can suffice.

Is it really so hard to accept God for who He really is? Yes, it is. Remember all the distortions of God’s love in chapter 2? It falls under this umbrella of distortions. The worst thing about committing such a mistake is that it is in itself a sin of creating our own image of God, an idol.

“Do not have any other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Exodus 20:3,4)

Yes, we may justify that we are still pursing after the true God. But remember the Israelites also thought they were worshipping the God of Abraham and of Moses, the same God who just brought them out of Egypt when they created a golden calf to bow to. They were not worshipping ‘another’ god, but merely tried to create an image of Yahweh to bow to. I think many of us are guilty of that same sin today. Sometimes when I pray to our holy Lord, I pray before all else that I, the real I, am praying to God, the true God. The poem by CS Lewis below succinctly crystallises all these thoughts.

“ He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.”

- A Footnote to Prayer, CS Lewis

As a conclusion to this entire series on the Love of God, I would like to suggest that you take everything you’ve read, dump them into an imaginary box, and hide it under a cobweb-infested corner of your mind. We must admit that our human minds are utterly incapable of grasping and comprehending God’s perfect wisdom and knowledge, His mysterious ways and love; if any of us could, the Church would not be as divided as it is today. There is however one mortal thing which keeps the universal Church intact: our faith in a perfect God.

If we can believe that He is God, perfect in His wisdom, knowledge, power, justice and love, then we should let Him be God. Instead of asking “Why can’t He save every single one He created? Why must He do this? Or that? What’s wrong with God?” we should be asking “what’s wrong with us? Why can’t we trust that God knows what He’s doing?” Everything we’ve discussed would all be meaningless study and meaningless chatter if we cannot even trust God to be God!

The best way to end this series is for you to read the book of Ecclesiastes, and be reminded how “Everything is meaningless!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2); then come to an inevitable conclusion: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13,14) I shan’t expound on Ecclesiastes, for one because I am no expert on it, and two because it requires an entire independent series to do it justice. There is one necessary thing, however, that we must draw as Christians today reading that book. Ecclesiastes premised on a belief that there was no afterlife, hence the pervading theme of the meaningless nature of life. We, as Christians today, however, have the joyous hope in knowing that not only is there an afterlife, there is also the resurrection and the eternal kingdom. This stark contrast reinforces one of the themes expounded in Ecclesiastes – that of God’s mystery – “then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.” (Ecclesiastes 8:17)

God’s secrets will remain as secrets until the time is due for Him to reveal: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) Perhaps it is best to leave it as that; to trust God that His beautiful plan will be revealed in His own time. An obsession to unravel these secrets before the time is due may just drive us to lunacy.

Admittedly, it is singularly my utter faith in God that preserves my sanity till today. For me, any other way is self-destruction, and in the words of CS Lewis, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God.”

“ To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy — to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. ”

- Jude 1:24,25

Soli Deo Gloria,
Ronald


* Pardon me, the two of you, for recounting this narrative rather inaccurately; and I hope you do not mind me using this anecdote.

** The ending of this anecdote bears much weight but was not relevant to what I was writing about, so I have shifted the ending to this footnote. So, we left the story off at him kicking down the brick wall with his foot. After that event, he went for a long run and later returned to tell her that he forgives her. Now, one might be thinking, surely since he would have forgiven her anyway, why the big fuss? It was definitely not a ‘show’ that he purposefully put up. It was genuine anger, which stems from his high expectation of her. In the same way, God expects perfect righteousness because He is holy, and our failure to meet His expectations incurs His wrath. Jesus, however, is the only one who meets this standard and He alone is able to carry the weight of God’s wrath on us on behalf of us. The point, however, is that at the end, God does get angry, but He also loves and forgives. Wrath and love are not mutually exclusive.

*** Do read Phillip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew”.

[Living Word] Love of God - Part 5

“ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ”

- Ephesians 1:4-6

In the previous chapter, I have covered what it means by God’s love, which I believe have also effectively touched the first three points I mentioned in Chapter 3, i.e., God’s intra-trinitarian love, sacrificial love and providential love. We now arrive at the fourth point, one that is highly contentious and hence the cause of divide amongst Christians since the Reformation – God’s love for His elect. This chapter must be seen in light of God’s sovereignty and His love; so do not restrict your focus as you continue reading, but more importantly, do keep an open mind and a Spirit-led heart to seek out answers and it may just benefit you.

This particular chapter is also especially messy due to its perplexing and gargantuan nature. I have however tried my best to structure it into 6 essential questions covering the following issues:

1) Unconditional election
2) Free will
3) God’s sovereignty & free will
4) God’s justice & the reprobate
5) Human responsibility
6) Once saved, always saved

To begin with, we must first establish that God is wholly sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient and transcendent. This is not an unfounded notion planted in our brains, so to buttress these points, I should quote scripture:

Omnipotent:

• “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17)
• “I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27)
• “…but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)
• Controlling nature: Matthew 8:26,27
• Controlling men’s hearts: “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart…” (Exodus 10:20)
• Sustaining the universe through His Son’s word: “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
• Even your baldness! “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:29-30)

Omniscient:

• “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13)
• “for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.” (Job 28:24)
• Even what would be the case in a hypothetical situation, what philosophers call “ middle knowledge* ”: Matthew 11:20-24
• Foreknowledge: 1 Samuel 23:11-13

It is apt now to throw in some caveats – they can all be regressed to a simple rhetoric question: “Can God draw a square circle?” If you think you can even come close to fathoming what a square circle might be, then I guess your notion of God’s omnipotence is highly evolved; otherwise, please be realistic to concede that God’s omnipotence is limited to Himself – His perfect wisdom, knowledge and nature. It should be worthy to point out also that God will never do anything that makes Him lesser than Himself, for e.g., the paradoxical question of “Can God create a rock so heavy He cannot lift?” It is utter nonsense because He won’t do that even if He could – the question is ranked alongside questions like “Is the number one noisy?”

