by A.W. Tozer
For those who think beneath the surface of things there are some real problems associated with the doctrine of the love of God. What is by many so airily taken for granted because it has been so often repeated is found to hold some positive difficulties when it is examined by the thoughtful and serious-minded Christian.
The first difficulty is one that is likely to bother the soul that is deeply convinced of its own grave sinfulness and its complete unworthiness before God. The problem simply stated is, "How can God love anyone as sinful and worthless as I am?" This question occurs in many of our hymns and is heard in countless prayers and testimonies wherever a group of humble believers come together.
It is not likely that the question will ever be answered to the satisfaction of the penitent heart, for whatever theology says it will always feel its own deep sinfulness and will side against itself and acknowledge that God would be just were He to forsake it forever. Because this is an impulse of the heart and springs not out of reason but out of moral repugnance, there is not much that reason can do to correct it. And I wonder if, after all, we want to eliminate this emotion from the heart entirely. Self-loathing may be carried too far, but a little of it keeps us down where we belong. I think the great saints have always felt it to some degree.
The second problem is a more serious one. It is this: How can a holy God love unholy men? This should not be dismissed lightly, for it involves a real theological predicament. God loves and must love what is like Himself. Now since He is by nature perfectly holy how can He love that which is by nature completely unholy? Man being deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, with every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually, how can that God who is exactly the opposite of all this find in the sinner anything to love? Would not God's love for that which is radically unlike Himself constitute a moral contradiction and put Him in the position of compromising His holiness?
Of course this is no problem to the quasi-religious person who thinks of God as a great "All-Father" or as merely a kindly spirit that pervades the world, without holiness, justice or truth. A weak, sniveling god who is too loving to condemn sin would have no trouble loving sinners. He could not compromise his holiness for the simple reason that he does not possess any. Such a god is the darling of the starry-eyed religious poet whose "creed is love," but he is most surely not the God of the Bible. He is a figment of a fallen and darkened imagination and is as certainly false as were the gods of the Philistines.
To the question, "How can a holy God love an unholy sinner?" there is a full and satisfactory answer. The answer, of course, is found in the teachings of the Scripture. It has been stated for us by the German theologian Eckhart: "The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and such things as He finds in the Son." This is a fair summation of the doctrine of the love of God as presented on the pages of Holy Writ.
"The Father loves nothing at all but the Son." All the love of God is gathered up in Christ. The Father loves the Son with all the love there is, which is to say with all of Himself, and He loves directly nothing but the Son. In the Son and through the Son all things came into being, including man. God loves men not for themselves but for the sake of the Son. His love for them is reflected from the face of Jesus Christ and falls upon them only as they are related to the Son. Man was made in God's image and Christ is said to be "the image of the invisible God."
In some mysterious way is the race of mankind related to the Son, and for His sake God can lavish His love upon sinful men and still be just and holy in doing so.
A marginal problem, of no practical importance, is whether or not God continues to love sinners after they have forfeited their rights under the patient forbearance of God and have been consigned to their final place in hell. To believe that He does would be to conceive of Him as being eternally frustrated. Were He to continue forever to pour upon lost men an unrequited love, He could never be at rest. His wasted love would torture Him without end forever.
The truth is that God loves only the Son "and such things as He finds in the Son." When impenitent men have made their final decision against the Son and have walked out of His light for good they will no longer be objects of the love of God. God's love is, like Himself, unchanging and eternal, but it touches only those who touch the Son. The soul that rejects the Son by a final irrevocable act forfeits forever the love of the Father.
( Article taken from The Price of Neglect, Chapter 9 )
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