John 11:35 (KJV 1900)

35 Jesus wept.

II] DEPTH OF THE HEART OF GOD

A. HE CRIES WITH US

B. HE CRIES FOR US.

1. (John 11: 33-38) A deeply moved Jesus comes to the tomb.

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

And He said, “Where have you laid him?”

They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”

And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.

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a. When Jesus saw her weeping:

The grief and tears of Mary and Martha moved Jesus.

God sees the tears of the grief stricken and is moved with compassion.

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• God sees our tears.

• God is touched by our tears.

• God remembers our tears.

• God acts to dry our tears.

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b. And the Jews who came with her weeping:

The Jews of that time and place were not reserved in their expressions of sorrow or grief.

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i. “We must remember that this would be no gentle shedding of tears.

It would be almost hysterical wailing and shrieking, for it was the Jewish point of view that the more unrestrained the weeping, the honour it paid to the dead.” (Barclay)

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ii. Jesus saw her weeping... Jesus wept:

There is an important contrast between the tears of Mary and the tears of Jesus.

Weeping (the word used for Mary in Joh 11:33) is a word that describes loud wailing.

Wept (the word to describe Jesus’ expression of grief in Joh 11:35) is another word that indicates a quiet weeping.

Jesus was greatly moved, but not out of control.

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iii. Morris on Jesus wept: “That used here (and here only in the New Testament) points rather to a quiet weeping.

Jesus did not wail loudly but He was deeply grieved.”

c. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled:

Coming to the scene of Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus intensely groaned in the spirit.

In the ancient Greek, this phrase literally means, to snort like a horse - implying anger and indignation.

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i. “The verb rendered ‘groaned’ is an unusual one.

It signifies a loud inarticulate noise, and its proper use appears to be for the snorting of horses.

When used of men it usually denotes anger.” (Morris)

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ii. According to Trench, the sense of was troubled is “‘And troubled Himself.’

The phrase is remarkable: deliberately summoned up in Himself the feelings of indignation at the havoc wrought by the evil one, and of tenderness for the mourners.”

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iii. “In ordinary classical Greek the usual usage of embrimasthai is of a horse snorting.

Here it must mean that such deep emotion seized Jesus that an involuntary groan was wrung from his heart.” (Barclay)

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iv. It means that Jesus wasn’t so much sad at the scene surrounding the tomb of Lazarus.

It’s more accurate to say that Jesus was angry.

Jesus was angry and troubled at the destruction and power of the great enemy of humanity: death.

Jesus would soon break the dominating power of death.

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v. “Christ does not come to the sepulcher as an idle spectator, but like a wrestler preparing for the contest.

Therefore no wonder that He groans again, for the violent tyranny of death which He had to overcome stands before His eyes.” (Calvin)

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d. Jesus wept: Jesus shared in the grief of those who mourn.

Yet unlike any other, God the Son was able to do something about their grief.

Jesus allowed this sympathetic passion to uniquely do for Lazarus what He will one day do for all the righteous dead.

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i. Jesus wept: There are many aspects to these two words.

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• Jesus was truly a man.

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• There may be no sin or shame in tears.

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• Jesus was acquainted with grief.

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• Jesus was not ashamed of His humanity.

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• Jesus identified with others in their sorrow.

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• Jesus loves people.

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ii. “Jesus had humanity in its perfection, and humanity unadulterated is generous and sympathetic.” (Clarke)

“He suffered all the innocent infirmities of our nature.” (Spurgeon)

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iii. Jesus dignified the tears of others in the Bible who wept, and all who weep.

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• Abraham wept when he buried Sarah.

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• Jacob wept when he wrestled the Angel.

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• David and Jonathan wept together.

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• Hezekiah wept over his sickness.

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• Josiah wept over the sin of his nation.

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• Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.

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iv. “Sometimes we are told that if we really believed that our friends would rise again, and that they are safe and happy even now, we could not weep.