With His sovereignty established in our minds, we now can extrapolate these properties of omnipotence and omniscience to the issue of salvation. Surely God knows who will choose to believe in Him, doesn’t He? Yet, surely God is able to use His powers to make people believe in Him, isn’t he? Does He thus choose His flock because He knows they would choose Him or does He choose His flock and then they would choose Him?

1) Essentially, it all boils down to this: does God choose whom He wants for salvation?

This question can slide down to the divide between Calvinism and Arminianism, but boxing our thoughts and persuasions into these labels would also be a slippery slope. Herein, I write my personal opinion on the issue of election. In summary, I am inclined towards Calvinism, i.e., that God, in His wisdom and sovereignty chooses His flock, and that this is, while on a balance of probabilities, on the basis of Scripture.

“When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honoured the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48)

Here, we are told that the premise for the Gentiles’ believing was that they were “appointed”.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30)

In these verses, Paul explains a certain ‘order’ or ‘sequence’ to salvation: chosen by God, called, justified, glorified. The sequence again begins with predestined election.

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (Ephesians 1:4-6)

Indeed, He had predestined us into His kingdom “in love”.

Moreover, Jesus also says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44). God himself draws us, and creates the change in our heart that is necessary to find Jesus.

One may argue from the other side of the fence that John 3:16 tells us “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Undeniably, God did give His only begotten Son to the world because He loved the world. Does it logically mean then that eternal life is for the whole world? This is answered in the very same verse: only “whoever believes in him”. And the above scripture quotations have effectively shown us that it is only because God chooses that He calls and hence those who are called will believe. In other words, God’s love and grace is sufficient for the whole world, but effective only for His elect.

And to answer the question posed at the beginning whether it likely is the case of God choosing because He knows people will choose Him, or people will choose Him before God chose them to do so, I think this would be a matter of personal preference. Personally, I would think that my Lord is sovereign and chose me because the converse does seem to make Him a rather ‘democratic’ God which the Old Testament has shown often to be not the case.

You may or may not choose to take this stand; you may choose to take the Arminian point of view, but I must warn you that it is less scripturally grounded than that of the above (Calvinist). I must also warn you that perhaps just because we are uncomfortable with it, we may choose to deny it and take a contrarian’s view, but risk being deviant from the Word: I know because I have been struggling with this long before I was a Christian. And if it should comfort you, it has been wrestled on by John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Wesley, amongst others, throughout their whole lives.

2) This doctrine of election thus has certain implications on our understanding of free will. One would ask then that if God had given us free will, surely we should be able to choose whether or not to receive our salvation, and not be predetermined by Him?

Indeed, it holds some truth – but only under certain perimeters and limitations. If one were to consider ‘free will’ to be that all possible choices in existence must be made available to us and that our decisions translates absolutely to our own mould of the future, then I must concede that is nonsense. The last I recall, the Bible never tells us that “God lets man choose every thing in the universe”, or to similar effect. To begin with, does any of us get to choose where we are born or to whom we are born to?

Free will must be seen in light of the Genesis story. God placed two trees in a garden, one tree carrying a forbidden fruit – that was God giving Man free will. If God never placed that tree in the garden, I guess our discussion ends here: there would be no free will (and we’d all still be in Eden). This would be the same for other hypothetical questions such as “why doesn’t God make everyone believe in Him then since He could?” It would effectively make us like some of our favourite animal cousins down the hierarchy of sentient beings – maggots, for example; merely existing to find food, reproduce and die. If God wanted that, He obviously didn’t have to create Man; He had already created a whole world of such organisms.

I think the best way to comprehend this concept of free will is to draw an analogy of a timeline seen from a macroscopic lens: draw a straight line, somewhere on that line, mark out point A, and then further down, point B; point A is where God places us to enter this world, and point B is where we depart, plus an additional binary variable (believer in His Son, or non-believer in His Son). I know I’m over simplifying here (I’ve ignored the whole process of justification, sanctification and glorification etc), but I beg your pardon to merely illustrate the point. The points A and B are decided by God, i.e., He chooses where we’re born and whether we’ll end up departing from this world with our passports to His kingdom certified and stamped. The time between A to B is effectively our lives and is analogous to “borrowed free time” – you have the liberty to do whatever you wish but I should emphasise again to avoid the fallacy that “whatever I choose, whatever will happen” because our life’s conclusions are not only determined by our choices alone.

3) This then begs another question: does this mean that our sovereign God is not in charge of our lives?? Not at all.

Remember that our God can control sentient beings as well as inanimate objects. He can turn the hearts of men and control the weather. Keeping this in mind, and reiterating my fallacy I pointed out earlier, our lives can be seen as a whole complex web of events moving along a spatial time axis – our decisions only form one element or coordinate in this whole web.

