The Father’s Love is Constant

John Owen, Communion with God:

The love of God is like himself — equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminution; our love is like ourselves — unequal, increasing, waning, growing, declining.  His, like the sun, always the same in its light, though a cloud may sometimes interpose; ours, as the moon, has its enlargements and straitenings.

The love of the Father is equal; whom he loves, he loves to the end, and he loves them always alike. . . . On whom he fixes his love, it is immutable; it does not grow to eternity, it is not diminished at any time.  It is an eternal love, that had no beginning, that shall have no ending; that cannot be heightened by any act of ours, that cannot be lessened by anything in us.

Our Father will not always chide, lest we be cast down; he does not always smile, lest we be full and neglect him: but yet, still his love in itself is the same.  When for a little moment he hides his face, yet he gathers us with everlasting kindness.

Objection: But you will say, ‘This comes near to that blasphemy, that God loves his people in their sinning as well as in their strictest obedience; and, if so, who will care to serve him more, or to walk with him to well-pleasing?’

Answer: The love of God in itself is the eternal purpose and act of his will.  This is no more changeable than God himself: if it were, no flesh could be saved; but it changes not, and we are not consumed.  What then?  Loves he his people in their sinning?  Yes; his people — not their sinning.  Alters he not his love towards them?  Not the purpose of his will, but the dispensations of his grace.  He rebukes them, he chastens them, he hides his face from them, he smites them, he fills them with a sense of [his] indignation; but woe, woe would it be to us, should he change in his love, or take away his kindness from us!  Those very things which seem to be demonstrations of the change of his affections towards his, do as clearly proceed from love as those which seem to be the most genuine issues thereof.  ‘But will not this encourage to sin?’  He never tasted of the love of God that can seriously make this objection.

Resting in the Father’s Love

“The love of the Father is the only rest of the soul.”

“Thus the soul gathers itself from all its wanderings, from all other beloveds, to rest in God alone — to satiate and content itself in him; choosing the Father for his present and eternal rest.”

John Owen, Communion with God

No Need to Ask For the Father’s Love

John Owen:

In John 16:26-7 our Saviour says, ‘I say not to you, that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you.’  But how is this, that our Saviour says, ‘I say not that I will pray the Father for you,’ when he says plainly, ‘I will pray the Father for you?’ (John 14:16).  The disciples, with all the gracious words, comfortable and faithful promises of their Master, with most heavenly discoveries of his heart to them, were even fully convinced of his dear and tender affections towards them; as also of his continued care and kindness, that he would not forget them when bodily he was gone from them, as he was now upon his departure: but now all their thoughts are concerning the Father, how they should be accepted with him, what respect he had towards them.  Says our Saviour, ‘Take no care of that, nay, impose not that upon me, of procuring the Father’s love for you; but know that this is his peculiar respect towards you, and which you are in him: “He himself loves you.”  It is true, indeed (and as I told you), that I will pray the Father to send you the Spirit, the Comforter, and with him all the gracious fruits of his love; but yet in the point of love itself, free love, eternal love, there is no need of any intercession for that: for eminently the Father himself loves you.  Resolve of that, that you may hold communion with him in it, and be no more troubled about it.  Yea, as your great trouble is about the Father’s love, so you can no way more trouble or burden him, than by your unkindness in not believing of it.’  So it must needs be where sincere love is questioned.

Communion In the Father’s Love

In John Owen’s book Communion with God, he talks a little about communion in general, then writes about communion with each Person of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Spirit.  He writes, “I come now to declare what it is in which peculiarly and eminently the saints have communion with the Father; and this is love — free, undeserved, and eternal love.”

The entire section about communing with God the Father is all about his wonderful love and how we should understand it, receive it, and respond to it.  Owen points out that when 1 John 4:8 says “God is love,” it means specifically, “the Father is love,” because what immediately follows is, “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.”  So the Apostle John specifically means the One who sent the Son when he says “God is love.”

