06.03. Brothers, God Is Love
Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Create the World , in John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 140, 242.
God is love.
1 John 4:8 ✦ ✦ ✦
Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”
Exodus 34:6 nasb ✦ ✦ ✦ His holiness is the absolute uniqueness and infinite value of His glory. His righteousness is His unswerving commitment always to honor and display that glory. And His all-sufficient glory is honored and displayed most by His working for us rather than our working for Him. And this is love.
3 Brothers, God Is Love
Some readers of the previous chapter will echo the con-cerns of some of the men at our church. At a men’s retreat, I defined spiritual leadership as “knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to get them there by God’s means in reliance on God’s power.” I suggested that the way we find out where God wants people to be is to ask where God Himself is going. The answer, I think, is that God loves His glory (see chap. 2) and that He aims to magnify His glory in all He does. So the goal of spiritual leadership is to muster people to join God in living for God’s glory. The objection arose at the retreat that this teaching makes God out to be a self-centered egomaniac who seems never to act out of love. But God does act out of love. He is love. We need to see how God can be for His own glory and be for us too. The best way I know to show this is to explain how God is holy, God is righteous, and God is love, and how these three interrelate. When we describe God as holy, we mean that He is one of a kind. There is none like Him. He is in a class by Himself.
Moses taught Israel to sing, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glori-ous deeds, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11). Centuries later Hannah, Samuel’s mother, taught Israel to sing, “There is none holy like the Lord; there is none besides you” (1 Samuel 2:2). And Isaiah (Isaiah 40:25) quotes God: “‘To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?’ says the Holy One.”
God is holy in His absolute uniqueness. Everything else belongs to a class. We are human; Rover is a dog; the oak is a tree; Earth is a planet; the Milky Way is one of a billion galaxies; Gabriel is an angel; Satan is a demon. But only God is God. And therefore He is holy, utterly different, distinct, unique.
All else is creation. He alone creates. All else begins. He alone always was. All else depends. He alone is self-sufficient. And therefore the holiness of God is synonymous with His infi-nite value. Diamonds are valuable because they are rare and hard to make. God is infinitely valuable because He is the rarest of all beings and cannot be made at all, nor was He ever made. If I were a collector of rare treasures and could somehow have God, the Holy One, in my treasury, I would be wealthier than all the collectors of all the rarest treasures that exist outside God.
Revelation 4:8-11 recounts the songs that are being sung to God in heaven. The first one says, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” The second says, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.” These two songs mean the same thing. “God is holy” means that He is worthy. His holiness is His immeasurable worth and value. Nothing can be compared with Him, for He made everything. Whatever worth makes a created thing valuable is found a millionfold in the Creator.
One way to highlight the meaning of God’s holiness is to compare it with His glory. Are they the same? Not exactly. I would say that His glory is the shining forth of His holiness. His holiness is His intrinsic worth—an utterly unique excellence. His glory is the manifest display of this worth in beauty. His glory is His holiness on display. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory,” say the seraphim above His throne (Isaiah 6:3). Habakkuk cries, “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor cov-ered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise” (Habakkuk 3:3). And the Lord Himself says in Leviticus 10:3 : “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.” To show Himself holy is the way He is glorified. The holiness of God is the absolutely unique and infinite value of His being and His majesty. To say that our God is holy means that His value is infinitely greater than the sum of the value of all created beings.
Turn now to consider His righteousness. At root, the righteous-ness of God means that He has a right assessment of His own ultimate value. He has a just regard for His own infinite worth, and He brings all His actions into conformity to this right judgment of Himself.
God would be unrighteous and unreliable if He denied His ulti-mate value, disregarded His infinite worth, and acted as though the preservation and display of His glory were worth anything less than His wholehearted commitment. God acts in righteousness when He acts for His own name’s sake. For it would not be right for God to esteem anything above the infinite glory of His own name.
