The Costly Love of God

I recently had a brief conversation with my nurse practitioner about church.  I mentioned I knew a church in the area where she grew up.  She replied that she was Catholic growing up but would now be Unitarian if anything.  She then explained, 'I just believe in loving everyone.'

I have thought about this brief exchange for the past few days as it is full of interesting points.  First, she implied that churches with commitments to doctrine or ethics are not as loving.  Second, the exchange begged the question, 'What is love?'  Her version of love is, undoubtedly, a product of a relativistic worldview that values toleration, acceptance, and diversity.  It might be called, 'permissive love.'  For her, permissive love is the highest version of love.  Third, her concept of love did not need God but was humanist.  We should love one another unconditionally and, if there is a god, then that god's love needs to look like our permissive love.

So, what kind of love do we hold up against this onslaught of our Christian faith?  First, God's love revealed in Exodus 34 to Moses is not a permissive love but a longsuffering, 'steadfast love' that does not deny certain acts are sinful in order to be openly accepting.  It is a love that will 'by no means clear the guilty (v. 7).  In its steadfastness, it remains faithful to the relation with the sinner, not tolerating sin but holding on despite sin.  Furthermore, it is a forgiving love.  Forgiveness is not tolerance, let alone acceptance.  It affirms that wrong has been committed but still holds the relationship to be worth saving.  It calls the sinner to acknowledge his or her sin, to repent, show contrition, and change.  Steadfast love is the commitment one makes to a relationship.

In the New Testament, we learn of an even deeper level to God's love.  It is sacrificial.  The well-known passage in John 3.16 says this clearly.  The background to this verse is John 1.10-11, where Jesus is pictured as the light of the world that came into the world but was not known by the world.  He came to His own, but they did not receive Him.  Then, in John 3.16, we read about God's love for the world that was costly.  Permissive love costs nothing.  It requires no suffering.  It is simply, 'live and let live.'  But the verse says, 'God loved the world in this way: He gave His only begotten son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life' (my translation).  God's love is not only suffering love but also giving love.  It only requires a relationship, a response of trust in God.  Permissive love does not need a relationship at all: what the other thinks, does, or feels is irrelevant.  God's love, on the other hand, offers the deepest possible relationship with God Himself, and the greatest gift of salvation from sin and death and of eternal life.

Paul captures this suffering, gift-bearing love of God in Romans 5 when he emphasises that it results in being reconciled to God.  He says, 

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 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. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5.7-11). 

In his first epistle, John returned to the theme of God's love in talking about how we know God.  He wrote,

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4.9-11).

We have an image of this love of God in childbirth.  Before the child is even born, the mother is in pain for him or her.  Before the child knows his or her parents and other family, he or she is already loved.  Just so God's costly love comes to us, offering us new life in Him before we ever knew Him.

Permissive love is all that our relativistic culture asks.  It turns out to be such a shallow love--really no love at all in that a relationship is not even necessary.  God's love is steadfast, longsuffering, forgiving, costly, and reconciling.  His love comes to us through Jesus Christ, who died for our sins on the cross in our place that we should not have to endure the guilt and punishment for our own sins but instead be reconciled to God.  As Charles Wesley wrote, 'Amazing love!  How can it be, that Thou my God should die for me!'  Only the Christian faith offers such love, such costly love, because only the Christian faith declares that Jesus is the love of God piercing our darkness with heavenly light, cleansing our sin through His own death for us, and restoring us to right relationship with Him.  In a culture that wants only toleration and acceptance, God offers so much more in His costly love.  In a culture that celebrates sinful ways that are contrary to God's purposes in creation and His standards in relationships, God offers so much more in His restoration to righteousness and reconciliation to Himself.  Oh, the costly love of God!