I wrote a blog in January titled: “Is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament?” That blog touched on 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 over half 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 30 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 a few—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 the NKJV:
For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Now the Pure Word translation;
note all the words substituting for the word “believes:”
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. This translation refines the
word “belief” so that it is more than a mental assent. It expresses 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 too). 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 should 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 is not easy for a pastor to give the Pure Word version of the verse, and
how they need to listen to a “truer explanation of Greek before they get the
wrong idea.” So pastors skip the difficulty and ignore crucial details. But
they go beyond that simple harm and then
preach “unconditional” when it is not. Then too many people relax on the
effort of 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 several times.
I assume that the Gospel was nearest to perfection when preached evangelically then,
because God enormously blessed their work with signs and miracles, and
thousands were converted. We can believe they taught it like that; they
emphasized words of godliness and commitment in the Anti-Nicene Fathers albums.
They must have had the right approach; 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 how God blessed
theirs? I mean, how have we improved society from preaching today’s Gospel—we
still have higher crime and violence, many of us are totally confused on men
and wives’s roles, and even about what gender we are; we vote extremely
leftward politicians into office, favor abortion; our children at school get
dumber by the year as Christianity and the Bible are banned from campuses.
Compare our results with theirs. As Acts show, they have “turned Rome
over” with their preaching. Which is really best?
Continuing on preaching the love of God: 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 of I John (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. 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.
Point #2: Every mention about God’s love is
addressed to people who are already
redeemed. As far as we know, from studies about
what they said, few heard about God’s love, as a theme through evangelistic preaching.
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).
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
the unsaved. It works gets twisted, much to the delight of hell’s
masters. It often leads to “easy believism.” God’s holiness and wrath are
little dwelt on, and, to them, God becomes a soft mark.
Point #3: When Scripture uses the words “love of
God,” what we are thinking of doesn’t come from 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 need it to
survive. Nothing can get in your way to getting it; you even hurt other
things or people, including yourself. 2) “Eros” is the love of sexual
attraction. That would be love between two genders, as God intended.
So this attraction, say between men and women, means you want to learn
everything about your lover—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.” That
word 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.” Many people are unaware of the depth our sin has been to a holy God.
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.
A good presentation would be the wrath of God, then the love of God--and you
should linger on the first point ‘way more. 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." But God is not making that kind of comparison. He compares
our unholiness to His demands. The current preaching, by not dwelling on that,
might not change their mind from feeling “better;” they might still believe that
deficient Gospel. We cannot ignore the subject of hell. Fact is, 60% of
people do not even believe that hell exists. Emphasize that God wants to
hear 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 just
come to be a Jesus fan, rather than the deeper truth of thanking Him for
reconciling us to His Father. If someone is a Jesus fan, their shallow
Gospel could mean 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 Buiding 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.
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