God's Love is Misunderstood

 

 I wrote a blog that appeared in February titled: “Is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament?” But that blog did not exhaust the subject of God’s character.  For more enlightenment, I would like to summarize a sermon by Rev. David Pawson.  Here we go.

A Gallup Poll in Britain recently asked people “Do you believe in God?”  Sixty seven percent said yes.  But… that’s an irrelevant and pointless statistic.  Britain is so cosmopoliton, they should have followed that question up with “Which God do you believe in?”  It could be Allah, or one of the Hindu gods, after all.  But even more important is the question “What kind of God do you or do you not believe in?” I’ve talked to a number of atheists and asked, “what kind of God that you’ve envisioned that you don’t  believe in?” When they got through explaining, I was able to respond, “I could be an atheist too, because I don’t believe in that kind of God either.”

So let’s broaden this and discuss, What kind of God do Christians believe in, nowadays?  I’m afraid that 9 out of 10 today would immediately say, “A God of love.”  Because the majority of pastors and evangelists have been preaching a God of love for over a hundred years, in their delivery of the Gospel.  More recently, an adjective has been added to that: a majority seems to now believe in “a God of unconditional love.”  That phrase has only been popular for 25 years, yet it has been preached around the world. 

But that is not our Gospel for evangelizing.  I believe we are mistaken, Biblically, to teach the unbeliever that God is love, as a feature of the Gospel.  Such is not the Gospel we have been given by God; and it is not the Gospel they preached in the New Testament days.  Such a Gospel tends to mislead.  The Bible never adds “unconditional” to God’s love, either. We all happen to love adjectives--unlike the Bible.  We sing “Amazing Grace,” yet the Bible never attaches Amazing to grace.  It simply talks about grace. There is now a chorus called “Outrageous Grace.”  Amazing must have lost its novelty, so we need a more sparkling adjective.  But these are sentimental rather than Scriptural, I’m afraid. 

I’d like to give you four main reasons why the Gospel to be preached is not “the God of love.”

Reason #1:  The Bible actually says very little about the love of God. But people have cherry-picked those verses that do, and preach on them endlessly, so people think that that’s a key phrase appearing frequently in Scripture. But here are most of the Books, and their count of verses about the love of God: 

Genesis:  0.  Exodus:  1. Leviticus and Numbers:  0. Deuteronomy:  2. Joshua, Judges, Ruth:  0 each.  I, II Samuel, I II Kings:  0 each. Psalms talks about the “loving-kindness” of God. That phrase is an English translation of a Hebrew word which really means “covenant love.”  It is never applied to people outside the Abrahamic, or Hebrew covenant. It has a strong note of loyalty in it, loyalty to the covenant.  God loves those who are within His covenant.  But there is no mention of His love for the World in the entire Old Testament. Continuing, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes:  0 each.  You’d be shocked to know that Isaiah has only one verse about God’s love.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel, one each.  Of the 12 minor prophets, only Hosea has one verse.

So, the Old Testament does not back “God is love” anywhere, except to the Jews in Psalms—and that’s not the love we were thinking about.  Song of Solomon is on love, but it’s human love.  Of course, it’s an allegory of God’s love, but it’s not directly satisfying, being that it’s an allegory. Hard to take to heart about loving God by trying to identify with Solomon’s rapture over different parts of his wives’ (or concubines’) body.   

Oh, you might be saying, God’s love, then, is in the New Testament everywhere.  I’m afraid you’re wrong. You would think Jesus talks about it in the four Gospel accounts, right?  Matthew strikes out, 0. Likewise, Luke and Mark.  But John does.  Everybody knows John 3:16. But Rev. Pawson refers to a previous session where he mentions the mistranslation and misunderstanding of the verse.  Here are my words on that.  The “correctest” meaning of the Greek words in that verse, per the Pure Word translation (that translation slaughters the nice flow of words that other translations have; but it is great for analyzing details of Greek meaning—so they are for scholars, not for readers).  Here is what the Greek words mean:

God has loved in such a manner the satan’s world, so that He Gave His Son, the Only Begotten Risen Christ, in order that whoever is Continuously by his choice Committing for the Result and Purpose of Him, should not perish, but definitely should, by his choice, be Continuously Having Eternal Life.     