Why not?

Jesus did.

There cannot be any error in following where Jesus leads the way.” (Spurgeon)

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v. Barclay explains that to the mind of the ancient Greek the primary characteristic of God was apatheia: the total inability to feel any emotion whatsoever.

The Greeks believed in an isolated, passionless, and compassionless God.

That isn’t the God of the Bible.

That isn’t the God who is really there.

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vi. Again groaning in Himself:

“The repetition of ‘deeply moved’ (embrimomenos), the present participle of the verb, shows that Jesus was still under the same emotional tension that his first contact with the mourners had aroused.” (Tenney)

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vii. See how He loved him!

“And when we see him pouring out his blood and life upon the cross for mankind, we may with exultation and joy cry out, Behold how he hath loved US!” (Clarke)

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e. And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”

These seem to be words of genuine sorrow and sympathy.

They thought it truly sad that even Jesus, in all His greatness, could do nothing for Lazarus at this point.

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i. “There is no reason for thinking of the words as spoken in mockery.” (Morris)

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ii. Yet, these words were not helpful to anyone.

Spurgeon noted that all this “what if” talking is vain, of no use.

“Perhaps the bitterest griefs that men know come not from facts, but from things which might have been, as they imagine; that is to say, they dig wells of supposition, and drink the brackish waters of regret.” (Spurgeon)

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iii. “Suppose that Jesus is willing to open the eyes of the blind, and does open them; is he therefore bound to raise this particular dead man?

If he does not see fit to do so, does that prove that he has not the power?

If he lets Lazarus die, is it proven therefore that he could not have saved his life?

May there not be some other reason?

Does Omnipotence always exert its power?

Does it ever exert all its power?” (Spurgeon)

Jesus wept.John 11:35

The word is different from that used to express weeping in

Joh 11:33; but this latter is used of our Lord in Luk 19:41.

The present word means not the cry of lamentation, nor the wail of excessive grief, but the calm shedding of tears.

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Men have wondered When they find in the gospel, which opens with the absolute concrete declaration of the Divinity of our Lord, Then at a moment when that Divinity was about to be fully manifested , these words, which point them still to human weakness.

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But the central thought of St. John’s Gospel is

“The Word made flesh,” and He is for us the Resurrection and the Life,

because He has been manifested to us, not as an abstraction which the intellect could receive,

but as a Person, living a human life and knowing its sorrows, whom the heart can grasp and love.

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A “God in tears” has provoked the smile of the stoic

and the scorn of the unbeliever;

but Christianity is not a gospel of self-sufficiency,

and its message is not merely to the human intellect.

But an appeal to the very Heart.

It is salvation for the whole man and for every man;

and the sorrowing heart of humanity has never seen more clearly the Divinity of the Son of Man than when it has seen His glory shining through human tears. (Archdeacon Watkins.)

Christ’s tears

(Text, and Luk 19:41; Heb 5:7):—It is a commonplace to speak of tears; would that it were a common practice to shed them.

Christ’s tears were

Christ’s tears

I. TEARS OF SYMPATHY.

II. TEARS OF COMPASSION (Luk19:41).

III. TEARS OF PERSONAL SUFFERING (Heb 5:7).

The tears of Christ

I. HE WEPT FROM VERY SYMPATHY WITH THE GRIEF OF OTHERS.

It is of the nature of compassion to “rejoice with those,” etc.

It is so with men, and God tells us that He is compassionate.

We do not well know what this means, for how can God rejoice or grieve?

He is hid from us; but it is the very sight of sympathy that comforts the sufferer.

When Christ took flesh, then, He showed us the Godhead in a new manifestation.

Let us not say that His tears here are man’s love overcome by natural feeling.

It is the love of God, condescending to appear as we are capable of receiving it, in the form of human nature.

II. HE WEPT AT THE VICTORY OF DEATH.

Here was the Creator seeing the issue of His own handiwork.