The biblical passage continues, “In this is love, not that we have loved God [the Father] but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  Owen notices that the Scripture makes the Father’s love “antecedent to the sending of Christ, and all mercies and benefits whatever by him received.”  The Father’s love was prior to and foundational to the sending of the Son to pay the penalty for our sins.  Yes, God is full of wrath for unrepentant sinners.  Yes, God is just and holy and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.  Yet it is not as though Jesus saw his Father’s rage, had compassion on us poor sinners and decided to intervene.  That’s not what the Bible teaches at all.  Instead we find the Father, full of justice, holiness, and wrath, yet also full of love.  So much so that he can be called “love” itself.  And out of that overflowing love he decides to graciously show mercy on damnation-deserving rebels.  So Jesus came, as he often said, to do the will of his Father.  The Father was the original authority (as noted in a previous post) behind everything the Son did to redeem us from slavery to sin and free us from the Father’s coming wrath.

How we should meditate on the Father’s love!  It is foundational to our very existence, to the existence and purpose of the universe, and to the details of our own personal history.  If you are a believer, everything that has ever happened in your life or ever will happen — “good” and “bad” — has and will only come from the hands of a heavenly Father who has loved you from eternity past with a free, undeserved, and eternal love.  The Father’s wondrous love is so central, so foundational, so essential to absolutely everything in our lives.  It explains everything, and yet it’s an unfathomable mystery.  It exalts us to share in the divine nature, yet it humbles us to the dust.  And as Owen says, “His love ought to be looked on as the fountain from whence all other sweetnesses flow.“

Loved Because Valuable, or Valuable Because Loved?

There’s a song that plays on Christian radio that I just can’t stand.  It’s not that the entire song is horrible; it’s just that there’s a line in there that makes me grimace in pain every time I hear it.  It says (talking to Jesus), “‘Cause you would rather die than to ever live without me.”  Uggh!  That idea just irks me!  To me it says, “I’m so wonderful, so valuable, so lovely that Jesus just couldn’t stand the thought of life without me, and it was worth going through hell for him to have the prize which is me!”  I hope that’s not what the songwriter had in mind, but that’s what it conveys to me.  It conveys the attitude that Jesus loves me and desires me because I am inherently valuable.  There’s something in me that is so wonderful that it’s worth more than the life of God’s Son.  I am loved by God because I am valuable.

There are some other songs that I actually enjoy that say things like, “I am nothing without you [God],” and “I try to be good enough, but I’m nothing without your love.”  That last phrase, especially, got me thinking a little bit.  I started thinking about why things are considered valuable.  Take gold, for instance.  Well, don’t actually take it unless it belongs to you, because if you do you’ll be in big trouble.  Why?  Because gold is very valuable!  But why is gold valuable?  It’s just heavy, shiny yellow metal.  Who decided way back when that the metal gold had great worth?  On what basis did they decide that?  Because it’s heavy?  Because it’s pretty?  The fact is that there’s nothing inherently valuable about gold.  It is only valuable because human society has assigned value to it.  What if you took a trunkload of pure gold to a culture where old socks were considered of great value, but gold was not even noticed?  All your gold would be worthless, but your socks might make you rich!  Material things on this earth have value only to the degree they are desired or loved by people.  Gold is not loved because it is valuable, it is valuable because it is loved.

I think it’s the same with us and God.  God doesn’t love me because I’m inherently valuable; rather, I am valuable because God loves me!  It’s not that he would rather die than live without me because I’m so inherently wonderful he couldn’t stand the thought of eternity away from my presence; rather, it is that his loving me makes me a thing of worth.  I am nothing without his love.  Isaiah 40:15-17 says:

¹⁵Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. ¹⁶Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. ¹⁷All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Also consider Daniel 4:34-35, which reads as follows:

For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; ³⁵all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

In and of myself, I am–like all the other inhabitants of the earth–nothing.  Indeed, less than nothing!  Yet God chose to pour out his love on this pathetic piece of nothingness, and that makes me something special.  I’m still nothing in myself (so I cannot boast in me), but in Christ I am an adopted child of the Most High God, heir to everything he has to give, which is . . . well, everything!  I have been raised with Christ and seated in the heavenlies with him.  I will reign with him in his kingdom.  I will shine like the stars of heaven.  I will one day be glorified with him, rejoicing forever as living proof of his glorious grace.  Oh, I have great value!  Not because I am inherently valuable, but because I am loved by the Supreme One.  And all who are recipients of his redeeming love become vessels of honor.  I am valuable because I am loved by God!