Rebuking Love

One of the greatest gifts God gives a person is his loving rebuke.

This week I saw on national news the story of a young woman who was murdered because she got in the wrong car. She had requested a ride-share from Uber. A car pulled up and stopped where she was waiting, and she assumed it was her ride, without confirming the license plate or the driver’s name. She got in the car and disappeared. All this was recorded on a nearby security video. Days later the police found her body.

Imagine if a friend had been waiting with her at the curb when that wrong car had pulled up. Imagine if that friend realized before the car door opened that this was not the right car or driver, but she said nothing because she didn’t want to tell her friend she was wrong or offend her by telling her what to do. Take it a step farther and imagine that she actually knew that the driver was a murderer whose mug shot she had seen on the news.

Such a scenario is ridiculous to imagine because what friend would be that uncaring? Sincere love always seeks the good of another, and that means not only telling them the truths they may not want to hear but even rebuking them sharply when necessary.

Rebuking love

This is the kind of love God continually gives people. It is one of his most gracious gifts to sinners. Psalm 25:8 says, “Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.” It is so important and necessary that he mercifully speaks warnings in abundance. He tells you the truth, including the hard truths you may not want to hear. He warns you. “Don’t get in that car! It’s the wrong car!” In love, he rebukes you.

Jesus said, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline” (Revelation 3:19). Jesus rebukes people. Webster’s defines rebuke as, “To criticize or reprove sharply; reprimand.” Whom does Jesus rebuke? According to this Scripture, he rebukes those he loves.

He rebukes you with 100 percent accuracy. He knows all things—all potential harm, all who would do you evil, all your weaknesses and sins. He knows the future. He knows what is right and wrong, wise or foolish. He knows Satan and his deceptions. He knows the world and its seductive pleasures.

When the Lord must offend

In the Gospels you see Jesus continually saying things that will offend somebody, if not everybody. Jesus was not trying to win a popularity contest by his words; he was trying to save people. When Peter tried to keep him from going to Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus “rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man’” (Mark 8:33).

When his disciples worried about where their next meal would come from, Jesus said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?” (Matthew 16:8).

When a crowd sought him following in boats when he withdrew from them, Jesus told them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:26–27).

In love, Jesus said the uncomfortable things people needed to hear.

When God must harshly offend

In fact, the context of Revelation 3:19—“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline”—is Jesus’s delivering one of the harshest rebukes found in the New Testament: his warning to the church in Laodicea:

“¹⁵ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot! ¹⁶ So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth! ¹⁷ Because you say, ‘I am rich and have acquired great wealth, and need nothing,’ but do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, ¹⁸ take my advice and buy gold from me refined by fire so you can become rich! Buy from me white clothing so you can be clothed and your shameful nakedness will not be exposed, and buy eye salve to put on your eyes so you can see! ¹⁹ All those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent!” (NET)

Imagine Jesus appearing to you in a vision and instead of speaking comforting words like “I will never leave you or forsake you” he said, “I feel like vomiting you out of my mouth”! Would you feel loved? Would you feel cherished? But soul-saving love is precisely what Jesus was giving the Laodiceans. That is what he said: “Those whom I love I rebuke.”

Fellowship can follow rebuke

Indeed, Jesus followed up his loving words of rebuke to the Laodiceans with loving words of invitation and promise to the very same church:

“²⁰ Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me. ²¹ I will grant the one who conquers permission to sit with me on my throne, just as I too conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²² The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3:15–22, NET)

Jesus said I want to fellowship with you. I want to make you a conqueror.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We misunderstand correction as rejection. We don’t want to hear about our faults or be told we must change. We may suppose that because grace covers all our sins then God must love us unconditionally and not rebuke us. We may suppose that because God is gracious, our “performance” doesn’t matter. We may suppose that talking about sin is just negative and unhelpful.

God’s way: For our good, Jesus tells us everything we need to hear, including the truth about our faults, including everything we need to know about God and his will. But the severity of his correction is determined by the degree of the sinner’s pride, stubbornness, unbelief, or honesty and willingness to repent. Do you have a hard heart or a broken heart?

Life principle: We must not misinterpret correction as rejection or hatred. If all you want to hear from God or his spokesmen are positive words of comfort and blessing, you are making a serious mistake. If you close your ears to the hard truths, you may soon be getting in the wrong car.

I invite you to read my weekly posts about
knowing God and his ways better.
—Craig Brian Larson

April 8, 2019April 1, 2019

Liberating Love

True freedom is all about love.

You and I long to be free. The yearning for freedom is what brings people to America. It’s why we love weekends. It’s why people want to be wealthy or retired. The love of freedom is why we want to be healthy and strong. It’s why we dislike domineering people, leaders, and organizations, or restrictive clothing, weather, or schedules. Freedom is paradise.

The longing to be free is why our fallen nature resists God. Our fallen nature sees him as the ultimate restriction.

Wrong

But that is not true.

Jesus said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

He also said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31–32)

In fact, the Bible overflows with the theme of freedom. It is the freedom Book, the freedom story—of God in love liberating people from slavery in Egypt, from bondage in Babylon, from the debilitating oppression of disease, from the burden of the Law of Moses, from captivity to Satan and sin and deceptions.

“The LORD sets the prisoners free” (Psalm 146:7).

Where God is most present, people are actually most free: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Freedom is our destiny; it is for what God in love designed us:

“You were called to freedom, brothers” (Galatians 5:13).