For example, I may decide at 10am to go for a run at 4pm today. At 2pm, my mother calls and instructs me to go to the supermarket to buy some groceries. Being a good son, I obey and head out after some procrastination at 2.30pm. On my way back, I witnessed a tree fall, pining down a kitten’s tail. Usually, I wouldn’t give so much as a glance but today, I feel extremely compassionate towards the kitten. I spend the next 2 hours lifting the tree, and nursing the kitten’s wound. By the time I return home, it is 6pm and my mother is fuming that she doesn’t have the stuff to prepare her ‘special’ dinner; and obviously, I didn’t get to go for my run. While this is highly hypothetical (I do like cats and definitely would save kittens!), I must highlight that God’s hand might have been in this. He probably could have made the tree fall at the very instant when the kitten was under it. He probably could have ‘softened’ my heart that very moment. He probably could have ‘incited’ my mother to cook a special dinner that evening. In fact, His hand could be in so many things in our lives; we would never know, and probably pass them off as a string of fortuitous incidents.

4) On a more serious note, whatever we’ve discussed above would definitely have bearings on the perspective we take on predestination and God’s love, doesn’t it? For one, most of us would be asking, what about those chosen by Him not to be saved (i.e., the reprobate)? Isn’t that unjust? Isn’t that merciless?

This may sound bluntly caustic but the truth is we all deserve eternal damnation anyway. Because of the Original Sin, we are all born evil, and we exercise our capacity to sin from the very first chance. We are told that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). None of us meet God’s righteousness and standards. None of us deserve to be saved; everyone deserves damnation. If God was merely just (and not everything else that He is, including love), then I would go so far to reckon we’d all end up in the eternal cesspool, because that would only be just. The typical analogy would be that we’re all criminals and deserve imprisonment anyway; that is justice.

But God is not just a just God; He is also merciful, and He is love. He has chosen from amongst the whole damn lot of criminals an elect few to be granted amnesty – at no cost to us, but a heavy price for Him. So how can we say that God is unjust or merciless or unloving?

At this point, it is appropriate for me to mention the story of Jacob and Esau. If you do not know the story, just go read it in Genesis 25:19-40 and for the full story, read till Genesis 35:29 (or if you’re really darn lazy, you can just borrow a kid’s bible story book). Paul reaffirms the whole doctrine of election in Romans 9:11-13, “Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ ” I mention this here because it is stern reminder to us that God does not choose by merits but merely in His love (Ephesians 1:4) and for His glory. The life stories of both Jacob and Esau definitely do not seem to be very favourable – one is stupid enough to sell his birthright and the other a conniving trickster. We know how the story goes: from Jacob came the nation of Israel. Is it unjust for God to have chosen such a sly, cunning man who tricked his own brother? (If you ask me, I feel injustice for Esau that poor hairy jock of a man!) One may also ask, why then did God create Esau? Extending that question further, why did God make Man knowing he would fall into sin?

The only way to look at the issue here is not in terms of just or unjust, or logical or illogical, but in terms of God’s sovereign choice – He will choose for His own glory, He will do as He pleases, for His own glory. It does sound a little pompous, doesn’t it? But the inescapable truth is that He is God, He is holy and set apart, does what He does to show us He is God, and does so in the strangest, most mysterious of ways – just take a look at the events in the first 5 books of the Bible for a start.

5) The next question stems from the earlier one: is it not true then to say that people should not be held responsible for their choices since it is after all God’s sovereign will?

I should now further throw in another thought – that of compatibilism. Simply put, it means that God’s sovereign will and human responsibility are mutually compatible. This strand of theological philosophy does not go so far to show you how this is possible – our human minds are probably inadequate to comprehend. It is however built on scriptural evidence to support that this is not only possible but is most likely the case.

In Joseph’s story, his brothers harmed him with a malign intent; yet, Joseph wisely told them in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” How perplexing: the same coin but two different sides. Does it mean that his brothers are guiltless? Not at all, because we cannot erase the fact that they did intend to harm Joseph [redolent of legal theory: mens rea (intent) and actus reus (the guilty act)]! Is it God’s fault then? Not at all, because He intended it for good, over the fact that He wasn’t the one who committed the crime, mind you.

In Isaiah 10:5, “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath”, God calls Assyria the rod of His anger and uses them to punish Israel. It would definitely be a stretch to think that it was God who ‘incited’ Assyria to attack Israel, and yet, God allowed it with the intent of punishing Israel. Again, same coin, two sides – compatibilism.

And the most poignant example is found in Acts 4:27,28, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.” There had been a conspiracy to send Jesus to the crucifix, and simultaneously, it was all in God’s plan. Does that make Herod and Pilate innocent? Not at all; they had acted by their own volition, and yet were elements in God’s big plan. If for a moment, we should think that this was not actually God’s plan but merely a clever manipulation of an ‘accident’ or worse, a totally unforeseen incident, then the entire pattern of antecedent predictive revelation** can be trashed: the Atonement, the Passover lamb, the sacrificial lamb etc. In the words of Donald Carson, “rip Hebrews out of your Bible, for a start”.

And on the other hand, if one were to argue that since God is utterly sovereign, humans should bear no responsibility then. If that were the case, then there wouldn’t even be a notion of sin, would there? In that case, the Cross is absolutely unnecessary. And if you find yourself feeling ‘compassion’ and ‘mercy’ for the Reprobate, ask yourself this: do you think that your compassion, mercy and goodness is more than that of God’s? I too have struggled with this but have since given up and conceded that God, in all His wisdom and goodness and love, would know better; after all, who am I to question His mercy and goodness? It is thus purely in faith that I could proceed from that handicap.

I think the above explanations have sufficiently covered the question on God’s justice for His Reprobate: all of us deserves damnation, the Reprobate themselves choose their own just deserts; yet the Elect have been endowed with God’s amazing grace to be called, to be justified, sanctified and glorified, to be His heirs, the sons of His kingdom.