Would He not revert to the hour of Creation when He saw that all was very good, and contrast man as He was made innocent and immortal, and man as the devil had made him, full of the poison of sin and the breath of the grave?

Why was it allowed?

He would not say.

What He has done for all believers, revealing His atoning death, but not explaining it, this He did for the sisters also, proceeding to the grave in silence, to raise their brother while they complained that he had been allowed to die.

III. HE WEPT AT HIS OWN IMPENDING DOOM.

Joseph could bring joy to his brethren at no sacrifice of his own.

The disciples would have dissuaded Christ from going into Judaea lest the Jews should kill Him.

The apprehension was fulfilled.

The fame of the miracle was the immediate course of His seizure.

He saw the whole prospect—Lazarus raised, the supper, joy on all sides, many honouring Him, the triumphal entry, the Greeks earnest to see Him, the Pharisees plotting,

Judas betraying, His friends deserting, the cross receiving.

He felt that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus had left. (Cardinal Newman.)

The tears of Jesus

I. CAUSES OF CHRIST’S SORROW.

1. The possession of a soul.

When we speak of the Deity joined to humanity we do not mean to a body, but to manhood, body and soul.

With a body only Jesus might have wept for hunger, but not for sorrow.

That is the property not of Deity or body, but of soul.

The humanity of Christ was perfect.

2. The spectacle of human sorrow.

(1) Death of a friend (John 11:36).

Mysterious!

Jesus knew that He could raise him.

This is partly intelligible.

Conceptions strongly presented produce effects like reality, e.g., we wake dreaming, our eyes suffused with tears—know it is a dream, yet tears flow on.

Conception of a parent’s death.

Solemn impression produced by the mock funeral of Charles V.

The sadness of Jesus for His friend is repeated in us all.

Somehow we twine our hearts round those we love as if forever.

Death and they are not thought of in connection. He die!

(2) Sorrow of His two friends.

Their characters were diverse: two links bound them together: love to Lazarus, attachment to the Redeemer.

Now one link was gone. His loss was not an isolated fact.

The family was broken up; the sun of the system gone; the keystone of the arch removed, and the stones lose their cohesion.

For the two minds held together only at points of contact.

They could not understand one another’s different modes of feeling: Martha complains of Mary.

Lazarus gave them a common tie. That removed the points of repulsion would daily become more sharp.

Over the breaking up of a family Jesus wept. And this is what makes death sad.

II. CHARACTER OF CHRIST’S SORROW:

Spirit in which Jesus saw this death.

1. Calmly.

“Lazarus sleepeth” in the world of repose where all is placid.

Struggling men have tried to forget this restless world, and slumber like a babe, tired at heart.

Lazarus to his Divine friend’s imagination lies calm.

The long day’s work is done, the hands are folded.

Friends are gathered to praise, enemies to slander, but make no impression on his ear.

Conscious he is, but not of earthly noise.

But “he sleeps well.”

2. Sadly. Hence, observe

(1) Permitted sorrow. Great nature is wiser than we.

We recommend weeping, or prate about submission, or say all must die: Nature, God, says, “Let nature rule to weep or not.”

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(2) That grief is no distrust of God—no selfishness. Sorrow is but love without its object.

3. Hopefully—“I go,” etc.

(Joh 11:11). “Thy brother” (Joh 11:23).

4. In reserve.

On the first announcement Jesus speaks not a word.

When He met the mourners He offered no commonplace consolation.

He is less anxious to exhibit feeling than to soothe.

But nature had her way at last.

Yet even then by act more than word the Jews inferred His love, There is the reserve of nature and the reserve of grace.

We have our own English reserve.

We respect grief when it does not make an exhibition.

An Englishman is ashamed of his good feelings as much as of his bad.

All this is neither good nor bad: it is nature. But let it be sanctified and pass into Christian delicacy.

Application. In this there is consolation: but consolation is not the privilege of all sorrow.