“For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

God actually commands us to live in freedom: “Live as people who are free” (1 Peter 2:16).

So, why is the Lord and the freedom he intends for us misunderstood?

The impossible dream of absolute freedom

Our love of freedom gets twisted when we long not for freedom, but for absolute freedom. We lose touch with reality when we long to do anything we want, any time we want, as much as we want, without regard to its effect on our bodies, our emotions, our family and friends, our possessions and financial situation, other people, our world and its environment, and the One who created and sustains us and everything around us. No one, for example, is free to eat chocolate all day, every day, without dire consequences.

So, the problem with absolute freedom is reality. We are inextricably connected to a much bigger reality than freedom of choice and the short-sighted pursuit of happiness, or the self-indulgent focus on me, myself, and I. Absolute freedom is absolute selfishness, unfettered narcissism.

And therefore it is harmful to others and death to self, sooner or later.

Unbridled freedom is slavery

Consider the professional athlete who under the influence of friends begins using cocaine. Before cocaine he was an all-star in his first year in the league. After cocaine he soon lost his starting position, sat on the bench watching others play his position, and eventually was cut from the team. For a new revenue stream, he turned to gambling and selling drugs. Before long, his money ran out, his decent friends were gone, and he ended up in jail.

This story is so common as to be a cliché, but it is a cliché because it is a law. The myth of absolute freedom is actually the worst form of slavery, for it is bondage to what harms and destroys us. The apostle Peter, warning against libertine false teachers, writes: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19).

True freedom

From this, God in his great love and wisdom offers to set us free. He frees us to be able to think, feel, and do what brings life to ourselves and others. The paradox is that God does this by calling us to live in complete submission to his authority and obedience to his commands. Again, this sounds like the ultimate restriction, but it turns out to be the ultimate freedom, because God commands only what is good, life-giving, and freeing.

God loves us and exercises his rule over us in a way that liberates us to be fully alive rather than oppressing and exploiting us. God does not make us puppets or robots; he gave us free will. God is free, and he created us in his image to be free within the bounds of his rule and within the bounds of what is good for us, others, and the world. God gives us the freedom to do what is good, righteous, perfect, pure, just, loving. Thus, he gives us the freedom to be like God.

True freedom is the ability to be disciplined, to control our thoughts, feelings, desires, words, and actions. True freedom is the ability to live with people in a way that enhances our relationships with them. True freedom is the ability to live in a way that enhances our relationship with the God who gives us life and every good thing in life.

Therefore true freedom is the ability to love. God, in love, sets us free to love him with all our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. True freedom is about love, and true love is about freedom.

The Year of Jubilee

One of the greatest examples of the loving, freedom-giving heart of God is the Year of Jubilee. When he created the nation of Israel and its laws, he knew that over time some of the people would fall into poverty and lose their economic freedom by selling their land and services to others. So, he instituted the law that every fifty years there would be a year of jubilee in which land would revert back to its owners and slaves would be set free.

Leviticus 25:9–10 says, “On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.”

The heart of the Lord is to set people free.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: Our fallen nature wants to use freedom as a cover up for evil.

God’s way: Jesus said God sent him “to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

Life principle: We experience perfect freedom when we surrender ourselves to God and live in love.

April 1, 2019April 4, 2019

Adopting Love

Though you are God’s adopted child, do you act like a spiritual orphan?

Imagine yourself being an orphan, nine-years-old, living on the streets of some third-world country. You never knew your father, and your mother died when you were six. No one wanted you, and you had nowhere to go but the streets. You beg. You eat from garbage cans. You steal.

But on one astonishing day, when you reach your beggarly hand to a well-dressed businessman, he smiles, gives you $5, and says, “I want to do more than this for you. I’ve seen you in the streets many times as I go to work, and I’ve begun to like you. I want to help you. In fact, I want to adopt you as my son.”

That very hour he takes you home to his estate. He orders his staff to clean you up, get you some clothes, and feed you well. He assigns you a room where three other adopted children stay. And he tells his assistant to begin the paperwork for legal adoption. A short time later it’s official. The wealthy man is your father; you are his son; you have a new name.

You quickly discover that he is a good man. He is a kind and gentle and hugs you often. Regularly, again and again because he has adopted other orphan children and knows how much they need to hear it, he tells you, “I truly love you. I will provide well for you. You have nothing to fear as long as you are in my house. You are safe. You are secure. And I will train you to be a good, strong, and mature person. I will give you the very best education. Always remember that I truly love you.”

You are God’s adopted child

Through your faith in Jesus Christ, this is what your heavenly Father has done for you. To know how much God loves you, it is vital that you know he is your Father, but more specifically, you need to remember he is your adopted Father. Adopting love is purely voluntary love. An adopted child is chosen. An adopted child is wanted, unlike some birth children who feel unwanted. An adopted child has a father who wants a relationship, wants to be together, wants to provide and protect and train—a father who dearly wants to be a father and dearly yearns to have a son or daughter.

1 John 3:1 says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

Ephesians 1:5 says, “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”

When God’s adopted child feels like an orphan

Imagine once again that you are this adopted child. You find something unexpected happening in your heart. Despite all that your new father has done and promised, you often find yourself afraid. For no reason, you distrust your father. You hoard food in your dresser. You disobey your father’s orders. You complain about the food served in the house and refuse to do your school work. When your father disciplines you, you lay in bed at night and think about running away from home to live once again on the streets.