6) To conclude this lengthy and possibly conflicting discourse, the issue of “once saved, always saved” ought to be tackled here, albeit in a mild manner.

I would like to mention a very famous (or infamous) man: Charles Templeton. He was a fervent evangelist, a close friend and aide of Billy Graham. Together, they co-founded Youth for Christ International. He was also senior pastor of a church he founded and attended Princeton Theological Seminary. Then, 21 years after his ‘conversion to Christianity’, after a long struggle with doubt and uncertainty, with the very doctrines of Predestination, Election and Redemption, he declared himself an agnostic and even wrote a book stating his arguments for agnosticism. He passed away in 2001 as an agnostic.

A glimpse at his book entitled “A Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith” would definitely have me believe that no one but himself had made him choose apostasy. And more so definitely did God not ‘incite’ or make him an apostate. Charles Templeton chose his own end. Now that we can look at his life in retrospect, we can say surely that God had not chose Templeton to be amongst His elect. Yet, when Templeton was a prominent evangelist and senior pastor, would anyone have been able to say the same?

From his life example, we are reminded of an axiomatic platitude: we are not God. We do not know who has been chosen by Him, only God knows; we do not know if we ourselves have really been chosen, only God knows. This can be translated into two lessons for us.

The first point is actually the 5th point I mentioned in chapter 3 about ‘God’s conditional love’. Jesus told us in John 15:9-10, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” From our perspective, at whichever point in our lives, there is no 100% certainty that we will finish the race, just as Charles Templeton’s life has shown us. The only way we can find security and “remain in His love” is by obeying Jesus’s commands. It is only through obedience that we can continually be sanctified for His glory, remain in His love and be endowed with His everlasting peace.

Secondly, because we will never know who in this world have been chosen, we must continuously fulfil the Great Commission and evangelise the Gospel of Christ to all, in hope that they may believe, or otherwise, at least, have seeds sown in their hearts. Remember, God calls those He has chosen. But He does so through us. Such a huge responsibility we have!

Having reached the end of this lengthy discussion, I would advise you to contemplate everything, shove all your thoughts into a little box and leave it at the corner of your mind, because the notions of ‘free will’, ‘predestination’ or ‘reprobation’ floating about will not help you obey His commands and remain in His love. The only way to do so is to return to the number one commandment and love our Lord with all our mind, might, strength and soul. It is from this love for God that everything else will grow and bear fruit.

It is because I love Him that I want to tell the world about Him; it is because I love Him that I want to obey and follow Him wholeheartedly; because I love Him, I want to remain forever in His love. But most importantly, it is because He first loved me that I love Him.


* for more information on “middle knowledge”, check out this site: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/omniscience.html

** I have borrowed this term and the examples here from Donald Carson.

[Reflection] Reasoning with God

Who are we to reason with God? Am I even suggesting that we can even have the ability to 'outsmart' God in logic and reasoning that He would, in all His wisdom, grant us what we request by mere argument? Yet, it has been shown to us that this is indeed one of the ways He wants to engage with us.

In Matthew 15:21-28, we meet a Canaanite woman who reasons with Jesus Christ. I must add firstly that there are many things you can learn, analyse or take away from this passage. To some, it may even seem slightly unlike of Christ, considering His initial response which seemed to hint of racial discrimination - contrary to His intended ministry to all (Jews & Gentiles alike). But I shan't even bother to talk about those things; perhaps it'll come to light further down this piece anyway. The point I'm making here is essentially on 'reasoning with God'.

The Canaanite woman came looking for Jesus because her daughter had been demon-stricken. She pleads for Him to heal her daughter, but He refused and ignored her. When His disciples asked Him to turn her away, He replied, rather bluntly (if I were to crassly put it), that He came for the Jews, not the Canaanites such as her. (You will probably understand this if you have some knowledge of the history and background from the OT regarding the Israelites and Canaanites.) He even goes on to refer to her and her race as 'dogs', that it is not right to take the children's bread to toss to dogs.

The next part of the narrative is rather shocking, not that the first wasn't shocking to us already. The Canaanite woman rebutted with all humility, persistence and desperation, " 'Yes, Lord,' she said, 'but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.' " Jesus then made a 180-degree turn on His prior decision, and commends her, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." and her daughter was healed at that very instant.

Shocking? To me, initially, yes. But really, this is not new of Jesus to do such a thing; and, in fact, He still does it with all of us. He places stumbling blocks in front of us, to serve as obstacles and hurdles, for one sole reason: to test our faith. Did you think for a moment that our God did not know what she would say? Did you really think for a moment that our God rejected her based on race - if it were so, we wouldn't be Christians today, would we? Did you really think that the Canaanite woman 'outsmarted' God? Absolutely not.

It was all as He expected and planned. He was testing the Canaanite woman. He was going to let the Canaanite woman reason with Him, and He was definitely going to use this moment for His glory, and to reveal something about Him that is little revealed before - that He would listen to our reasoning and He would give it to us.

This is what I call "holy argument" - and many Biblical heroes of faith have done it, serving as advocates (lawyers) who presented their case before the Judge; Abraham in Sodom, Moses many a times, Elijah at Carmel. Even the story of the centurion at Capernaum (Matthew 8:5-13) showed a form of 'reasoning' with God.

What does this mean for us ? It means that in our prayers and petitions, in our desperation and frustrations, we can plead to God with holy argument, and He will listen; not only will He listen intently, He will grant us our petitions if it be His will. And perhaps, sometimes, it is that which He desires of us - utmost absolute faith and a desperation that is turned only unto Him.