Christ is at Lazarus’s grave, because Christ had been at the sisters’ home, sanctifying their joys, and their very meals.

They had anchored on the rock in sunshine, and in the storm the ship held to her moorings.

He who has lived with Christ will find Christ near in death, and will find himself that it is not so difficult to die. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The import of Jesus’ tears

The weeping was preceded by groans.

After the groans come tears—a gentle rain after the violent storm.

Jesus in this, as in all things, stands alone.

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1. Different from Himself at other times.

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2. Very unlike the Jews who came to comfort the two sisters, and

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3. unlike the sisters themselves. Jesus’ tears imply

I. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE MIND (Lam 3:51).

Tears are natural.

The relation existing between matter and mind is inexplicable.

Yet it exists.

From this fact we can reason to the relation existing between God and the material universe.

II. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE.

Here we have a proof of His humanity.

What more human than weeping?

Following this manifestation of humanity is the manifestation of divinity.

We should guard against the old errors concerning the constitution of Christ’s person; for they appear from age to age under new forms:

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1. Arianism—denying His proper Divinity.

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2. Appolinarianism—denying His proper humanity.

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3. Nestorianism—dual personality.

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4. Eutychianism—confounding the two natures in His person.

III. THE RELATION BETWEEN CHRIST AS MEDIATOR AND HUMANITY, IN GENERAL, IN ITS MISERY, AND HIS PEOPLE, IN PARTICULAR, IN THEIR AFFLICTIONS.

1. The question, why He wept? is here answered.

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(1) He was sorrowful because of the misery caused by sin.

As Jerusalem was before His eyes when He wept over it, so here humanity in its sin and all its misery passed in review before His face.

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(2) His weeping was a manifestation of His sympathy.

No comparison between His consoling, comforting tears and those of the Jews.

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2. The intercessory work of Christ as our High Priest in heaven is here implied.

He is the same there as when here upon earth (Heb 13:8).

Has the same heart beating with ours.

He is our sympathizing Friend and Brother there.

APPLICATION:

1. Have you wept on account of your sins?

They have caused, and are still causing, Jesus to weep.

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2. Do you realise Christ’s friendship for you?

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3. Let us learn from His example to sympathise with the sorrows of our fellow men. (T. E. Hughes.)

A unique verse

I have often felt vexed with the man whoever he was, who chopped up the New Testament into verses.

He seems to have let the hatchet drop indiscriminately here and there; but I forgive him a great deal of blundering for his wisdom in letting these two words make a verse by themselves, “Jesus wept.”

This is a diamond of the first water, and it cannot have another gem set with it, for it is unique.

Shortest of verses in words, but where is there a longer one in sense?

Let it stand in solitary, sublimity and simplicity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Embodied sympathy powerful

“Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them.

They pass athwart us in this vapour and cannot make themselves felt.

But sometimes they are made flesh, they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft, responsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones.

They are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love.

Then their presence is a power, and we are drawn after them with a gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame.” (George Eliot.)

Jesus sympathizes with all who suffer

If a man be found weltering by the roadside, wounded, and a stranger comes along, he will pity him, for the heart of man speaks one language the world over.

But if it were a near neighbour or strong personal friend how much more tender the pity.

That of the man’s own father far transcends those.

But the noblest heart on earth is but a trickling stream from a shallow fountain compared with the pity of God, which is wide as the scope of heaven and abundant as all the air. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christ satisfying the instinct of sympathy

There is a word in our language—the iron Roman had to arrange many circuitous approaches to it—we borrow it straight from the plastic, responsive Greek—the word sympathy

I. THE INSTINCT.

The word has gone through one process since it left its root “to suffer,” which root does not mean suffering in our common sense, but “being affected.”

So sympathy does not mean fellow suffering, but community of affection. It may be

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(1) A community of congruity.

There is sympathy between two persons where there is such a likeness of disposition that they are mutually drawn to each other.