An orphan spirit can linger in an adopted child. This is what happened to the people of Israel, whom God called his son, when he delivered them from Egypt. They had felt like orphaned street children in Egypt, and even after God set them free and pledged his love and care, they continued to feel and act like orphans. They did not trust their heavenly Father, nor did they obey him. They grumbled and complained and talked of returning to Egypt. They refused to enter the Promised Land. They never get over their orphan spirit.

God’s adopted child receives many assurances

Christians can have an orphan spirit. Our Father, in adopting love, reassures us again and again in Scripture of his commitment to love, provide for, protect, train and educate us.

Paul writes, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Peter urges you to cast “all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

God says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8).

Jesus said, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:29).

The Lord repeats these promises again and again and again because he knows that orphans need to hear it. God’s children fall easily into an orphan spirit: afraid, insecure, distrustful of their Father, complaining about their circumstances, disobedient and suspicious toward his good commands.

Our adopted Father, who chose to love us, keeps reassuring us: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31:3).

Paul writes: “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

You are no longer an orphan. A good, kind, and faithful God has voluntarily adopted you. He wants to be a Father, and he wants you as his son or daughter forever. He wants this father-child relationship. He delights to provide for, protect, and train you. He is absolutely trustworthy. You can rely on him always to work for your highest good and his highest purposes.

March 25, 2019April 13, 2020

Burden-bearing Love

How does God bear your burdens?

Are you carrying any burdens today? Are you feeling weighed down, even crushed, by a need or problem, by a responsibility or worry? What would you give to have someone strong and loving enough to come alongside and help share your load!

That is precisely the nature of God’s love. In his love, he bears your burdens.

Psalm 68:19 says, “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens” (NIV).

God showed his burden-bearing love to the Israelites

When the Israelites were oppressed as slaves in Egypt, the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush and said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:7–10, ESV).

Their burden was mud baked into bricks. Someone had to tread straw into mud, carry that mud in a basket, press that mud into molds, carry the molded mud into an oven, carry finished bricks to the job site, and cement the mud bricks into place. All under a hot Egyptian sun and cruel, whip-bearing Egyptian taskmasters. God saw their burden, and he cared enough to help.

There is a kind of friend or lover who will enjoy a relationship with you, seek your company, like your personality, be glad to see you, hang out with you, laugh with you, high-five with you—but when you have a heavy load, he or she will not be found. God is not that kind of friend, not that kind of love. When you have mud and bricks to carry under a blazing sun, he will help. His love is a burden-bearing love. He is willing to share crushing loads with you daily.

Bearing burdens and the meaning of love

True love and burden-bearing go together. The apostle Paul taught this on the human level, saying, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). What is the law of Christ? It is of course the law of love. Jesus said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), and “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). So, Jesus commanded his followers to love one another, and Paul said that we fulfill that law by bearing one another’s burdens. You could even say that bearing others’ burdens is at the heart of what it means to love truly.

10 ways God bears your burdens

So, how does God in reality bear your burdens? How does he make a difference? How does he lighten your load? In every way. In response to your prayers and trust, the Lord

removes loads he does not want you to carry. (see Matthew 8:14–17)
gives strength to carry the loads you must carry. (see Isaiah 41:10)
imparts wisdom for how to solve problems and work successfully. (see James 1:5)
grants supernatural peace. (see Philippians 4:6–7)
sends people to help with your burden. (see Galatians 6:2; 2 Corinthians 7:6)
provides for your every need. (see Philippians 4:19)
manifests his presence so that you are not alone with your load, giving sympathy, compassion, affection, emotional support. (see Hebrews 13:5–6).
cleanses of the sins that make your way hard. When your sin is what brings your burdens, he helps you repent of it. (see Luke 15:13–16; 1 Corinthians 6:11)
delivers from Satanic oppression. (see Luke 13:11–13)
gives purpose, so that you carry your load for him. He removes the sense of meaningless toil. You can bear any load when you have a sense of its lasting purpose. (see Romans 8:28; Philippians 2:13)

God really does bear our burdens in a way that changes everything, turning us from weakness to strength, from despair to confidence. When we learn to turn to God to help us with our burdens, we find that we can say with Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

Our way and God’s way

Our way: As the Israelites showed in the desert, fallen people do not want to have to rely on God and trust him day by day.

God’s way: The Lord wants to help us with our burdens, if we will only let him.

Life principle: God bears our burdens as we follow his instructions. God cannot bear the burdens of those who are self-reliant, disobedient, and unbelieving.

March 11, 2019March 2, 2019

Forgiving Love

Under what conditions will God forgive your wrongs?

Have you ever had a relationship with someone you care about end because the person was not willing to forgive a wrong? It’s painful. You want the relationship. You reach out and apologize and ask forgiveness, but the person holds on to the grudge, and the relationship dies.

Just think; it could have been that way with God. He could have said, “Sorry, you’ve sinned against me. You’ve ignored me. You’ve disobeyed my commands. I’ve had it with you. I will never forgive you.” And when Judgment Day comes, as it surely will, you could stand before him guilty. He would hold you accountable for every way that you have fallen short of loving him and other people, and you would be condemned forever.

But thankfully, that is not the way it is with God. If we meet his conditions, he is willing to forgive. Psalm 86:5 says, “For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.”

The prophet Micah asks, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?” (Micah 7:18) The answer to Micah’s question is, there is no other God who forgives like the Lord. J. K. Grider writes in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology: “No book of religion except the Bible teaches that God completely forgives sin.”