Struggle and wrestle with Him if you should need to; perhaps it is what He wants of you right now.

[Living Word] Love of God - Part 4

" The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. ”
– John 3:35

The idea of a father-son relationship is depicted in many points in the Bible. It is interesting to note that the first time such mention surfaced in biblical history is in 2 Samuel 7:14-16, when God told King David through the prophet Nathan about His own plans for building a temple for God – “I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” I may be treading on speculation, but it definitely seems like a prophetic parallelistic prelude to the coming of Christ: we know David’s human kingdom of Israel did not last forever – civil war broke out after his son’s, Solomon, rule; but David’s kingdom was definitely established forever through Jesus Christ.

I mention this not to highlight a tidbit of interesting biblical prophecy but because it is here that God first declares a father-son relationship between Him and His chosen people. And there are implications: that of discipline, and also an eternal covenant. Again, it sounds like a blatant parallel to that of the divine Father-Son relationship, doesn’t it? Hold this thought then while I explore the love between Father and Son and study certain qualities and aspects of this love.

1. Subordination Sonship. In John 5:19, Jesus says “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Does Jesus claim to be equivalent to the Father? Not at all. Instead, Jesus explicitly states an absolute dependence on the Father, one of absolute submission, and it is from this obedience that the Son is able to do the many amazing things that He does. This is a reminder to us about the notion of “Christ-likeness”. As Christians, we aspire to imitate Christ and it is exactly because we want to obey, because we are His sons and heirs, and truly because we love Him. The extent however is lost on us. Most of us compromise in our aspiration – a little this or that will do no harm – but really, we can do nothing by ourselves. Even those things which we think are by our own strength and volition, we are really only deceiving ourselves. Give it a thought: even Jesus Christ, God the Son, can “do nothing by himself”, what about us?

2. Revelatory Fatherhood. In the next verse, John 5:20, Jesus explains, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” It is precisely because the Father loves the Son that He shows the Son everything. An analogy closer to home would be something like that of a family recipe to a unique dish which has been handed over generations, or perhaps a craftsman passing down everything he knows about the craft to his apprentice son. When seen from our perspective, we can also now understand that it is because of His love for us that He has revealed many things to us through His Word, taken in its dual meaning, i.e., in the form of the Bible and also His Son, Jesus Christ, for “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). And He does this so that “he who has ears let him hear” (Matt 13:9) and that “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you” (Matt 13:11) that we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Christ.

3. Perfect divine self-disclosure. It is the above two points that enable us to truly know our true God. Because Jesus and all His actions are an exact representation of God’s love for Him, and because Jesus loves us that He has shown us and taught us about His Father’s love, we are able to know God’s love and nature absolutely accurately. Think then, what if the Son did some things His own way? Then we would never know what of those expressions were that of the Father or the Son. It is based on this Father-Son love that all love relationships are set. The standard of God’s love is revealed in John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” – indeed God loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son, but it is precisely because He loves His Son to such an unfathomable extent “that” it is the benchmark. Only by this divine self-disclosure that we are able to grasp the extent of the Father’s love for His Son, and vice-versa and hence, His love for us.

4. Eternal Father-Son love. Christ has been since eternity – John 17:5 says “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” – and this forms a logical basis for us to suppose that God’s love is eternal, and a priori, or independent of existence (something I raised earlier in Part 3). Philosophers have always argued that in the absence of existence, there would be no notion of morality whatsoever, i.e., the case for moral relativism. But the Bible clearly states the contrary** and explains this in something so much more amazingly simple: that God is Love (1 John 4:8). I have always wondered what the statement meant and it is this rigorous cognitive exercise that have got me to finally comprehend it. God is Love because His love is eternal and independent of anything else, and this is because within the Triune God, there are the subject and object of God’s love. Hence it is a perfect love since eternity past. It also reveals to us that God’s love has always been other-oriented. And in refute to philosophical meaningless chatter, He did not need to create mankind to be the objects of His love – He has been loving since forever, and hence He is Love.

I believe the above aspects of the Father-Son love are able to explain to us several more things which are applicable to our lives.

Jesus said in John 15:14,15, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” From an atheist’s point of view, it must sound extremely absurd that utter, servile obedience would be considered ‘servanthood’ but friendship. Exactly the irony: it is because God loves us that He has made known to us His purpose, and the very reason why we must obey – love. Donald Carson draws an example of a Private and an Officer Commanding: an Officer Commanding can order the Private to fetch for a Rover; but if the OC was perhaps a family friend of the Private and have known each other since they were children, the OC would probably say, “Ronald, fetch the Rover, please. I’ll be going to HQ now for a battalion briefing and will take 2 hours. You can use the Rover during that time, but return to HQ to pick me up after that. Thanks.” In both cases, the Private must obey regardless. The difference of friendship is that of revelation, not obedience.

It is hence this love for God that compels us to obey fully, even though it is against our predilections, our comfort zone, and our (sinful) nature to do so. But recall John 15:9-10 – “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” Obedience will lead us to remain in His love, and it is by obedience that we can be sure we will not fall away. It is only by remaining in His love and never falling away that we can be made heirs of God (Rom 8:17, Gal 3:29). The alternative, if we should choose to disobey and fall away, would lead us to eternal damnation. By such simple reasoning, it is clear that He commands us to obey because He loves us and wants us to be made His heirs.