Yes, that’s a mouthful, but carefully observe the words “continuously,” and ”by his choice,” and their contexts.    These verses express an ongoing need for us to choose to abide with Christ’s commands and purposes, in order to continue to have eternal life (see John 15:6’s warning).  So this verse definitely doesn’t fit the word “unconditional” for God’s love; He has conditioned His love upon continued obedience and commitment.  We need to intentionally, day by day,  strive to abide with Christ, and make our choice to be more like Him. We choose that we want to be sanctified, and there are works to perform, and evil not to perform, to attain that likeness of His holiness. We need to be reliably doing that to obtain heaven.

It becomes not an easy evangelism, to give the usual translation of 3:16, and then try to tell everyone that “they are wrong in their assumptions about the famous verse; they need to cover Greek for awhile with you.” So pastors skip the difficulty and ignore this crucial detail, and preach “unconditional” when it is not.  Too many people relax on sanctification.  So, many people, in the future, will therefore be surprised when they are denied heaven.

Even the loving apostle John only has one more verse (besides 3:16) on the love of God in the Book of John.  But the biggest surprise of all is the Book of Acts, where the Gospel that moved the world was preached.  I assume that the Gospel was nearest to perfection when preached then, because God enormously blessed their work with signs and miracles, and thousands were converted.  They knew Greek backward and forward, they lived in the culture that understood the meaning of each word. They had the apostles right there, who had heard straight from the lips of Jesus Himself, and they got answers to the meaning of doctrines.  But here’s the shocker:  Not one verse in the whole of the Book of Acts mentions the love of God. Now a serious question arises:  Shouldn’t we follow their successful model? Do you really want to introduce a huge variant from their Gospel, when you consider that God blessed theirs? I mean, what have we got from today’s Gospel—higher crime and violence, many of us are totally confused on men and women’s roles, and even about what gender we are; we vote extremely leftward politicians into office, our children at school get dumber by the year as Christianity and the Bible are banned from campuses. Compare  our results with theirs.  Which is really best?

Continuing, Romans:  1 verse.  I and II Corinthians:  0.  Saving space, only I John mentions God’s love more than once or twice.  Nearly at the end (4:7), you find the three words, “God is love.”  Yet those words are not in a section describing God.  They are in a section exhorting believers to love one another.  It’s a section on behavior, not belief. Finally, we come to Revelation.  The only mention of love in that book has a negative attached:

Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten (Revelation 3:19)

That’s it for God’s love in our New Testament. All that should tell us something and make us think. Flat out, the Bible cannot be described as a Book about preaching God’s love.

Well, Rev. Pawson said he would bring you four points; we have only covered one.  The second point is, Every mention about God’s love is addressed to people who are already redeemed.  Well, we are not here to make you a one-point Calvinist, so let us stick to his point.  As far as we know, nobody who has not been redeemed ever, Scripturally,  heard about God’s love, as a theme through preaching, in those days. By the way, I have never denied that God loves us; I am merely pushing the idea that it is not great to evangelize on it. Rev. Pawson considers that God’s love is precious, a pearl NOT to be thrown to the swine (Matthew 7:6). Pigs don’t appreciate pearls.  Unredeemed people do not understand God’s love (more on this later). I add that the phrase about the love of God is too easily misunderstood when presented to those unfamiliar to the Scripture.  It works for the worse, and it gets twisted, much to the delight of hell’s masters.  It leads to “easy believism,” I think. God’s holiness and wrath are underemployed, and He becomes a soft mark for us to attempt to manipulate. 