Obstacles to complete forgiveness

That’s why the Bible is good news, why it is gospel. We need complete, not partial, forgiveness. When one person in a relationship wrongs the other, it can harm the relationship in many ways:

1. Emotions: The person who is wronged can feel ongoing resentment, anger, and bitterness.

2. Punishment: The person who is wronged will often want to retaliate, to exact vengeance.

3. Recompense: The person who is wronged may have a legitimate claim that the wrongdoer should make things right by correcting the harm done. If the resident of a college dorm, for example, broke or stole something from a roommate, the offender obviously ought to pay it back.

4. Favor: The person who is wronged not only needs to let go of negative emotions, but also to return to positive feelings of favor and enjoyment of the relationship.

5. Remembrance: People who are wronged need to let go of the desire to remember the wrong. If it comes to mind, they must choose to turn away from the memory. They must refuse to talk about it ever again or to use it against the other as a weapon in arguments.

With all these potential obstacles, it is no wonder that broken relationships do not mend easily. All these factors come into play when we want to mend our relationship with God.

Desperately needed forgiveness

The forgiveness that God offers to us through faith in Jesus Christ extends to all these obstacles and more. For, there is more to fix between God and us than a broken relationship. There is also the matter of divine justice. God, as creator and sustainer of every living thing, and as the owner of the universe, is the righteous judge of every person. He will hold court someday and dispense to every person what they deserve for how they have lived on his earth, based on whether they have followed or ignored his righteous commands. As is obvious by looking into our own souls and looking at the lives of all around us, no one has fully kept these commands (Romans 3:23). Because God’s standard is perfect justice, every person deserves to be condemned (Revelation 20:11–15).

But, because God is love, he has made a way to forgive us. He wants to restore the relationship. He does not want to condemn us. And so, he sent his Son Jesus Christ to the earth to become a man, to live a perfectly righteous life and then to die as a substitute for our sins, thus making a way for us to receive his forgiveness.

“In him [that is, in Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). God made a way to forgive us because he loves us (John 3:16).

Complete forgiveness in Christ

When God—in love—forgives you because of your faith in Jesus Christ, he solves each of the five problems noted above that come with broken relationships and laws:

1. Emotions

Romans 5:1, 8–10 says: “¹ Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. … ⁸ but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

2. Punishment

Romans 8:1, 31–34 says: “¹ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…. ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”

3. Recompense

Colossians 2:13–14 says: “¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

4. Favor

Romans 8:31–32 says: “³¹ If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

5. Remembrance

In Isaiah 43:25 God says: “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

Psalm 103:12 says: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Hebrews 10:14 says: “By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

Ready to forgive, or reluctant?

One sweet truth about God’s forgiveness is that he is not reluctant to forgive. He does not forgive us grudgingly. When we meet his conditions, it is his nature to forgive gladly.

In the verse that I turn to again and again because it is God’s self-definition, we read: “ ⁶ The LORD passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation’” (Exodus 34:6–7).

(I’ll talk about the last half of verse 7 in my next post, for it seems to cancel the first half of verse 7 and much of what I’ve written in this post.)

Jesus perfectly portrays God’s readiness to forgive in his portrayal of the gracious father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son:

“¹⁷ But when [the prodigal son] came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! ¹⁸ I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ ²⁰ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. ²¹ And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. ²³ And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. ²⁴ For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.” (Luke 15:17–24 ESV)

Your Father in heaven is not reluctant to forgive you, but ready, willing, and able through Jesus to joyfully welcome you home.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: Pride makes fallen people slow or unwilling to forgive others who wrong them. We may think God is equally unwilling to forgive.

God’s way: Because of his great love, God wants to forgive sinners. Because of his perfect justice, he cannot forgive sinners—unless they come to him through faith in the substitutionary death on the Cross of the Savior Jesus Christ.

Life principle: The condition that God requires you to meet to receive his gladly offered forgiveness is simple but earth-shaking. The apostle Paul summarized it this way: he preached “of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). If you will repent of straying from God and ignoring his commands, and if you will have faith in Jesus Christ and the saving power of his death for you on the cross and the reality of his resurrection from the grave and the authority he has been given as Lord of God’s creation, God will forgive you of every sin you have ever committed—every single sin, no matter how heinous.

March 4, 2019July 17, 2021

Jealous Love

God is a jealous lover.

One of the most important things you need to know about God’s love is that it is a jealous love. It is an aspect of God’s love that few people understand or take into account.

Consider the difference between the love of close friends and the love in a romantic marriage. If I sit down with a close friend for lunch, and he mentions having enjoyable lunches with several other close friends over the last month, I’m happy for him. But if I sit down with my wife for lunch, and she mentions having enjoyable lunches with various men she is fond of over the last month, I’m not happy for her. Friendship and marriage are different relationships.

The love that God has for us is much more like romantic love than friendship love. He does not accept rivals.

Jealousy is defined as being “intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness” (Webster’s). A second sense is, “fiercely protective or vigilant of one’s rights or possessions” (The Online Dictionary).

As our Creator and the Savior who loves us infinitely and has purchased us with his blood, God has rights to us. We are his beloved, his possession. He will not smile upon unfaithfulness.