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(2) A community of contagion.

You sympathize with a person when in some particular sorrow or joy you share the feeling arising out of circumstances not your own.

1. As a community of disposition, sympathy is

(1) The spring of all love.

We see in the soul which looks through those eyes, its windows, the very counterpart and complement of our own.

Even beauty acts through sympathy.

It is not the flesh, grace, colour, etc., but the idea or promise of beautiful qualities which wins the heart.

Another may be more comely, but we are not attracted because we read not the disposition which ours craves.

We blame ourselves for not loving. Why do we not love?

For the lack of that sympathy of congruity represented by the word “liking.”

(2) The inspiration of eloquence.

What is there in that insignificant figure, uncomely countenance, unmusical voice which nevertheless sways multitudes as the orator lists.

An empire has hung in suspense while one man has talked to 10,000.

Why?

Because of the charm of sympathy.

(3) The secret of power in poetry and fiction.

What is it which draws tears from eyes which know they are Witnessing imaginary sorrows?

It is the skill with which genius draws upon the resources of human feeling.

The moment the tragical passes into the artificial, the tear dries of itself.

(4) The explanation of all magnificent successes

A want of sympathy accounts for the failure of men possessed of every gift but one.

You see it in oratory: there is learning, industry, etc., but the audience is unimpressed because there was no heart.

You see it in action: there is education, character, opportunity, etc., but coldness of temperament chilled the touch of friendship.

(5) This sympathy has its excesses.

It is so charming and remunerative that some men are guilty of practising on good impulses, and become insincere, and destroy others by means of the soul’s best and tenderest affections.

2. Sympathy of contagion, too, is an instinct.

To feel is human; we call a man unnatural, unhuman who cannot pity.

But some men feel without acting, and consequently feeling is deadened.

Others keep away from them what will make them feel, and waste the instinct.

To this kind of sympathy belong all those efforts by which we throw ourselves into another’s life for benevolent influence.

This alone renders possible an education which is worthy of the name, the teacher sharing personally the difficulties, games, weaknesses, etc., of the taught.

II. CHRIST SATISFYING THIS INSTINCT.

1. He presented Himself to us in one thrust, as possessing all that beauty which has a natural affinity to everything that is noble and true.

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(1) He appeals to the instinct in its form of likeness.

We must be cautious here, a not confuse the ruined will, the original temple.

Still there is no one who has no response in him to that which is lovely and of good report.

The instinct finds not its rest here below. Some profess to be satisfied: they have what they want.

They are happy—might it but last; were there no storms and eventual death.

But for the rest care, toil, ill-health, bereavement have forbidden it, or they have not yet found the haven of sympathy.

The first movement of such in hearing of Christ satisfying the wants of the soul is one of impatience: they want something substantial.

What they really want is community of affection.

There is offered to them a perfect love.

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(2) Christ guides and demands sympathy.

He makes it religion, which is sympathy with God; “liking” the drawing of spirit to spirit by the magnet of a felt loveliness.

“I drew them with cords,” etc. Without this religion is a burden and bondage.

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2. Christ satisfies the sympathy of contact.

We might have thought that the Creator would shrink from the ugly thing into which sin has corrupted His handiwork.

But He never heard the lepers cry without making it a reason for drawing nigh.

Again and again He went to the bereaved, and it was to wake the dead; and this not officially, as though to say, “This proves Me the Christ.”

Jesus wept.

There was no real peril or want with which He did not express sympathy.

He loved the rich young man; He wept over Jerusalem with its unbelief and hypocrisy; He was in all points tempted, and so is able to sympathize with our infirmities.

What He sympathized with was poor sin-spoilt humanity, and for that He died.

Conclusion:

What Christ did He bids us do not in the way of condescension, but as men touching to Him, not loving the sin, yet loving the sinner.

Lonely people cease to be alone. “Rejoice with them that rejoice,” etc. (Dean Vaughan.)