Point #3:  When Scripture uses the words “love of God,” the love that we are thinking of doesn’t come from well-known Greek words for “love.”  The Greeks were far more careful than the English about the use of the word “love.”  They had different words for different kinds of love.  There were four: 1) “epithumia,” which is a love from addiction.  You feel you need it to survive.  Nothing can get in your way to getting it, even hurting other things or people, including yourself.   2) “Eros” is the love of attraction.  Obviously that would be love between two genders, as God intended (unless you are “woke”).  So this attraction, say between men and women, means you want to learn everything about them—the opposite sex are different, right?—which is meant to take a lifetime to explore the joys of.  A marriage needs eros to survive—even beyond when sex becomes absent in old age.  3) “Philia” is affection, or deep friendship, such as what David and Jonathan had (they were not gay). 

The world knows and expresses those three kinds of love, but uses the same English word for all three, unfortunately.  But there was one other word for “love” in the Greek language, which was rarely used—because it expressed a love that was Not common. Namely  4) “agape.” It stressed action.  You can’t have agape without acting in love.  It has an emotional connection, because it is usually born out of compassion, for someone in a desperate need. But it doesn’t become agape until you act to meet that need. That is the only word for “love” that is used of God in your New Testament. Our need is a Savior because of our sins offending a holy God.  So when you find the word love related to God, you find immediately a mention of the Cross (First John 3:16, for example). This is what God did, acting out of compassion for the human race. This is how we know God loves us, because Jesus the Christ died for the sinner and the ungodly. In I John where it says “God is love,” it goes immediately on to say, “and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

What Christians did (which makes preaching on “God’s love” not a good idea to those unfamiliar to the Bible), was to twist this rare word agape–rare because it moves to help those who have been unworthy and often don’t even say “thank you” for when it is offered. God’s love even includes for His enemies. But when you evangelize “God loves you,” they will think, not of agape, but one of the other, more common, uses of the word, which expresses easy affection.  But truth is, God is not fond of us, not attracted to us, when we are unsaved and in rebellion to Him—He is actually angry with us.  Our rebellion against His best rule in our lives makes us His enemy.  His agape love caused Him to give His Son to die anyway.

Thus, you need to learn about the wrath of a holy God before you will appreciate His love. That’s why Romans begins (first two chapters) with the wrath of God rather than the love of God.

The wrath of God before the love of God–and you should linger on the first point.  Do not give His offense at our sin short shrift–most people, by studies, give themselves a pass, and a fair certainty of heaven, because they’re “better than the bad guys.”  Nor ignore the subject of hell.  Fact is, most people do not even believe in hell.  Emphasize His need of hearing our repentance from our sin, and our expressed desire to stop offending Him and quit the sin—with help by appealing to the Holy Spirit. The point is, these ideas are seldom taught from our pastors and teachers.

Rev. Pawson’s  final Point #4:  Neither Jesus, nor any of the apostles ever preached publicly about the love of God. “Check me out in your Bible,” he says. If I’m right, tell people the Bible says it, not me. Remember, for reasons we’ve brought up here, it was clearly a pearl.  Keep the concept among the Redeemed, lest it will most always be misunderstood.  You should evangelize like Paul or John did.  When Paul spoke to the Jews, he quoted their prophets or poets, the Old Testament. Then, since they already knew about God, he taught them about Jesus.  When he spoke to the non-Jews, he began with teaching them about God. They needed to understand God, or they won’t be interested in reconciling to Him in fear and worship.  (Read Acts 17 for an example of that approach).  Note also in Romans 1:16-17a:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith

If you start your evangelism with praising what Jesus did, they might be a Jesus fan, rather than the deeper truth of thanking Him for reconciling us to His Father.  If a Jesus fan, their attachment might blow away in times of stress.  They, too, must ‘take up our cross’ and follow Him.  We don’t want to end up, like the Sower parable, on shallow foundation—it makes it easier to lose our salvation.

May God help us to revolutionize our evangelism and help to create a revolutionized country, eager to know Him.