God is jealous

God reveals the jealousy of his love most clearly in his instruction about idols. Concerning the idols of the nations, God commanded Moses: “You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God)” (Exodus 34:13–14, ESV). God is not only jealous; his very name is Jealous. That means his nature is jealous; his identity is jealous. His love for his people is so great, so intense, so all-consuming, that he will not tolerate rivals. He is fiercely protective of our relationship with him and our affection for him.

That is flattering. Who else loves you that strongly? Get ahold of that, and you will never have problems with self-respect or significance. The God of the universe, the greatest being in existence, loves you so much that he is jealous for your attention, worship, and affection. He is jealous for your love not in a needy, weak, immature way—which is of course impossible—but rather in the holy way of guarding what rightly belongs to him alone.

Jesus is jealous

Both the Old Testament and the New affirm God’s jealous love.

Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).

He also said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

As this verse suggests, the New Testament speaks not only of the idolatry of worshiping statues but also the idolatry of loving anything or anyone in this world as much or more than God. What is our ultimate concern? What do we really live for? If it is anything or anyone but God in Christ, then it is an idol that provokes God’s jealousy. As I said, this is very important.

Idols that are not statues

We see more about this in Philippians 3:18–19 where the apostle Paul describes the behavior of people who are “enemies of the Cross of Christ”: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” This verse again teaches that idolatrous gods are not just statues and literal idols, but rather any desire or passion that masters us, for which we supremely live. In this case Paul said it was these people’s belly. They lived for food. Not only that, their minds were “set on earthly things.” Their thoughts and preoccupations revealed that their ultimate concern in life was not God but the world and its pleasures.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with food or satisfying our hunger. The problem for these people was the degree of their focus on food and worldly things compared to their professed love for God.

The apostle Paul speaks further about excessive desire in Ephesians 5:5–6: “You may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”

This is serious. Paul says covetous, greedy people are idolaters, and they are not going to inherit God’s kingdom. That means they will not be saved. Remember, the last of the Ten Commandments was “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17). This is an especially important warning for us in America, for we live in a culture of more, more, more. Greed is so accepted and applauded and normal in our culture, and so encouraged by advertising, that it can be difficult to recognize in ourselves.

When Paul speaks about being “covetous” in the verse above, he is not just referring to the desire a person has for the possessions of others; he is also referring to excessive desire for wealth and possessions, that is, to greed. That is the dual meaning of the Greek word translated “covetous” above (pleonektēs).

Contentment

That God’s love is jealous does not mean true Christians must take a vow of poverty. It does not mean a wealthy person must give away all his or her possessions (in America, most are wealthy by historical or third-world standards). It does not mean we should feel guilty or lost if we want something. The real question is do we really love God? Do we truly desire more of him and the things of God? Do we delight in him? Are we content with having him, his kingdom, and salvation?

If that is so, everything else will have its proper place in our hearts. Money and possessions will simply be tools for which we give thanks to God and which we use for his purposes. In that case, God wants us to enjoy them and glorify him by giving thanks.

That’s Paul’s message in 1 Timothy 6:17–19: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”

Guarding your affections

You must know your heart. You must prayerfully discern whether you have a problem with greed and covetousness. This is as serious as living in unrepentant sexual sin or thievery or bitterness. God’s love is jealous. He wants all your heart. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38).

If your love for God is not your first love, he knows it and he is jealous (see Revelation 2:4).

If your love for this world is hot but your love for God is lukewarm, he knows it and is jealous. (see Revelation 3:15–22)

He wants you to love him the way that he loves you.

If you recognize a problem with your desires, I urge you to meditate on and even memorize all the Scriptures above and below, for the Word and the Spirit have the power to change our affections.

The apostle James wrote: “¹ What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? ² You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴ You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” (James 4:1–5, ESV).

The apostle John wrote: “¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15–17).

Jesus said, “¹⁴ And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14).

Hebrews 13:5–6 says: “⁵ Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ ⁶ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’”

Our way and God’s way

Our way: Fallen mankind wants to love the world and its pleasures as much as, or more than, God. Fallen people want to love God and idols.

God’s way: God will not accept spiritual adultery. His love is a jealous love.

Life principle: God’s infinite love offered to us in Christ requires that we change our loves. We must guard our hearts against loving anyone or anything with the intensity that we love God.

I invite you to read my weekly posts about
knowing God and his ways better.
—Craig Brian Larson

February 25, 2019February 15, 2019

Gentle Love

When we have sinned, if we come to God in brokenness, humility, and repentance, he will receive us with gentleness.

Have you ever known a person in authority who is inconsiderate of the feelings of his subordinates, who is continually rough, harsh, or severe? Think of a teacher of first-grade children who regularly yells at all her students, both the good and the bad, and moves them around by grabbing their arms and dragging, or by pushing children where she wants them. Think of a boss who berates, threatens, and bullies employees when they don’t measure up to his impossible standards. Think of a bus driver who deals with all passengers with glaring looks and a hard voice.

God is not like that. God is gentle. He is harsh only in judgment. He is severe only when giving a needed warning.

God’s gentleness as seen in Jesus

Jesus, who is the exact representation of God, said of himself:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30, ESV).

The soul finds no rest in the presence of a violent master. There is only intimidation, coercion, and fear. The soul finds no rest with a master who, with a high and heavy hand, exploits and abuses workers to get every last ounce of useful toil from them, then casts them aside.