Let me now return to the idea offered in the introduction paragraph: that of the father-son relationship stated in 2 Samuel 7:14-16 involving discipline and an eternal covenant. At this point, we should re-examine the passage – “I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”

The first thing to note is that God chooses His son. This is seen in tandem with God choosing Israel, His own people, God choosing David, and then Solomon, and in the New Testament context, His Church – those will eventually and will finally be saved in Christ – who makes up His new Israel. This is redolent of the idea of election – we do not choose our Father, but He chose us.

Secondly, when His son does wrong, the son will be disciplined. The poignant phrasing of the words in the passage rings of Jesus’s crucifixion, and bearing similarity to Isaiah 53:5. Surely the son mentioned in this passage cannot be a parallel to Jesus, who was perfect and hence deserving no wrong that God would punish him? Exactly the same reason why Jesus was crucified isn’t it? We as Christians know that Jesus was crucified in our place, for our sins. It is precisely because God have chosen us as His sons and unwaveringly according to His promises have ‘punished’ us – yet He knows our ‘wrongs’ are far too much for us to bear our deserving punishment and have instead done so – through Christ, His perfect, obedient Son.

Thirdly, we are told that God’s love “will never be taken away from” His son, again redolent of what Jesus said in John 10:28: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand." This is the eternal love which God exhibits and professes, which translates to an eternal covenant He has with His sons.

Fourthly, the eternal kingdom is thus established in Christ, who has resurrected and reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev 19:16), for eternity. It is because we are God’s sons, saved by grace in Christ, and hence will become co-heirs with Christ in the eternal Kingdom (Rom 8:17, Gal 3:29).

As you can probably see by now, the Father-Son relationship is not confined to the Intra-Trinitarian love which is undeniably important but not the only sense of love which exudes from this special relationship; it is the model and standard which His love for us, His own sons through faith in Christ, is also exhibited that we belong to Him and become heirs. Isn’t it amazing how this whole delicately intricate plot seems when we consider all these things? And best of all, because of this, we belong to the eternal Kingdom.

“ You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. ” – Galatians 3:26-29

** I’m adding this as a footnote because it is not entirely related to the topic of the Love of God. Nonetheless, I have mentioned that the Bible states a contrary notion to a popular philosophical view that in the absence of existence, there can be no morality, i.e., moral relativism. Moral relativism suggests that morality is relative to social, cultural, historical and personal circumstances. The contrary, which is moral absolutism, as the name suggests, states that there is an absolute code of morality which is stemmed from a fundamental source, e.g., the nature of Man, the inherent laws of the universe, the will of God etc.

The Bible has blatant evidence for moral absolutism. In Proverbs 8, King Solomon writes about Wisdom, personifying Wisdom and goes into a lengthy narrative/exposition about her – quite pristinely written, wisdom is associated with knowledge, goodness, justice, righteousness, discretion, understanding, and power.

In Proverbs 8:22,23, Wisdom says, “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began,” and in Proverbs 8:30,31 – “Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.”

Is it not clear from the passage that even before creation, God had already established ‘wisdom’? Not only so, the passage also suggests that God made use of this wisdom to create the world, being the “craftsman at his side”. Ever since I found this passage, I have been marvelling at it and God’s brilliance, because it explains and scripturally supports many things which we often conjure as mere thoughts and ideas in our head but never found much scripture to buttress with. For one, this is a clear evidence for moral absolutism, and two, it is with this divine ‘universal knowledge’ that the universe was created – the same knowledge that we as humans presume to possess or seek to possess. Think about all the physics, chemistry and biology lessons – the knowledge we have spent thousands of years of human consciousness to discover is exactly the truth which govern the laws of the universe, are the very things which God used to create the universe, and is the very knowledge God Himself had created before existence.

Now if you were a philosophically-inclined atheist, you may argue that Proverbs 8 does not at all explain or justify moral absolutism but merely presupposes it. I concur on that, and now I attempt to explain. To begin, I must state clearly two indisputably granted assumptions. We as Christians know that our God is omnipotent and omniscient. We also know that our God is and has been around for eternity past – He is the Alpha and Omega.

Now in philosophy, we know that there is a priori knowledge – knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction and hence independent of empirical experience – as opposed to a posteriori knowledge, which stems from empirical deduction. Examples of a priori knowledge would be geometry, mathematics, and axiomatic statements whose truth are inherent in itself. To simplify things, an analogy would be that even if the entire universe were to disappear at this moment, there would still be some truths standing – for example, the idea of “null” or “zero” or “one” or synthetically speaking, “one plus one equals two” and that “a square has four sides”. Such is a priori knowledge.

In the same way that we can appreciate a priori truths, extrapolate this meek understanding of it unto God, who is not merely an a priori truth, but the source of all knowledge itself. Surely all the a priori knowledge has to stem from a source or require a medium through which the knowledge can sustain itself, because without which, we would have an absolute void except for a few drifting concepts of ‘squares having four sides’ and ‘one plus one equals two’? Admittedly, this is a loose argument, but I do not confess to use this as the main argument in my favour. Instead, I am only asking that you extrapolate the frail comprehension you have of a priori knowledge unto our omnipotent and omniscient, eternal God. It is in this same way that we can inch closer to understanding how God can be eternal.

If you were to at least sway towards this argument, then you would have little difficulty accepting that wisdom, being a characteristic of God in itself can exist in eternity, independent of creation, and hence be the justification for moral absolutism.

I should add as a last note that I am definitely no philosopher, and neither do I even come close to being an expert on this matter. There are however, books that you can read to suffice your thirst to know, if you do have one. One of which is The Abolition of Man, by CS Lewis. A full transcript of it can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm.