The tears of the Lord Jesus

I. JESUS WEPT; FOR THERE WAS CAUSE WORTHY OF HIS TEARS.

The finest, noblest race of God’s creatures dismantled, sunk in death before Him, all across earth and time from the world’s beginning.

Tears, we know, show strongest in the strongest.

When you see the strong man broken down beside his sick babe you cannot but feel there is a cause.

Whatever else there may be in the man, you see that he has a heart, and that his heart is the deepest, is the Divine part of him.

As the father’s tears over his child testify the father’s heart, so the tears of Jesus testify that He has a heart which beats with infinite love and tenderness toward us men.

For we are His, and in a far more profound and intimate sense belong to Him, than children can to an earthly parent.

And the relation into which the Lord Jesus has come with our humanity is closer and tenderer than that of earthly parent.

We speak of Him as our Brother, our Elder Brother; but the truth is, Christ’s relation to us is Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Husband, Friend, all in One.

But He knew—further—that a sadder thing than death and its miseries lay behind, even sin.

This touched and affected Him most, that we were a fallen and dishonoured race, and therefore death had come upon us and overshadowed us.

Why else should we die?

The stars do not wax old and die, the heavens and the earth remain unto this day, though there is no soul or spirit in them.

Why should the brightness of an immeasurably nobler and more exalted creature like man wax dim?

Stars falling from heaven are nothing to souls falling from God.

The one are but lights going out in God’s house, the other the very children of the house perishing.

Jesus wept then for the innermost death of all death, the fountain misery of all miseries But while in His Divine thought and sorrow He penetrated to the root and source of that evil and of all evil, the mighty attendant suffering awoke in Him the truest and deepest compassion and sympathy.

He wept, then, with each one of us; for who has not been called to part with some beloved relative, parent, partner, companion, guide, or friend?

With all sorrowing, desolate hearts and homes of the children of men He then took part.

Again, the Lord Jesus felt how much the darkness and sorrows of death were intensified and aggravated by the state of ignorance and unbelief in which the world lay.

How mournful to His spirit at that hour the realization of the way in which the vast bulk and majority of the human race enter the world, go through it, leave it

for He knew, better than any other that has been on earth, man’s capability of higher things and of an endless life and blessedness.

“Like sheep they are laid in the grave,” says the writer of the 49th Psalm, What a picture! Like that abject, unthinking, and helpless animal, driven in flocks by awful forms, cruel powers, they can neither escape nor resist, to a narrow point and bound, where all is impenetrable darkness.

II. Let us consider “THE TEARS OF JESUS” AS REVEALING THE DIVINE HEART.

Are we to believe that He out of whose heart have come the hearts of all true fathers and mothers, all the simple, pure affections of our common nature and kinship, of the family and the home; are we to believe, I say, that God has no heart?

Some one may say, There is no doubt God can love and does love—infinitely; but can He sorrow?

Now, my friend, I pray you, think what is sorrow but love wanting or losing its objects, its desire and satisfaction in its objects, and going forth earnestly in its grief to seek and regain them?

Sorrow, suffering, is one of the grandest, noblest, most self-denying, and disinterested forms and capabilities of love, apart from which love could not exist, whether in nature or in name.

III. THE TEARS OF JESUS ARE THOSE OF A MIGHTY ONE HASTENING TO AVENGE AND DELIVER.

They are not the tears of one whose pity and sympathy can only be thus expressed, but who has no power—whatever may be his willingness and desire—to help.

The tears of Jesus are those of a hero over his native country and kingdom laid waste by an enemy whom he hastens to meet and avenge himself upon.

There is hope, there is help for our world; Jesus Christ weeps over it, and He “will restore all things” of which we have been robbed and spoiled.

IV. HENCE WE LEARN OUR TRUE SOURCE OF COMFORT, HELP, AND RESTORATION.

He who wept and bled and died for man has proved Himself to be our great Deliverer.