Jesus is not like that; God the Father is not like that. He is Lord, but he is a gentle Lord, a kindly, amiable, and tender Master. He does put a yoke on us—like the yoke put on the necks of oxen plowing a field. It is the yoke of his commands, but it is an easy yoke and a light burden. “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). For, his commands are good, wise, and life-giving. He puts on us the delightful yoke of love, for which we were created, in which we find fulfillment and joy, and through which we escape the acid-like selfishness and malice that destroy one’s soul. (Matthew 22:36–40; Romans 13:8–10)

Love is the gentle yoke of the Lord.

God’s gentleness in the Holy Spirit

Think of how God reveals his gentleness elsewhere in Scripture.

When the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism, he came in the form of a dove, not a hawk.

When Elijah ran for his life from Jezebel, he came to Mount Horeb and hid himself in a cave. God revealed himself to Elijah and told him:

“‘Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.’ And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.” (1 Kings 19:11–12)

The Lord was in the whisper. Only in the gentleness of God did Elijah find courage to go out and meet him. “And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” (1 Kings 19:13)

The bruised reed

Elijah did not need to wrap his face in his cloak. Elijah was a broken man, but Scripture says of the Lord, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench” (Matthew 12:20). So gentle is the Lord that he does not break a reed, not even a bruised reed. So gentle is he that he refuses to quench between his wet fingers the wick smoldering in discouragement and sadness, but gently blows on the smoking wick until it flickers again into flame.

A sinful woman kneeled at the feet of Jesus as he reclined at table eating. She wept tears of repentance and gratitude on his feet and anointed them with perfume. She wiped them with her hair. It was quite a scene, for Jesus was eating at the home of a Pharisee. How easy it would have been for Jesus in embarrassment and with a sense of decorum to quickly put a stop to her. But he let it go on long enough even to tell a parable and instruct the Pharisee. Finally Jesus spoke to the woman, and his first words were not a rebuke, not a correct description of her many wrongs, but rather a gentle “Your sins are forgiven.” He went on: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:36–50)

A bruised reed he will not break.

Paul spoke of “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1).

God’s gentleness with Peter

The apostle Peter knew what it was like to make mistakes and receive firm correction from Jesus when needed, but he also tasted of the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Peter ran away with the other disciples when Jesus was captured in the Garden of Gethsemane, and a few hours later he denied the Lord three times. That is no small matter. That is betrayal.

But sometime after his resurrection Jesus appeared to Peter, who had already wept tears of sorrow and repentance after the cock crowed. Jesus did not rebuke Peter for the denials as he had rebuked him for other failures. Peter had already recognized his sin, and his repentance was firmly in place.

Knowing this, Jesus restored him gently with soul-searching questions:

“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’” (John 21:15–17)

When gentleness is not loving

Still, no one should mistake the gentleness of Jesus for weakness toward sin. When the money changers had turned the temple into a market, Jesus made a whip of cords and “drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15).

When Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, he called them hypocrites, children of hell, blind guides, blind fools, whitewashed tombs, serpents, a brood of vipers, and murderers. (Matthew 23)

When correcting and warning hardened sinners, Jesus was not Mr. Rogers. You don’t break concrete with a pillow; you break it with a hammer. Jesus knows what is needed for the job at hand, and so does the Father.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: Fallen people want God to deal gently with them even when they persist stubbornly in sin. They may not respect God’s gentleness.

God’s way: He will be as gentle with you as possible, as gentle as you and love will allow.

Life principle: When we have sinned, we can be encouraged to know that if we come to God in brokenness, humility, and repentance, he will receive us with gentleness. We don’t have to protect ourselves from God but can place ourselves in his hands. We can take the yoke of Jesus upon us without fear that he will whip and drive us. Our souls can find rest in Jesus.

February 18, 2019February 15, 2019

Patient Love

In his great love, the Lord is patient with us, and we need to learn to be patient with him.

To understand God’s patience, you need to sit in front of a high chair and feed a one-year-old. Feeding a toddler takes a long time. They don’t just eat their food; they play with it. They play with you. Toddlers press their little fingers into the sweet potatoes and wipe them on their face. They shut their mouths tightly when mom presents the tiny spoon that holds one or two Cheerios. They spread food on the table and throw it on the floor.

And mom is in a hurry. She has 20 other things to do. But you cannot rush a one-year-old in the long, long process of eating. How do moms do it, several times a day, for years? How do moms not lose it emotionally again and again and scream at their kid to eat?

Moms can wait because they love their children. “Love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4). Moms don’t always feel love, but they always want what’s best for their kids.

God’s patient love

“God is love,” says 1 John 4:8, and therefore like a good mother God is patient. He waits for us. He is longsuffering and forbearing. The Lord endures our wrongdoing, weaknesses, and failures. He does not treat us as an ambitious, driven manager might treat a slow employee, but as a parent treats a beloved child.

He is like a farmer who patiently waits for the crops to grow and ripen. God waits for us to become the people he wants us to be.

Romans 2:4 speaks of “the riches” of God’s “forbearance and patience.” If God’s patience was measured in dollars, he would be wealthier than all the millionaires and billionaires of the world put together.

In God’s great definition of his own nature to Moses, he describes himself as “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6).

Examples of God’s patience

For example, God allowed the wicked Amorites to hold their ground in the Promised Land for 400 years until their sin reached its full measure. Only then did God deliver the nation of Israel from Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land to give it to them as their possession. (Genesis 15:13–16)

During the time of the kings who followed David, God endured the sinfulness of the kings and the nation of Israel for hundreds of years before finally, regretfully turning them over to Assyria and Babylon and sending them into exile.

