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.“

Scriptural Support for the Previous Post

I said I would give biblical support for Owen’s statement about the distinct way in which each Person of the Godhead communicates grace to the believer:

It remains only to intimate, in a word, in what this distinction lies, and what is the ground of it.  Now, this is, that the Father does it by the way of original authority; the Son by the way of communicating from a purchased treasury; the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.

The Father does it by way of original authority.  The Father is the ultimate giver; the divine Initiator.  John 3:16 affirms this by telling us it was the Father’s love that led to the sending of the Son.  Every blessing we have in Christ is therefore due to the Father’s initiative.  Jesus said he didn’t do anything on his own authority, but only what his Father told him (John 8:28).  Owen points to James 1:18 (and I would add verse 17) which says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.”  God was the great initiator in the work of Christ.  It is ultimately through the Father’s love, the Father’s will, and the Father’s authority that we receive grace.

The Son communicates grace from a purchased treasury.  Ephesians 1 says that we receive every spiritual blessing from the Father (another support for the previous point about the Father).  But if you scan the chapter you will find over and over again that we receive the Father’s spiritual gifts only and completely “in Christ.”  By the sacrificial shedding of his blood in death, Christ removed the wrath of God from us (Rom. 3:25), redeemed us (Eph. 1:7), brought us near to God (Eph. 2:13), conquered the Devil on our behalf (Heb. 2:14), purified our conscience so we can serve God (Heb. 9:14), gave us confident access to God’s presence (Heb. 10:19), sanctified us (Heb. 13:12), ransomed us from the futility of unbelief (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rev. 5:9), freed us from our sins (Rev. 1:5), and keeps cleansing us from all sin (1 John 1:7).  That should be enough to show that Jesus purchased every bit of grace we receive from the Father.

The Spirit communicates grace by way of immediate efficacy.  He is the one acting directly in us to manifest God’s grace in our lives.  Owen points to Romans 8:11 which states that the Father raises us to life spiritually “through his Spirit who dwells in you.”  So regeneration comes from the Father, through the Son, by means of the Spirit.  I think this is true of all grace.  If you go a little further in Romans 8, verse 13 says, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  This shows that, while we could legitimately say we are sanctified by the Father or by the Son, it is actually the Spirit who is working directly in us to enable us to kill sin in our life.  While we’re in Romans 8, we could note verse 26, which says, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”  Again, it is the Spirit who is the immediate worker in our spiritual lives.

So I think it is very biblical to have this perspective: Justification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Adoption comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Sanctification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  “Fill in the blank with any spiritual blessing” comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.

Distinct Communication of Grace

In John Owen’s Communion with God, he establishes that Christians can have communion with each Person of the Godhead distinctly; with the Father, with the Son, and with the Spirit.  He says in regard to God’s communication of grace to the believer,

It remains only to intimate, in a word, in what this distinction lies, and what is the ground of it.  Now, this is, that the Father does it by the way of original authority; the Son by the way of communicating from a purchased treasury; the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.

In other words, when it comes to receiving any aspect of God’s grace, the Father is the ultimate giver.  He is the originator of it all.  From him the plan and the power springs.  He is the divine Initiator.  The Son then communicates the grace of his Father to us by purchasing it for us on the cross.  Without the wrath-satisfying sacrifice of the Son, we would deserve only damnation and punishment from the Father.  The grace we receive from the Father is due only and completely to the cross-work of Jesus: his death, resurrection, and exaltation.  The Holy Spirit, then, is the immediate actor in our lives.  He works directly in us to bring the blood-bought grace of the Father to us.  There is, of course, overlap in any full description of the work of Father, Son, and Spirit, since there is but one God; yet I think Owen is basically correct in his analysis.

I don’t have time right now, so maybe next time I’ll provide Scriptural support for the above description of the distinct work of Father, Son, and Spirit.  After all, Owen’s words are worthless if they’re not from the Word of God.