THE LOVE OF GOD II
TITUS 3:4
There was once this man who goes into a restaurant/lounge wearing a shirt open at the collar. Before he can get through the door he is met by the bouncer who tells him he must wear a necktie to be admitted. The man knows that there is not another restaurant around for miles. So he goes out to his car and he looks around for a necktie and discovers that he just doesn’t have one. He sees a set of jumper cables in his trunk. In desperation he ties these around his neck, manages to fashion a fairly acceptable looking knot and lets the ends dangle free. He goes back to the restaurant and the bouncer carefully looks him over for a few minutes and then says, "Well, OK, I guess you can come in; just don’t start anything."
Now I thought for hours on how I was going to tie that joke into my sermon this morning before I realized that I just couldn’t do it. But is was too good of a joke not to tell. At least I have everyone’s attention now.
Please turn with me to our passage today, that would be Titus 3:4.
Titus 3:4; “But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared,” Here Paul begins to speak on the doctrine of salvation. He begin in verse 4 by telling us that the kindness and love of God appeared to us through the coming of Jesus Christ. In that Christ came for our salvation, He was born, He lived, He died, He rose again, for us, so that we could have salvation.
Last week we began to talk about the love of God, and was learned some basic things regarding God’s love. While I stated that we will be looking at God’s love for two weeks actually we will be looking at it for three.
This week I want to us to get a glimpse of how complex God’s love is. Next week I want us to look at how God’s love works into our salvation.
How many of you have seen the movie “A Princess Bride”? It is great movie. One of the characters of the movie is a little Sicilian guy, who speaks with a little bit of a lisp. Now every time something happens that is the least bit out of the ordinary this little guy says, “inconceivable”. When they kidnap the princess and he is quite sure that no one knows that that did it, they make their get away in a ship. When another ship appears on the horizon he states, “inconceivable”. When they are climbing up the cliff on a rope and the masked hero is following them, he states, “inconceivable”. Over and over again, “inconceivable”.
Well if our little Sicilian friend where here and I began to tell him of the love of God, I know he would utter those words, “inconceivable”.
Because God’s love is just that “inconceivable”. We cannot even begin to understand that depth of Gods love, we cannot even begin to understand the complexity of God’s love. But while we cannot understand it fully we must strive to understand it the best we can. We must look to God’s word and glean what we can concerning the love of God.
I want to begin this morning by pointing out three observations that we can see concerning the Love of God. These are things that are plainly seem. Thing that you do not even have to open your Bibles to see.
First there is no other attribute of God that is so plainly seen. We see it in creation. Everyone take a look outside. See the trees and the hills, ok ok look back up here, and the snow, the beauty of it all. It all proclaims the love of God. The love of God is obvious in creation. God could have made this world very bland, but He did not, and He did not because of His love.
God love is also plainly seen in that He sustains this creation. He give us breath, food, drink. He keep our hearts pumping. And when our time is done He stops our hearts. Matthew 5:45 “...for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” It matters not whether people our wicked or not, they are sustained by the love of God. The fact that the sun rises every day, that the rains come and water the crops, is a display of the love of God.
God’s love is also plainly seen in the fact that He has sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. As our passage state God’s love appeared in that He has provided us with a means of salvation, and that means is of course the blood of Christ shed on the cross. By placing our faith in that blood for the forgiveness of sin, God provides us with eternal life.
The Second observation I would like to make is that no other attribute of God is so widely believed. If you were to ask a hundred people what that know about God, most I believe, if not all would say something about God and love. Whether they believe in the God of the Scriptures or not, most people will apply the term with God.
The last observation I would like to make is the fact that there is no attribute of God that is so misunderstood. Most people including Christians have a distorted view of the love of God.
Many people believe that God’s love cancels out His holiness. Because of God’s love people believe that no one will go to hell. I know that at one time I believed this to be true. If God loves every body certainly He is not going to send any body to hell. You just would not do that to someone you love.
Because God is love everyone goes to heaven. That view is incorrect and totally unsupported by Scripture.
People misunderstand that just because God is love it does not mean that love is God. While the first part of that is certainly true, we see that in 1 John 4:8. Love is the very nature of God, we saw that last week. But the saying that love is God is not true. Look around. Some people love evil, they love sin. Jesus states that some men “love the darkness rather the light.” Some folks love sin rather then righteousness.
