Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Attributes of God - God's Love

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Attributes of GodIn this episode Jonny discusses the Love of GodWatch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this series, we're looking at the character or the attributes of God. And in this episode, we're looking at God's love. Let's dial in. I love the words of the hymn, In the Love of God. It says, Could we with ink the ocean fill, or were the love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong it shall forever more endure the saints and angels song. These lyrics are precious to me and to all of us as Christians because they're true. We affirm and we sing and we proclaim that God is a God of love.

Remember what I said in our first episode in this series, that A.W. Tozer says, what comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about you. And if you can think of the love of God and not have great thoughts about his love, then your view of God and my view of God is assuredly flawed, which means that the most important thing in our life,

namely our view of God, is tainted. Sinc the most important thing in our life, namely our view of God, is tainted. Sinclair Ferguson says this in his book, A Heart for God. He says, how you view God determines the quality and style of your Christian experience. Many Christians spend much of their lives paralyzed because although they have trusted Christ as Savior, they have never really seen what his sacrifice teaches us about the character of God. He gave us his son. He sent us his son. He handed over his son because he loves us.

In this episode, we're going to talk about God's profound love as we survey the scriptures. In Exodus 34, verse 6, Yahweh himself proclaims that the Lord, the Lord, he's talking about himself, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and faithfulness. God himself proclaims that he is abounding in love. That is over the top, spilling over, no room left, suitcase can't shut, stuffing over the seams, love. God is abounding in loving kindness. And do you know the reason that God is abounding in loving kindness? Or how is God's love different than yours or mine? Well, let me say this first and foremost. There are three descriptions in the Bible where the scripture says God is blank.

Number one, it says God is spirit in John 4. God is not a spirit. It says God is spirit. Number two, God is light. First John 1 says that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. And thirdly, in 1 John 4, it says God is love. And the reason that God is abounding in loving kindness is because love is not something that God possesses. Love is what God is. This isn't to minimize God to his love,

but R.C. Sproul says this, that God's essence is so closely related to his love that the scripture says he is love. And the love that God has or the love that God is, is abounding. God doesn't ration off his love. He's not a miser or a hoarder of his love. He abounds in loves and he gives it abundantly. And if you want to understand God, listen here, you must understand this love. If you miss this, you miss God. If you don't know God as a God of love, then you don't know God at all. In the rest of this episode,

I wanna highlight seven features of the love of God. And as I give these features, it's important to note that many of these features of the love of God exclusively apply to those who are God's children. But here are seven features of God's precious and profound love. Number one, God's love is eternal. As God himself has no beginning, neither did his love. I like what one pastor says. He says, God was love before time and space, because if he

is love, as we read in 1 John 4, he has been love before there was someone else to love. Then the question that we should ask is, who did God love when there was no one else to love but God? Well, the only one that God could love was himself. Before time and space, the only one was the Godhead, the Trinity. God has never been alone or in isolation because the Trinity, meaning that God is three in essence, but one in being,

stay tuned for an upcoming episode to further explain the important doctrine of the Trinity, but meaning that God has always had someone to love because he operates within a context of love within himself. John 3.35 says, the father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. John 5.19, for the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself is doing. John 17.24, father, I desire that they also whom you have given to me be with me where I am so that they may see my glory which you have given me,

for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Understand this about God's love. There is a deep love between the Father and the Son that is so tight, so deep, and so rich that they dwell in this love collectively amongst the Trinity. The way that the Godhead loves each other also is by promoting each other's glory. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit love constantly and seek to bring glory to each other. The Father says, I love my son so much that I'm going to show him how much I love him by creating a group of people and then redeeming those people to sing his praises. And the son says, father,

if they sing my praises, they will sing your praises and they will pray this way. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. In John 14, 31, Jesus says as he is moving towards the cross in obedience, he is doing so so that all the world may know that he loves the Father. But not only is God's love eternal or everlasting amongst the Godhead or the Trinity, God's love for you, if you're in Christ, is also eternal. Jeremiah 31 verse 3 says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have drawn you with loving kindness. God's love for you is everlasting. Ephesians 1 verse 4 says that he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and he predestined us, verse 5, by his great love.

God's love towards his children did not begin with their love for him. He loves you with an everlasting and eternal love. God's love for you had no commencement in time. It wasn't launched or set forth or begin at a certain point. God's love for you is eternal. And this eternal love that God has for you is also rich and deep and full, like God's love for himself. John 15 9 says, just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Understanding the eternality of God's love for you is crucial to fathom because it will set us free from the false idea that our love for God is the cause of His love for us. Not only that, understanding the everlasting nature of God's love will tell us that God's love is eternal. Number two, God's love is undeserved.

Because God's love for us is without beginning, we can know with great certainty that it is offered to us without regard to our performance. God's love is undeserved and uninfluenced. A.W. Pink says that there is nothing in the creature to attract or to prompt the love of God. The love which one creature has for another, he says, is because of something in them. But the love of God is free, spontaneous, and uncaused. The only reason God loves any is found because he chooses to do so.

Deuteronomy 7, verse 7 and 8 says, The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because you are more in number than any people. God is telling the people of Israel this. He says, for you are the fewest of all the peoples. He says, but because I set my love upon you, that's why I love you, not because you deserve to be loved. It is highly important, Pink says, if God is to be honored and the heart of his child established, that we should be clear on this precious truth. God's love for me and for each of his own was entirely unmoved by anything in them or in you.