Exhibit A

The apostle Paul wrote that God worked in his life with the purpose of showing God’s patience for all to see: “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16).

Paul says, “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1 Timothy 1:13). The Book of Acts details this:

“Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.” (Acts 8:3)

Paul testified to others: “I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women” (Acts 22:4)

“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.” (Acts 26:9–11)

Paul carried on this violent opposition for 1–2 years! In God’s inscrutable wisdom, he patiently endured this opposition and then finally knocked Saul to the ground with blazing light and revealed Jesus to him. Paul says this two-year period displayed the “perfect patience” of Jesus (1 Timothy 1:16).

Waiting for your patient God

No doubt, those Christians that Paul was persecuting had their struggles with God’s perfect patience in this case, but God brought about the highest good through it. There are many times in your life when God’s perfect patience may seem imperfect to you. But his patience always has a good, eternal purpose.

Scripture says:

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

“For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4)

The Lord waited until Abraham was 75-years-old and Sarah was 65 to promise them a miracle child, and then he waited 25 more years to fulfill the promise.

Jesus has been coming soon for over 2,000 years.

Presumption

But we must never presume on the patience of God. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus told one church:

“I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.” (Revelation 2:20–23)

God’s patience is long but not endless. “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)

Love and mysteries

God’s loving, wise patience explains many of his inscrutable ways with us and the people in the Bible.

God’s loving patience explains why at times he seems slow to administer justice.

God’s patience explains why some notorious sinners live long and prosper.

God’s loving patience explains why we so often must wait on the Lord. Sometimes God seems slower to act than a glacier moving across the earth, than an oak tree growing in a field. If love is patient, then God is clearly the most loving being in the universe.

God’s loving patience explains why we must wait for the answer to many prayers and the fulfillment of many promises. He “acts for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

We must wait because God is love, and his love is patient.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We want God to be patient with us, but we don’t want to have to be patient with God. Sinners dangerously presume on the patience of God.

God’s way: In love, in perfect wisdom, he seeks our highest good by waiting to act.

Life principle: Therefore,

Don’t give up on your prayers and faith.
Don’t give up on yourself.
Don’t give up on the souls of sinners.
Don’t give up on our nation.
“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14)
Be as patient with God as he is patient with you. You’re in a long, slow dance with a patient God.

February 4, 2019January 30, 2019

Faithful Love

You can trust God because at the core of God’s idea of love is faithfulness. He is a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. He is a promise maker and a promise keeper. He is a truth teller and a truth keeper. The Lord values permanent relationships.

Lamentations 3:22–23 says, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The Lord’s love for you is steadfast and faithful.

You can trust God for everything that really matters.

Many relationships fall out, lose steam, break, even end in betrayal. But not your relationship with God, for he will never betray you, never become bored with you, never lose interest in you, never weaken in his devotion and commitment to you.

God is a relater. He loves people. He loves relationships, permanent relationships, truthful relationships.

You can trust God because he is a covenant keeper

The Lord is a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. He wants covenants and commitments with others. He made a covenant with Noah and his descendants after the flood, which is why we have rainbows. He made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. He made a covenant with the nation of Israel.

Jesus made a covenant with all those who follow him: “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” (1 Corinthians 11:25 ESV)

God is the polar opposite of Judas and treacherous humanity.

God is absolutely faithful to his covenants. At the core of God’s idea of love is faithfulness.

You can trust God because he is a promise keeper

Moreover, God is a promise maker and promise keeper. He relates to us on the basis of promises he makes to act in certain ways, which he requires us to believe. Through this, he wants to display his faithfulness. He delights to show his faithfulness to his promises.

God made promises to Adam and Eve, to Noah and his descendants, to Abraham and Sarah, to Isaac and Rebekah—to everyone, everyone in the Old Testament, everyone in the New Testament. Jesus made promise after promise.

And God expects us to believe every one of them. They are important to him because faithfulness is important to him. Promises are God’s love language. It’s his way of relating to us. He delights to make promises, to see us believe his promises, and then to keep his own promises.

It offends God tremendously if we don’t believe his promises, don’t trust him. It offends him so much that it limits what blessings he pours into our lives. Unbelief restricts who God will be to us. (Mark 6:5–6; Hebrews 11:6; James 1:6–8)

You can’t know God apart from believing his promises. The sure way to see your relationship with God dry up is to stop believing what he says, to doubt the Bible. The sure way to see your relationship with God flourish is to believe his written Word without question, without qualification. When you trust his promises for however long is required, which sometimes takes many years, even decades, even a lifetime, even more than a lifetime, you will ultimately discover the perfect faithfulness of God.

You can trust God because he is a truth keeper

In his faithfulness, God is a truth teller and a truth keeper. He is perfectly faithful to truth, to reality, to all that he says, to all that he is. He is truth. (2 Timothy 2:13)

Truth and love never part ways in God. He is faithful to speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15; 1 John 3:18; 2 John 1:1–3)

Deception is betrayal. Lies break relationships. Relationships are founded on trust, and trust is founded on truth.

At the core of God’s idea of love is truth.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: The love of fallen men is treacherous. They betray and fail each other. They break covenants and commitments. They divorce. They deceive. They don’t do what they say.

God’s way: God’s love is perfectly, absolutely faithful and true.