Do we ever feel we can go anywhere else but to Him when sickness and death threaten and invade us and ours? (Watson Smith.)

The Love of God

DEFINITION

The love of God is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow both physical and spiritual benefits upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace), the most exalted of all such benefits is God’s selfless gift of himself to his creatures in Jesus Christ.

SUMMARY

The love of God is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow benefits both physical and spiritual upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace).

We see the love of God most clearly in that he gave himself to us in his Son, through which God gave us the most enthralling, beautiful, and eternally satisfying experience possible, that is, the knowledge and enjoyment of God himself.

Although the love of God can be discussed in at least five different ways, this is the love of God in its particular, sovereign, and saving form.

This eternal love of God for his people is what secures the adoption of the saints into the family of God, the loving discipline of the Father for his children, and the presence of the Spirit of love in their lives as Christians. Of all that we are justified in saying about God, perhaps the most foundational truth of all is that he is love.

Love doesn’t simply come from God. It is more than what he does.

As John states so clearly, “God is love” ( 1 John 4:8

). Carl F.H. Henry rightly declares that love “is not accidental or incidental to God; it is an essential revelation of the divine nature, a fundamental and eternal perfection.

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His love, like all other divine attributes, reflects the whole of his being in specific actions and relationships” (see Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, Volume VI: God Who Stands and Stays, 341).

Sadly, though, “love” is one of the least understood and most widely abused concepts in our world, even in the church.

What, then, does it mean to say that God is love?

Love is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow benefits both physical and spiritual upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace).

The most exalted of all such benefits is God’s selfless gift of himself to his creatures.

The preeminent expression of love is when the lover, at great personal cost, gives or imparts to the beloved the most enthralling, beautiful, and eternally satisfying experience possible.

The latter, of course, would be the knowledge and enjoyment of God himself.

So, when Jesus prays that the Father would glorify him so that he in turn might glorify the Father, he is demonstrating his love for us ( John 17:1 ).

He is asking the Father to give us that one experience that alone can satisfy our souls forever, far beyond any other gift or sight or experience.

Seeing and savoring and being satisfied with the glory and majesty of God is the most loving thing God could ever do for us.

The Characteristics of God’s Love

Love as Grace

Our focus here is on the fourth expression of God’s love, namely, the affection he displays toward his elect people, the beloved of God.

We must remember that, insofar as not all of God’s creatures receive and experience his love in precisely the same manner or to the same degree, one cannot speak of the love of God without qualification.

It seems inescapable, both from Scripture and experience, that we differentiate between the love of God as manifested in common grace and the love of God as manifested in special grace.

The love of God as manifested in common grace is the love of God as creator which consists of providential kindness, mercy, and longsuffering.

It is an indiscriminate and universal love which constrains to the bestowing of all physical and spiritual benefits short of salvation itself. It is received and experienced by the elect and non-elect alike (see Matt 5:43-48 ; Luke 6:27-38 ).

Indeed, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8 ).

The sole cause of God’s saving love for sinners is God himself!

Love and the Death of Christ

This love of God, then, is the source or cause of the atoning work of Christ.

God does not love people because Christ died for them; Christ died for them because God loved them.

The death of the Savior is not to be conceived as restoring in people something on the basis of which we might then win or merit God’s love.

The sacrifice of Christ does not procure God’s affection, as if it were necessary, through his sufferings, to extract love from an otherwise stern, unwilling, reluctant deity.

On the contrary, God’s love compels the death of Christ and is supremely manifested therein.

In a word, the saving love of God is giving. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).

Again, as Paul states, “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20; see also Eph 5:1-2,25; 1 John 4:9-10)

Love as Sovereign

The saving love of God is also sovereign.

John Murray explains as follows:

Truly God is love.

Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be.

He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally.

As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love.

Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects.

It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the “I am that I am” (see Redemption: Accomplished and Applied, 10).

Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say it is distinguishing.