We can say truthfully the God is love, but to say Love is God, is just not so.
So those are just some quick observations that we can see regarding the love God, things that you really do not have to study to see.
Now over the course of my studying the love of God, I have read several different items by several different authors. I will say that it gets confusing at times. I have come away repeating the word, “inconceivable”. But the fact that I cannot understand the love of God does not mean it does not mean that it is not there.
The fact that I can’t understand God’s love, for me is humbling. It shows me just how much bigger God is than me. I reminds me of how small I am compared to the creator of all things. I am reminded how God is almighty and here I sit with this tiny little brain, trying to figure out a God who has every hair on my head numbered, a God who as numbered and named every star. Is it any wonder I cannot understand the full debts of His love.
These facts have of course not stopped men from trying.
All of us can agree that God is love. The Bible plainly states that to be true. But HOW God loves is a debatable question. Last week I mentioned how I love things differently, I love God, my wife, my kids, you, and playing golf. I love all those things different.
To a degree the same is true with God. God certainly loves His creation, He certainly loves the animals that He has created, He loves the angels in heaven, the Bible even states that the Lord loves the gates of Zion and so forth. But it is clear that God does not love all those things in the same way.
Let us look at three ways of looking at how God loves. Now many pastors would give their view and that is all you get. This morning I want to give you three views. I give you these three views not to confuse you but so that you understand that God’s love is a complex thing, it is not something that will fit into a nice neat little package.
Each one of these views can be defended using scripture. This is not to say the Scripture contradicts itself, but that there are different ways of looking at certain passages.
I also give you these views with the prayer that you may be spurred on to study the Word of God regarding God’s love. Just as the Bereans did in Acts where the Bible states “...that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”
So here are the three views. The first one states that God only loves the elect. He only loves those for whom Christ died. In other word God only loves those whom He will save, those who are predestinated for salvation.
Now historically this has been the most widely held view to some degree up until the last 100 years or so. Yet when we hear this today it does not sit well with very many people. The thought that God would hate a person just rubs us the wrong way.
There are however, verses which would seem to back this up. Psa. 5:5; “The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity.”
Psa. 11:5; “The LORD tests the righteous, But the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates.”
Rom. 9:13; “As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” which quotes Malachi 1:2
These and other verses are pointed to say “look God does not love everybody, some he hates.” Those that are outside the saving grace of God the Bible states God hates.
Others point to those verse and say that they do not teach the God hates anyone but that they teach that “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” A saying that we hear often.
I must say that Psa 5:5 and 11:5 do not teach that “God hates the sin but loves the sinner”. In fact no where in the Bible is that taught.
It does not say that God’s hates the sin, is plainly states that God hates the sinner. It states God hates the “all workers of iniquity”. Not just the iniquity but the worker of iniquity.
Psa. 11:5 states that God hates “the one who loves violence. Not just the violence.
We should also understand that there is nothing in the sinner to love. As Paul states in Romans 7:18, and he speaks for every one here, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.”
You cannot separate the sin from the sinner. Just as we cannot separate love from God because it is part of His very nature you cannot separate the sin from the sinner because it is part of their nature. God is love and a sinner is sin.
To say God loves the sinner but not this sin, is to say that God loves something which is not righteous. That is why we need the righteousness of Christ imputed upon us. That is why we need salvation, that good may be imputed to us through Christ. That there would be something to love in us.
Now just when we think we have this thing settled for those who hold this position may I point out Luke 14:26; "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
In Luke 14 we have Jesus telling us that we need to “hate” our father, our mother, our spouse, our children, our brothers and sisters, even our own selves.
Surly Jesus does not mean that we are to literally hate them, this would contradict other portions of Scripture where we are told to love those very same people.
What Jesus means here is simply we need to make Him the priority in our lives. Christ needs to be first in our lives. We need to love Christ more then anything or anybody.
So looking back to Psa. 5:5 and 11:5, the question is not “does God hate workers of iniquity?” He does, it says so right in the Bible. But the question is “what is exactly meant by “hate””. Is it a total absence of love or a varying degree of love that we see in Luke 14.
Also are we not all “workers of iniquity” to some degree?
The second view is the “God loves everyone equally”. In other words God works in all hearts equally, but some respond to the Holy Spirit and some do not.