Life principle: Every day, morning and evening, God’s steadfast love calls for our praise. “It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night” (Psalm 92:1–2). God calls us to love him and one another with steadfast love and faithfulness. You need to trust in God’s steadfast love at all times, in every situation, no matter how difficult or painful your circumstances. In a world of shifting sand and miry clay, his faithfulness is your rock and his Word is your reality.

January 28, 2019January 19, 2019

Affectionate Love

To know God rightly you must know his heart.

It might surprise you to know that some theologians believe that God does not feel affection for those he loves. They believe that he is like Spock in Star Trek, that God’s love is solely his will to do good for others and his kind actions, but not something emotional.

Some of these theologians are heavily influenced by philosophical reasoning, and they don’t want to define God as a being who is determined in any way by his creation or susceptible to doing anything but what he freely, dispassionately, chooses to do. (The technical term for this view is the impassibility of God. Thomas Aquinas taught the idea, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England affirmed it, describing God in article one as “without…passions.”)

The heart of Jesus

Of course, you could never get that idea from reading the Bible.

The apostle Paul writes to one church, “God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8). So, Paul says he has affection like the affection Jesus has. Hence, Jesus has affection. He has feelings of pleasure in other people, warmth, fondness, liking, the enjoyment of being together, and when apart having a longing and yearning to be together again.

At the Last Supper, one of the last times he would be together with his twelve disciples, and with the agony of the cross only hours away, Jesus told his friends, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). With all that lay before him what Jesus dearly wanted was to be with his friends. Because he liked them. He loved them.

In the pages of the Gospel of John, the writer referred to himself as the one whom Jesus loved (John 20:2; 21:20). Not that Jesus did not love the others, but John knew in the depths of his soul, by experience, that Jesus loved him, and he could not think of Jesus without an awareness of his love for him. One does not say that about a person as cold as stone or as uncaring as a computer.

The apostle Peter, who of course had firsthand, face-to-face, eye-to-eye experience with Jesus for three years, wrote, “He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

At the grave of his friend Lazarus, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

Affection in his eyes

When a wealthy young man asked Jesus what to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus recited to him several of the Ten Commandments. The man responded, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth” (Mark 10:20).

“And Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (v. 21). That is a telling description. Jesus loved him, even though the man was a sinner who loved his wealth more than God, as the rest of the narrative shows. But it doesn’t just say Jesus loved him; it says, “looking at him” he loved him. Jesus’ look was a knowing look, a thinking look, a seeing-into-the-depths-of-another-person’s-soul-as-only-God-can-do look. Yet, knowing all that he knew, Jesus still loved him. Jesus looked at that man with affection. His eyes revealed holy love.

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” This is a microcosm of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God the Father looked at our world of fallen, lost people and loved us.

The heart of God, the heart of a dear father

So, Jesus feels love; he doesn’t just do loving actions or will the good. And Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Jesus teaches us to call God our Father, just as he always addressed God as Father, and he even set the example of addressing God as Abba (Mark 14:36), an Aramaic term expressing warm affection and the confidence that a young child has when approaching a father. Weaned children learning their first words called their father Abba, just as we would use Daddy. Eventually Abba gained an expanded use and was used also by adult children, but it always kept the warm, affectionate sense of “dear father,” just as some grown children will continue to use Daddy.

The Holy Spirit leads us likewise to use the term Abba in prayer. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15–16). “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6)

That Father God wants us and leads us by his Holy Spirit within to use the word Abba tells us volumes not only about how he wants us to feel about him but also about how he feels about us.

The heart of a mother and a husband

Elsewhere God even describes his feelings for his people as being like those of a mother for her children: “But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.’ ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.’” (Isaiah 49:14–15)

God frequently describes his love for his people to be like that of a husband for his wife. “For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isaiah 54:5) “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” (Isaiah 62:5) “And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.” (Hosea 2:19–20)

God’s marital relationship to his people was not merely a marriage of convenience, a living arrangement marked by a sterile fulfillment of duties and roles. God’s heart was in this relationship. God revealed this by describing his jealous protection of the relationship and his intense feelings of anger and rejection when Israelites worshiped other gods, which God described as adultery. God feels not only warm affection but also intense love for us.

Tender, Trinitarian love

Isaiah says, “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” (Isaiah 40:11 ESV) Those are not the actions of a cold God. The God who is our shepherd is a warm God.

God the Father showed his tenderness at the Baptism of Jesus, announcing over him in a voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Jesus said that God the Father loves us with the same love that he loves Jesus. Jesus prayed, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:23) Because of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice on the cross, God the Father speaks over us, These are my beloved children, with whom I am well pleased.

A heart of warm embrace

I have saved my favorite display of the affectionate, tenderhearted love of God till last. Jesus knew his Father perfectly, and when he told the Parable of the Prodigal Son, here is how he described the father’s reaction to his son’s arrival at home after coming to his senses in the pig sty:

“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.” (Luke 15:20-24 ESV)

That is not the response of a cold, calculating patriarch. Our Father God has the heart of one who runs and embraces and kisses you, who celebrates your relationship, who rejoices to have you home again and with him forever.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We may think of God as distant, remote, and uncaring. Yet, the great longing of the human heart is for the tender love and concern of the Father.

God’s way: He has feelings, strong feelings. He has affection, not only compassion for the hurting but also warm affection for the people he loves. He feels love.

Life principle: To know God rightly you must know his heart. Until we experience God’s love and know him as Abba and as the Savior who cares for us, we will feel and act like orphans. Knowing God’s heart will satisfy your soul and anchor you emotionally in him.