Psalms 143:11 says, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring me out of trouble!” Notice the parallel between “in your righteousness” and “for your name’s sake.” Similarly, Psalms 31:1 says, “In your righteousness deliver me.” And Psalms 31:3 adds, “For your name’s sake you lead me and guide me.” Similarly in Daniel 9:16-17, the prophet prays: “According to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem.
. . . For your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.” An appeal to God’s righteousness is at root an appeal to His unswerving allegiance to the value of His own holy name. For God to be righteous, He must devote Himself 100 percent, with all His heart, soul, and strength, to loving and honoring His own holiness in the display of His glory. And that He does, as we saw in chapter 2. The main point of Ephesians 1:1-23 is repeated three times: God “predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:5-6). God’s purpose is that “we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12). “The promised Holy Spirit . . .is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14). Everything in our salvation is designed by God to magnify the glory of God.
God is supremely and unimpeachably righteous because He never shrinks back from a right assessment of His ultimate value, a just regard for His infinite worth, or an unswerving commitment to honor and display His glory in everything He does.
Now we are ready to consider God’s love. God’s love does not conflict with His holiness and righteousness. On the contrary, the nature of God’s holiness and righteousness demands that He be a God of love. His holiness is the absolute uniqueness and infinite value of His glory. His righteousness is His unswerving commitment always to honor and display that glory. And His all-sufficient glory is honored and displayed most by His working for us rather than our working for Him. And this is love.
Love is at the heart of God’s being because God’s free and sover-eign dispensing of mercy is more glorious than would be the demand for humans to fill up some lack in Himself. It is more glorious to give than to receive. Therefore, the righteousness of God demands that He be a giver. Therefore, the holy and righteous One is love.
Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God’s love. And when He came, He said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The Son of Man has not come seeking employees. He has come to employ Himself for our good. We dare not try to work for Him lest we rob Him of His glory and impugn His righteousness. The apostle Paul says, “Now to one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly; his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5). This is a warning not to pursue justification by working for God. It is a gift. We have it by faith alone (see chap. 4). And even when we “work out” our salvation in fear and trembling, we must see it as a peculiar kind of working: the only reason we can will to lift a finger is that God is the one “who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Php 2:13).
Though Paul “worked harder” than any of the other apostles, he declares, “It was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Therefore, in Romans 15:18, he avows, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.” Paul is utterly convinced that no blessing in life is finally owing to man’s willing or running but to God, who has mercy (Romans 9:16).
God aims to get all the glory in our redemption. Therefore He is adamant that He will work for us and not we for Him. He is the work-man; we stand in need of His services. He is the doctor; we are the sick patient. We are the weak; He is the strong. We have the broken-down jalopy; He is the gifted mechanic.
We must beware lest we try to serve Him in a way that dishon-ors Him, for He aims to get the glory. As Peter says (1 Peter 4:11), “Whoever serves [let him render it] by the strength that God sup-plies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.” So God is love, not in spite of His passion to promote His glory but precisely because of it. What could be more loving than the infi-nite, holy God stooping to work for us? Yet in working for us rather than needing our work, He magnifies His own glorious self-suffi-ciency. The stream glorifies the fullness of the spring. And the stream that flows from God is love. If He ceased to seek His glory, He would be of no value to us. But, praise God, He is holy. He is righteous, and therefore, He is love.
Now here is a closing test to see if you have penetrated to the essence of God’s merciful God-centeredness. Ask yourself and your people, “Do you feel most loved by God because He makes much of you or because He frees you to enjoy making much of Him forever?” This is the test of whether our craving for the love of God is a craving for the blood-bought, Spirit-wrought capacity to see and glorify God by enjoying Him forever or whether it is a craving for Him to make us the center and give us the pleasures of esteeming ourselves. Who, in the end, is the all-satisfying Treasure that we are given by the love of God: self or God?
God is love because He is infinitely valuable (His holiness) and is committed to displaying that value for our everlasting enjoyment (His righteousness). God is the one being in all the world for whom the most loving act is self-exaltation. For He and He alone will satisfy our hearts.