This is I believe the most popular view. It’s popularity has a lot to with D.L. Moody the great evangelist from the 19th century. The fact that so many people believe this is based not in the fact that we have studied it and come to this conclusion, for most people it is simply what they have been told over and over again.
“Jesus loves you” “Smile God loves you”, and so forth.
The centerpiece for this argument is John 3:16 a passage that most everyone is familiar with. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
There it is, right there in the Word of God, “for God so loved the world”. What more proof do we need? God loves the world how plain can it be?
What we need to realize is that the word “world” is used in different ways in the Scripture. In fact rarely is the word used to describe all people for all times. Let us look at some examples;
John 3:17 the verse that follows John 3:16; "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
Now we all agree that not every one who ever lived is not going to be saved. Not everyone will make it to heaven. The word “world” here cannot refer to everybody through out time. It obviously refers to those who will be saved. Jesus will indeed condemn those who will reject Him, and He will save those who place there faith in Him.
Another verse is John 7:7 Here Jesus is speaking “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.”
Is this speaking of every person ever born? Or even every person alive now, or every person alive when Jesus spoke those words? No it can’t. Jesus disciples did not hate Jesus, I do not hate Jesus, you do not hate Jesus. Jesus is obviously using the word “world” in a different sense then to included every person.
I could also give other examples from Scripture. John 14:17 states that the “world” will not receive the Holy Spirit. Yet the follows of Jesus have, since Pentecost been filled with the Spirit of Truth.
So when we look at John 3:16 and other passages that speak of God loving the “world” the question becomes “what is meant by the word “world””?
Now there are other passage that can be used to defend this position. But they can be answered in some way by those who may hold to the other views.
The final view is that while God loves everyone He does not love everyone the same way. How He shows that love and the way He loves may differ.
We all experience God’s love. The passage that I read early on in the sermon, Mat 5:45; "for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
We see from this verse just by the fact that God provide the suns and the rain to both the saved and the unsaved they both experience the love of God.
From that this view would state that because we all experience God’s love, God in essence loves us all though because some are saved and some are not, God loves us differently.
When we look around us we can see that people experience God’s love differently. The Bible tells us that all good things come from God, He is the giver of all blessings. All blessing are a demonstration of God’s love.
Some people are obviously blessed with more material things and talents then others. Some folks do not have care in the world while others struggle for all they have. Now I am not saying that by our blessings we can measure how much God loves us. But simply that the way God manifests His love to us differs from person to person.
Now whether we see material things as a blessing or a curse is academic. The point is that God’s love is manifested to us in different ways within each one of our lives.
This group would contest that God demonstrates His love differently towards the elect then the non-elect. While to the elect God dispenses electing love, to the non-elect He does not. Yet both experience the love of God but to different degrees and in different ways. God loves both but not in the same way.
So in a very real sense God does love His enemies, yet in another sense He does not.
Now some would point to Acts 10:34 “Then Peter opened his mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality.” to say that God must love all people equally. That God is not a respecter of men.
However this view contends that Peter is speaking here not of men in particular, but that God is not a respecter of man in that men of all races and colors will be saved.
As Rev. 5:9 states; “And they sang a new song, saying: "You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation...”
So there are the different views of God’s love as far as who He loves and who He doesn’t. Again I want us to understand that these different views do not show contradiction in the Word of God, but they show that God’s love is complex, and not so easy to understand that we can just fit it into a box.
As I stated I give them to you not to confuse you, but to show you how awesome God’s love is. How is goes beyond all that you can begin to imagine. How God’s love is indeed “inconceivable”.
I also bring them up in hopes that you will turn to the Word of God, that you will dig deeper into it. That you will study it. Uncover the wonders of God’s Word.
Now some of you may be wondering where I am in all of this. Well I’m not telling. I will say that while I believe in one of these three views, I am not fully convinced.
I am however convinced that God loves me with a love that will never be over come.
In closing may I say that no matter what view you or I may hold to one thing is certain. Without the blood of Christ there is no salvation. Without a profession of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no eternal life. Will you trust in Christ today? Believe that He died for you. Trust in His blood for the forgiveness of sin. Come and experience the awesome love of God as seen in His Son Jesus Christ. Come and enjoy the appearing of God’s love by believing in Christ. Trust in Him today, and to God be the Glory!
LET US PRAY