[Living Word] Love of God - Part 3

" The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song... ”

– The Love of God, a hymn by Frederick Lehman

The love of God is indeed greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. Yet, because He loves us so much He has sent His Word down to earth that we, in spite of how fallen we are, may have a chance to know Him and to seek Him. From Scripture, we can see many examples of God’s love. Categorically, there are 5 main genus of such examples, though this list is not exhaustive.

1. God’s love within the Trinity. This is shown in God’s love for His son, Jesus, and reciprocally, Jesus’s love for the Father. The Father’s love for His son is one of revelatory and trusting delegation. John 3:35 says, “The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.” And the Son’s love for the Father is one of willing obedience, which crystallised in the crucifixion. Here I take leave to a little theological philosophy: it is with this premise of Intra-Trinitarian Love that God’s love can exist in itself, independent of any other notion of love, and hence also logically buttressing the statement that “God is Love”, because if this Intra-Trinitarian Love never existed, God’s love would be perceived in terms of His relation to the external, i.e., beyond Himself, and the apostle John should/would have written “God is loving” or “God loves”, and not “God is Love”. It is also on this logical premise that we can say God’s love is everlasting. I shall expound on this further in subsequent parts.

2. God’s sacrificial love. The Father sacrificed His only begotten son, and the Son sacrificed His life; not only that, Jesus emptied Himself of divine glory to enter this world, be betrayed and afflicted, be escorted all the way to the cross where the Father poured the cup of His wrath – the culmination of His wrath against the sins of every human being that exist(s)(ed) across time – onto the Son. All these because “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ” (John 3:16), and “by this we know love, that he (Christ Jesus, God the Son) laid down his life for us… ” (1 John 3:16).

3. God’s providential love. It is such an amazing perplexity that God is able to sustain the amalgamation of all the cosmos and all the atoms and forces that stitch the universe together and we know it because “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them” (Nehemiah 9:6) [ESV]; also it is said “God gives to all men life and breath and everything else... For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:25,28). And Jesus knows this because Hebrews 1:3 tells us, “The Son is… sustaining all things by his powerful word.” This very same person who merely ‘speaks’ existence into existence, have told us to “look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26) and “why are you anxious about clothing?”, “but if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ” (Matthew 6:28-30). Indisputably, God provides; His Providence is for everything, down to the last detail.

4. God’s love for His elect. A highly precarious topic to tread but one which will inevitably have to be returned to. As much as we can try to democratise our God, we have to embrace the fact that a crucial cornerstone of our faith is built on this – the doctrine of election, or sometimes fragrantly known as grace. Israel was chosen as God’s own people, not because Israel was powerful or possessed any other merits but merely because He loved them: “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). God also chose His new Israel, the NT Church not by the basis of merit but solely by loving grace, “for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Ephesians 1:4). I mentioned that this is precarious because to have an Elect, the corollary is that there is a Reprobate; there are times even when God’s love appears to be discriminatory: “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated” (Malachi 1:2-3). Perhaps I am now touching the Pandora’s Box, but precisely because God’s love is so intricately inexplicable that we must wrestle with it.

5. God’s conditional love. We’d like to think that because God has chosen us and chosen us to be the object of His everlasting love, it is done. Indeed, it is done, but… There are ‘buts’. This begs the perennial issue of “once saved always saved”, but we shall leave it to a later time. For now, we should bear in mind that the love of God is but one coordinate in an entire matrix of His character – I say matrix because the coordinates are not separate and/or distinct from one another, but are all intricately inter-woven into His personality – and we ought to remember that our Lord is also a just God, a wise/omniscient God and all-powerful/omnipotent God. Hence, His love for us, for His elect, must be seen side-by-side with His justice, which is why there are conditions. Deuteronomy 7:9-11 says “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today” and Christ in John 15:9-10 decreed to us, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” Evidently, one is able to remain and not remain in God’s love, the deciding predicate being obedience.

I ought to admit that to segment examples of God’s love into categories can be obstructive to comprehending the fullness of His love, but it has served me well in at least inching towards a slight understanding of it. Indeed, God’s love means many things to different people, but I should, at this point, add a caveat and warning that one should never perceive such aspects of God in absolute or lean towards a particular inclination and hold a skewed perspective of the entire body, i.e., God’s love is not just the Intra-Trinitarian love, and not just His sacrificial love; it is an amalgamation of everything good that comes out of goodness, of Love itself.

As a conclusion to this part and prelude to the rest of the chapters where I will expound on the examples of love mentioned here, I should now pose a question on 1 John 4:19 – “ We love because he first loved us. ” From a philological perspective, the conclusion that “we love” leading from the premise that God “first loved us” seems to be rather fallacious. Rather perplexing. Did John mean that I love my family, my spouse, my friends, and even my pet kitten because God loves me? Was he talking about the capacity to love, or the act of loving (in continuous tense) that we are presumed to be executing presently? Regardless if it were the former or latter, how is it derived from the premise that it is because God “first loved us”?

Didn’t I tell you the love of God is rather abstruse? Not as simple as your “love is only a feeling” axiom eh?

“ When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky. ”

- Last two stanzas of The Love of God

[Living Word] Love of God - Part 2

"Love is only a feeling
(Drifting away)
When I'm in your arms I start believing
(It's here to stay)
But love is only a feeling "

– Love is only a feeling by The Darkness

It is a strange world to be ‘in love’ now – there is such a wide buffet of interpretations of love available for your palate. Tune in to Class 95 FM and you will hear but a few opinions on what love is: “love is about giving your heart away”, “love is about being blind to the other person’s faults”, “love is…” etc.

