The Sovereign Love of God
Unconditional yet Particular
While it’s true that God is love, this doesn’t imply that he’s obligated to express that love to everyone. In fact, God’s sovereignty means he has the freedom to choose whom to bestow his love upon. As John Murray so eloquently put it, God’s love is inherent to his nature, yet it’s not necessarily tied to redeeming or adopting undeserving sinners like us.
Electing Love: A Sovereign Choice
God’s love is distinguishing, meaning it’s bestowed upon and experienced by those who are saved – the elect. Although God loves the non-elect, it’s not a saving love. If it were, they would certainly be redeemed. God’s eternal, electing love is particular, not universal. He displays his love in various ways and degrees, depending on his good pleasure, purpose, and the most effective way to bring honor and glory to his name.
Common Grace vs. Saving Grace
We see God’s love manifested in two ways: common grace and saving grace. Common grace is his love as creator, consisting of providential kindness, mercy, and longsuffering. It’s an indiscriminate and universal love, received and experienced by both the elect and non-elect. Saving grace, on the other hand, is the love of God as savior, consisting of redemption, regenerating grace, and eternal life. This discriminate and particular love leads him to bestow the grace of eternal life in Christ, received and experienced only by the elect.
Five Distinguishable Ways of God’s Love
D. A. Carson identifies five ways the Bible speaks of God’s love. First, there’s the peculiar love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father. Second, God’s providential love over all creation. Third, God’s saving love toward the fallen world. Fourth, God’s particular, effectual, selecting love for his elect. Fifth, God’s love toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way.
The Source of Salvation
The saving love of God is the source of the atoning work of Christ. God didn’t love people because Christ died for them; Christ died for them because God loved them. The death of the Savior is not about restoring something in people to win God’s love. Rather, God’s love constrains to the death of Christ and is supremely manifested therein. In a word, the saving love of God is giving.
Remembering God’s Love
In the busyness of life, it’s easy to forget who God is, what he has done for us, and who we are because of him. Let’s not forget that there was nothing in us or what we might choose to do or believe that constrained God to set his saving love upon us. It’s to the saving love of God that we trace the cause of our predestination and adoption as sons.
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