Here are my two cents on the whole deal.
Obviously, “God is love” is true. It has to be true. But I don’t think it means what we sometimes want to think it means.
Obvoiusly, God hates sin, and condemns the sinner (Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Lev 20:23, Prov 6:16-19). And yes, Jesus was sent to cover this sin, poured out from the gracious mercies of the Father when we could not help ourselves (Rom 5:6). To tell the unregenerate that God loves them is beautiful, precious truth. It is life-direction-changing truth. But it is not the ultimate truth.
Here’s what I mean. To tell someone that God loves them, especially a lost person, is good. It is very good. But if it’s your main point, then there’s a problem. Because as humans, and as unregenerate people before being covered by the blood of Jesus, we will take that to feel better about ourselves. “God loves us,” we will think, “so we will be okay.” “God loves me how I am.”
God loved me so much that Jesus was sent so that I could be renewed and… live happily ever after? … have a better life? … feel better about myself? … get rid of that pesky sin debt? No, God loved me and sent Jesus so that I could be cleansed, repent, and glorify Him. It’s all about God and it’s all about glorifying God through Jesus. The love we feel, the grace we experience, the righteousness that we wear, they are all side effects of the glorious main plotline: our glorification of God. So while “God is love” is true, it doesn’t always mean what we think it means. In light of the gospel, in light of Jesus, “God is love” means that everything God does, from destroying iniquity, from condemning the rebellious, from having beautiful mercy on the sinner, from bringing the Church through Jesus to glorify him, is love. They are all love. When we say “God is love,” we must means that “God is God.” They must be synonymous. If they are not, we run into the trap of fabricating a God or leaving the hard stuff out.
This doesn’t mean we stop showing mercy on the brokenhearted, or being utterly devastated to proclaim the Gospel to the lost, or sympathizing with the hurting. But it means we do them for the right reasons. And this doesn’t mean we stop saying “God is love,” but that when we say “God is love,” we point people to God the Father through Jesus. We don’t point people to love. We don’t point people to acceptance or good feelings or a better life. We don’t point people to sympathy, or even mercy. We point them to Jesus. The love, the mercy, the acceptance, the grace, they are all beautiful side effects of knowing the Lord. They are all beautiful results of communion with the Father. They are all characteristics of God that we come to know by first seeking Him. A man without a watch continually needs to be told the time. What he needs is a watch, but he’s too attracted to the concept of knowing what the time is that he forgets to acquire the necessary device from which notification of the current time comes. We could continue to tell him the time, or we could direct him to the Source: the watch. When he gets the new watch, he realizes how much he has needed it. He pours over it, examines it, and excitedly wraps it around his wrist. He puts it to his ear and hears it ticking. He polishes the glass face. He also looks at the time. What was once the object of his search is now the result of a new Object: the watch. Knowing the time is now a result of knowing the Watch. No analogy is perfect, but what a lost person needs is Jesus. They don’t need or deserve good feelings, or acceptance, or provision, or mercy, or grace, or propitiation, or even to breathe their next breath. But when we as humans are directed to Jesus, as the current lost person would be and as we were, we are brought to new life. We enter into communion with the Father. We glorify and worship his Name. And praise the LORD! We also receive his love, and his mercy, and his grace, and we receive eternal communion with Him. Thinking like this makes the Gospel so much deeper and so much more beautifully scandalous.
So what is my point? What am I trying to say? That the watch-less person isn’t looking for the watch. They’re looking for the time, and something to polish, and the sound of the ticking cogs, and the feeling of the solid timepiece on their wrist. But they need the watch. Let’s give them the watch! Even much more so, the lost person is looking for love and acceptance and forgiveness and mercy. But they desperately need Jesus. When they know Jesus, when they glorify Him, when they bring him praise and bow to the ground in worship of His name; when we do those things, it makes the blessing of forgiveness and the depth of mercy in the cross so much more profound. Why does Jesus matter? Not because we escape Hell. Not because he makes us feel loved and accepted. But because he brings us to God and imputes to us his righteousness so that we can worship the One True God. And praise Him! He allows us so many great blessings through this communion. But the object, the object is God. The way and life is Jesus. Giving the lost person a feeling of acceptance, or making them feel loved, these are not our objects. Jesus is. These things will be some of the glorious side effects of communion with a God who is love and life and goodness.
That’s my point. It’s all about Jesus. If it’s all about good feelings and love and peace and grace and mercy, we will keep leading the watch-less man to search aimlessly for all of the qualities of the watch but not search for the true Object: the watch itself. We will keep leading the lost person to search aimlessly for all of the wonderful free gifts through Jesus but not search for the true Object: God Himself.
