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.

Problem Solved!

In 1 Samuel 2, Eli the High Priest is talking to his two sons, of whom it is said they “were worthless men [who] did not know the LORD” (a ringing endorsement, indeed!).  In rebuking his wicked sons, Eli asks a question that seems to encapsulate the dilemma of the Old Covenant.  Here is what he says (1 Sam. 2:25): “If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?”  The answer that is clearly implied is, “There is no one who can intercede between God and man!  If you continue to sin against Yahweh, my sons, you are dead!”

Of course this is not the whole of Old Testament theology.  There are many OT references to God being gracious, merciful, and longsuffering.  Yet the question remains unanswered, “Who can stand between God and Man as a mediator and interceder on behalf of Man?”  Since every man stands guilty before God for his own sins, there is no one who can act as a third-party mediator.  If I myself am at odds with God, I can’t intercede for you with God.  I need a mediator myself!  As God says in Isaiah 43:27, “Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me.”  This is a big problem!  The situation is completely hopeless as it stands in the Old Covenant.

Except for one thing: God’s promise of one to come who would be able to intercede for sinners.  “He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12).  Here we find someone who can successfully mediate between God and Man.  Someone who doesn’t have to answer for his own sin, and is thus able to answer for mine.  This man is Jesus Christ: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6a).

Glory be to God for his amazingly wise, shockingly unpredictable, unfathomably gracious solution to our seemingly insurmountable sin problem!