Similarly, our comprehension of God’s love has also been corrupted by the plethora of deviant ideas of love, kudos again to pluralism, which has stealthily also infected Christians to believe that all opinions are equally worthy and should be embraced, and that no one opinion is more true than any other – that is essentially pluralism. Here we examine 5 common distortions of God’s love.

1. God is only an absolutely loving figure. In fact, people who hold this view believes that God loves them so much He will be on their side regardless of circumstance, showering them with luxury and prosperity beyond imagination. It puzzles me. If He is really so loving, why doesn’t He give everyone overflowing bank accounts (and a Beemer or Porsche to top it off)? Or consider a situation where a German Christian soldier and a Britain Christian soldier meet on a battlefield during WWII? Whose side would God be on then? We should all bear in mind that while God is Love, He is not only Love. God is also the Just; and Justice and Love are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are threads of the same fabric.

2. God has become sentimentalized. People today only ‘feel’ God through their emotions: heart warming love, cold guilt, furious wrath etc. For those of us who have less sensitive lachrymal (tear) glands, are we deprived of God’s presence then? In a survey done in the US during the mid 1980s, ¾ of respondents saw God as friend rather than king. Hillsong sings that “Jesus is my best friend”. I do not wish to comment on the theological accuracy of that statement, but it is evident that most people have conveniently forgotten that Jesus is first and foremost Lord; of course, the sweeter sounding response is that Jesus is our best friend.

3. Religious Pluralism. All roads lead up the same mountain – many today think that because our God is so loving He must be so merciful and all encompassing; a person who is worshiping Vishnu is actually really worshipping God - merely a misconceived or alternative manifestation of God. Such an idea is even more poignant and relevant in relation to believers in the other Abrahamic faiths, considering all three religions share the same ‘roots’. Read paragraphs 839 – 848 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and you’ll be surprised (http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm). Religious pluralism has become so commonplace that anything else is considered bigotry; what then can be held true at all anymore?

4. God’s love mutually incompatible with His sovereignty. People overlook or ignore the hard cold reality because it is the safer thing to do. How does one reconcile God’s love with that of disasters, mass genocides and world wars? Has God lost control in such events that He is unable to do anything about it, or is it that He actually does not love His creation enough to warrant intervention in all these things?

5. God’s love is simple. This is probably the strangest distortion of God’s love to mention. In fact the statement, “God loves you” or “Jesus loves me”, has been so pervasive that the statement has become a logical absolute, an axiom-premise in itself, from which everything else follows. Yet, I have already posed to you the rather disheartening questions in Part 1 which begs the larger question: if God’s love is simple, why can’t I answer those questions, in light of my simple understanding of His love?

These are but a few common distortions of God’s love and sufficient to say, most of us are guilty of one or more of such deviant views. Having been exposed to this, it is better now to open our hearts and minds to God, let the Spirit guide us as we scour the Word for the correct understanding of God’s love, and forgo our prior preconceived notions, for we are told in Proverbs 3:5 to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”.

For now, we can at least safely conclude that… no, love is definitely not only a feeling.

[Living Word] Love of God - Part 1

"God is love" - 1 John 4:8

Sounds good, doesn't it? This is what the God of Jesus Christ, of Israel, of Abraham, of Moses, of Noah, of David, the Lion of Judah is explicitly stated in the Word to be - love.

The problem is that in our post-modern world today, we have varying notions of "love". That in itself is not a problem: the real problem is that God's love is the Original Love, the intended absolute example of love, while we, fallen humans who have gladly made ourselves masters and determiners of 'good' and 'evil', have chosen to ignore this fact and pitched these deviated/distorted ideas of love as standards of our lives, surreptitiously dragging us deeper into the dominion of darkness.

Let me tell you why God's love is such an inexplicably difficult doctrine to grasp. If our Lord is so loving...

• Why does He allow the Original Sin? (Gen 2: 15-17, Gen 3)
  
• Why does He allow suffering & pain? (Ps 6, Ps 13, Acts 9:16, even to His own Son! - Luk 24:46)
  
• Why does He allow us the freewill to sin, and then hold us responsible for our sin?
• Why does He only show mercy to His elect (His chosen people, e.g. Israel, us Christians who receive His salvation) (John 15:16, Eph 1:4)
  
• Why does He pour His wrath on His people? (e.g. Ezek 5:11-17, Isa 13:4, Rev 8-9)
  

Perturbed? You ought to be. Your God is not your mollycoddle cartoon character, nor is He your imaginary best friend who will justify/condone/forgive everything you do and say, and protect you from every form of pain and hurt in the entire galaxy. He is God.

This short series on the Love of God will cover the many difficult issues surrounding the very notion of God's love. It will briefly cover issues such as Election, Predestination, Providence, and Pain.

Do not fret the jargon: this series is meant to expose you to them and yet will not stumble you, it is meant to build you up, not turn you away, meant to show you who God really is, and help you eradicate a false image/idol of God that may exist in your mind now. Take heart because Jesus has told us: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand." (John 10:28) Find security and comfort in Jesus today, because by God's grace we have been saved, and it is by His grace we are here studying His word, to know Him for who He truly is.

N.B. Much of the content will be drawn from "The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God" by Donald A. Carson, and other literature such as "Problem of Pain" by CS Lewis and New Bible Commentary from IVP.

blessings,
Ronald