Let’s give them the Watch.
-Riley
Isn’t this exactly what Shane Claiborne is arguing?
He’s just arguing from the opposite side. You’re saying it’s not about the happiness that God’s love gives us, it’s about glorifying God. He’s saying it’s not about rules and laws, it’s about understanding God’s love so that we may enter into it. And, under Piper’s concept of Christian Hedonism, doesn’t being satisfied in God’s love lead to God being most glorified in us? Which would mean you’re both saying the same thing.
I don’t understand how you can acknowledge that “God is Love,” and then go on to say that love is just a side-effect. Taking part in agape necessarily means taking part in God because they are the same essence. Love – true agape Love – is not comparable with “good feelings.” It is transcendent and eternal because God is transcendent and eternal. If God was not Love, He would not be God, just as a watch that is not made to keep time is not a watch.
I understand that “God is Love” should not be taught explicitly as the whole story, because of how people can twist that, but in some sense, it is the whole story of the Gospel. Everything we talk about when we say “Gospel” is wrapped into those three words. The depravity, the holiness, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Logos made flesh, all of it.
I think our disagreements aren’t disagreements. I think it’s about semantics at this point. This argument has just reaffirmed what I already knew: that I would make an awful pastor.
@Andrew and @Zach:
You are right, we are mostly arguing semantics here and mostly arguing past eachother. I think what I’m seeing though is a lack of right emphasis on Claiborne’s part.
While agape love is truly the essence of God, so are terrible glory and just holiness. When I say “let’s give them the watch” I say let’s give them all of God, and not just love. I guess one could argue that all of God’s essences are one in the same, i.e. his terrible glory and just holiness are true representations of his infinite love, and vice versa. But understand that mainly when I’m talking about love I’m talking about what we as humans on earth understand love to be: i.e. sacrificial mercy, affirmation of value, etc. which only sometimes gives evidence of true agape.
The way I see true agape should be understood is this: it’s all about God. Same with true holiness and true justice and true glory. They are all about God. My point is that “God is love” or “God loves you” or “God so loved the world” can be easily misunderstood to mean “God loves something about you so much that Jesus was sent to win you back to Him.” This brings the emphasis of God and puts it on me. While that may even be part of agape, it’s not all of it. The love in John 3:16 and elsewhere is a love that has an ultimate ends of bringing glory to God. The Gospel, God’s ultimate plan for reconciliation with humans, is all about bringing glory to God, not about redeeming humans so they could escape damnation.
That’s what the true essence of Piper’s “Christian Hedonism” is, at least I think so. And that’s why when we share the Gospel we should lead people to understand that it’s all about God. God did love the world, and God is love, and God’s wonderful compassion and mercies are new every day and they are poured out on us in ways we can’t even comprehend — Hallelujah for that! — but they are poured out not so that we can feel better, or have a better life, or enjoy heaven, or even feel God’s love (in a man-understood sense). They are poured out as beautiful essences of God that come when the emphasis is put on glorifying Him forever and bringing praise to His name.
It’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s hard to explain what I’m trying to say, so I understand my points may be a little disheveled. I also understand that at times I can be a hard-hearted person. I also am not the one-stop shop for answers, nor do I claim to have this all figured out or truly understand God’s glory. I just see a terrible pitfall when we tell the lost person, who is broken and beaten and bruised, only part of the Gospel of the glory of God. We can tell them that God loves them, and that Jesus was sent for them, and they will feel better. This is all good! This really is, because a love the quickens the spirit and softens the heart is an essence of God. But we need to give them God, not a feel-good love. A God who is completely holy and who can’t even be in the presence of a human without the covering of the blood of Jesus. God is not a monster, and nor is God just an A-OK, lovey dovey dad. He’s God. That means he’s gonna blow stuff up, burn stuff up, destroy things, be wrathful and just, and at the same time scandalously redeem a lost people through his Son. All of these are love. All of these are agape. Presenting the Gospel means presenting all of God; all of his essences, and not just the ones people want to hear. If we do that, we will lead people to a false Gospel and not to God. And to my original, however lackluster and insufficient analogy, we will lead them to aspects of the watch, even whole essences of the watch, but they won’t love the Watch. They’ll just love what the watch does for them. May it not be in the true example. May we lead people to love God and to realize that their lives must be centered around glorifying God. May I realize that. May we all realize that.