It is, by definition as saving love, bestowed upon and experienced by those only who are in fact saved (i.e., the elect).

Although there is surely a sense in which God loves the non-elect, he does not love them redemptively.

If he did, they would certainly be redeemed. God loves them, but not savingly, else they would certainly be saved.

All this is but to say that God’s eternal, electing love is not universal but particular.

Love and Adoption

The love of God is what accounts for our adoption as sons.

It was “in love” that God “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” Eph 1:5; cf. 1 John 3:1).

This love of God is rightly described as “great.”

It was because of the “great love with which he loved us” (Eph 2:4) that God made us alive together with Christ.

It is a great love because it can never be exhausted, its depths never plumbed, its purpose never thwarted by the sin of man (Eph 2:4-5).

Love as Eternal

The saving love of God is eternal. It was “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4-5) that he set his saving love upon us and predestined us unto adoption as sons (cf. 2 Thess 2:13 ).

Charles Spurgeon describes this eternal love:

In the very beginning, when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes awoke the solitudes; before the mountains were brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through the sky, God loved His chosen creatures.

Before there was any created being; when the ether was not fanned by an angel’s wing, when space itself had not an existence, where there was nothing save God alone — even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved with love for His chosen.

Their names were written on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul.

Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the world — even from eternity! and when He called me by His grace, He said to me, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee (

This love is not only eternal in its conception, it is irrevocable in its purpose.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:35).

Nothing! The Apostle Paul can speak of such confident hope on no other ground than that God has loved us in Christ.

It is because he loved us when we were yet his enemies, a love demonstrated by the sending of his Son, that his love for us now that we are his friends is unshakeable (see Rom 5:8-11).

To know that from eternity my Maker, foreseeing my sin, foreloved me and resolved to save me, though it would be at the cost of Calvary; to know that the divine Son was appointed from eternity to be my

Saviour, and that in love he became man for me and died for me and now lives to intercede for me and will one day come in person to take me home; to know that the Lord ‘who loved me and gave himself for me’ and who ‘came and preached peace’ to me

through his messengers has by his Spirit raised me from spiritual death to life-giving union and communion with himself, and has promised to hold me fast and never let me go – this is knowledge that brings overwhelming gratitude and joy

(see “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Celebrating the Saving Work of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, 1:158-59).

Love as Discipline

The Hebrew Christians to whom these words were addressed had mistakenly come to think that the absence of affliction was a sign of God’s special favor and, therefore, that suffering and oppression were an indication of his displeasure.

On the contrary, so far from being a proof of God’s anger or rejection of us, afflictions are evidence of his fatherly love.

Discipline, writes Philip Hughes, “is the mark not of a harsh and heartless father but of a father who is deeply and lovingly concerned for the well-being of his son” (see his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 528).

God’s Love and the Christian Life

The eternal and irrevocable love which God has for his people also secures far more than merely the reconciliation of estranged sinners.

The love that God has for us also makes possible our love for one another: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12; see also 1 John 2:5).

Finally, the love of God for his people is not simply a doctrine to proclaim but a vibrant affection in the heart of God that he wants us to experience.

Therefore, Paul prays: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thess 3:5).

If we are to experientially enjoy being loved of the Father, it is the Father himself who must (and will) act to remove every obstacle and clear away every encumbrance to that inexpressible experience.

God’s love for us has been “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5.

Paul’s effusive language points to the unstinting lavishness of God’s gift.

As Charles Hodge put it (quoting Philippi), God’s love “does not descend upon us as dew drops, but as a stream which spreads itself abroad through the whole soul, filling it with the consciousness of his presence and favour” (see his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 210).

God wants our hearts to be inundated by wave after wave of his fatherly affection.

This is why Paul can pray that we might “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19).

FURTHER READING D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God Gerald Bray, God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology J. I. Packer, “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Celebrating the Saving Work of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Pack

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series.

All views expressed in this essay are those of the author.