What was there in me to attract the heart of God, Pink says? Absolutely nothing. But to the contrary, everything to repel him, everything calculated to make him loathe me, sinful, depraved, a mass of corruption with no good thing in me. God's love is completely undeserved. It is uninfluenced and he chooses to do so because it is in accordance with his good pleasure and will. Number three, God's love is declared. God's love for his people, for you, is not merely a conclusion

that has been drawn by putting some pieces together throughout the scripture. God's love is a conclusion because it is a declared and communicated reality by God. Our understanding of God's love is not just others reflecting or hoping that God is love, but rather listening to God himself in his word declare, proclaim, and communicate his love. Malachi 1 verse 2 says, I have loved you, declares the Lord. To an unworthy, obstinate, disobedient, unfaithful people, God says, I love you.

There is something profound here. I mean, think with me. That the maker of heaven and earth who declares the end from the beginning declares also, I have loved you. Isaiah 54 verse 10, though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you. John 15 verse 12, Jesus says, I have loved you. John 13, 34, as I professes and proclaims his love for his people. But not only does he declare this love with words,

number four, God demonstrates this love. Romans 5, 8, and we potentially know this verse with such a great deal of familiarity that it no longer amazes us. So we need to pray and ask God, even as we listen to it now, know this verse with such a great deal of familiarity that it no longer amazes us. So we need to pray and ask God, even as we listen to it now, that he would give us the grace to behold its truth with proper awe and wonder and gratefulness. But Romans 5, 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God demonstrates his love towards us as he hangs naked on a cross in order

that you and I might be reconciled to God. Ian Murray calls the cross of Calvary the pulpit of God's love. Let me ask you some questions. Do you ever doubt God's love? Do you ever wonder if God's love for you is real? The Bible and the scripture prompts us, look to the one who hangs in your stead on the cross of Calvary. Look to the one who bids you to come to him so that you might have life. Look to the one who cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In order that you yourself might hear, I will never leave you God's love is not just proclaimed with words. It is proved and demonstrated as Jesus dies on a cross by the one who dies in your stead, but not only dying, but who also rises from the grave

in order that you may have life if you believe in him. These are the most famous words in human history. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jerry Bridges says this, Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God's love for us. Number four, God's love is demonstrated. Number five, God's love is personal. I want to highlight this because I think it is so important and so precious to understand and to contemplate and to consider. If you've grown up in the church, you have memorized verses regarding the love of God, like John 3, 16, where it says, God so loves the world, or that God demonstrates his own love towards

us in Romans 5 8 and with memorizing these truths and growing up around them there can possibly seem to be an interpretation of God's love that is merely on a macro level rather than on a micro and personal level but this taints and diminishes the wonder of God's love. God's love for you is personal. He doesn't just love his children as a collective group, but like a good father, God loves his children individually and personally. Augustine says, I'm going to read that again. He loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love. I'm going to read that again. He loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love. I love that.

God's infinite love is not divided amongst the seemingly infinite amount of people to love. Rather, God's infinite love is offered and extended to you individually. Galatians 2.20 says, I have been crucified. This is Paul talking. I have been crucified. This is Paul talking. I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loved us and gave himself up for us. But that is actually an inaccurate reading of the verse. Paul doesn't say who loved us. He says, Paul reflecting on the life that he now lives as a Christian

is rooted in an understanding that God's love is personal and the sacrifice of Christ was personal. And because this love is personal, God's love is something that, number six, is experiential. God's love is experiential. Maybe this causes you to tilt your head, but God's love is not something merely to be theologically affirmed. It is something to be personally experienced.

John Piper says this, every true Christian, every true Christian knows that the love of God is not just an argument, but it is an experience. The psalmist says in Psalm 63, God's loving kindness is better than life. Psalm 34 says, I have tasted and I have seen that God is good. Romans 5 verse 5 says that the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through God's spirit. The child of God, the true child of God, relishes in a love that they have experienced. We can affirm doctrinally that God is love, but the love that God offers us in himself is a love that can be actually experienced. That's why the psalmist says in Psalm 34, taste and see that the Lord is good. Jonathan Edwards says that someone can affirm

honey is sweet without ever tasting honey. But the difference is the person who has tasted honey, experienced its sweetness, and then proclaims what they have tasted. God's love is not like just affirming the sweetness of honey. It's like tasting it, knowing it, and believing it, and experiencing it for yourselves. God's love is experiential, number six. And number seven, if you're in Christ, nothing can separate you from God's love. Romans 8 says, What can separate us from the love of God? Well, tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword. Verse 36, Paul says nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,

nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. An understanding of these realities will propel a life of love in service to Christ, that God loves you with an everlasting love, that his love for you is uninfluenced and undeserved. And much of what I've said in this episode is directed towards those who are in Christ. God does have a benevolent love towards all people. He sends rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He is patient towards us all. But maybe you as a listener are not a child of God, and you're wondering, how can this fatherly love that we can never be separated from, how can this saving love that God demonstrated towards me in Christ on the cross, how can that love be mine? How do I receive this love? And the scripture is super simple yet profound.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Turn to him, come to him, look to him, believe in him, and you shall be saved and receive this love. Stay dialed in.