Divine Love (John Witherspoon) | The Whole Counsel

Welcome to The Whole Council. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Chuck Baggett, and we're going through a book entitled Salvation in Full Color, and this is a collection of 20 sermons by Great Awakening ministers in America, and it's on the topic of salvation.

The unique benefit of this book is that these sermons are not only wonderful sermons preached by extraordinarily blessed men, but they are sermons that are laid out in a theological order, and this is a theological order that we feel is biblical, but also it's a theological order that these men would have agreed with.

So we begin with certain truths that a man must be gripped by before other truths can really mean what they ought to mean to him, and this week we're looking at a sermon by John Witherspoon on the love of God, and we'll talk about this in a few minutes, but I really think that this topic is one that illustrates what we've been saying in the past weeks about the importance of order.

Well, let me say some things about Witherspoon. You may not have known that John Witherspoon is a Scottish Presbyterian pastor who pastored for 25 years in Scotland before he accepted a call to come to the American colonies.

When he arrived here, he came to a Presbyterian situation where the Great Awakening, which had already been going on for about 30 years by the time he got there, had created a division in the Presbyterians.

You had kind of old lights, new lights, people that felt that the Great Awakening was too emotional, and it wasn't, you know, the way we've always done it. So you can kind of think of traditionalists and revival men, and in this situation, my sympathies are with the revival men.

I feel like they were right, and though the revival, like every work that we're a part of on earth, wasn't perfect, I think it was really a wonderful work of the Lord. But when he arrived in the midst of this divided Presbyterian situation, his godliness and his earnestness about spiritual things really won the hearts of the revival side of the people, and his academic rigor and education, and he was well-respected for his intellect, as well as his gracious demeanor, won the other side.

So he brought a lot of healing to them. He was, strangely, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Of the many books that he wrote, his book on justification and regeneration is one that he's best known for.

Before we look at the sermon, I want to say that while he was president at Princeton University, which at the time was called the College of New Jersey, and he was a pastor and an author, what he was known for in his own day really was his life.

When he died, there was a religious newspaper that recorded his death, and they said that few men were ever more anxious to walk close with God and to have a solid, righteous, and holy life that adorned the doctrine of the gospel.

Beside the daily devotions of the closet and the family, the article says, Witherspoon regularly set apart with his household the last day of every year for fasting, humiliation, and prayer. He often spent days in the secret exercise of this fasting and prayer as the occasion required.

So many, many impressive things. Guy has a lot of gifts, but it's his life that was most memorable.

Let me give you a quick overview of the sermon before we talk about it. Basically, the sermon gives us seven characteristics of the love of Christ and a couple of applications. So the seven characteristics are.

The love of Christ is an everlasting love. The love of Christ is free and unmerited. The love of Christ is unsolicited. The love of Christ is a distinguishing love. The love of Christ is an expansive love.

The love of Christ is a most generous and disinterested love. And the love of Christ is a most fruitful, active, and beneficent love.

So before we even get to those main points, we both feel that this is a sermon, a topic, that illustrates the benefit of this book probably more than any of the others, because it is a topic or a theme in Scripture that is so significant.

The love of God, even for his enemies. And yet it's a theme that is made weightless to many ears in Western evangelicalism because of the lack of understanding of other truths that you need to have clear if you're to understand love.

So a small view of God, big view of me, the idea that someone says to me, well, you do know that God loves you, don't you? You know, the attitude in our heart, even though we probably wouldn't say it, is, well, of course he does.

I'm a lovable person, you know. So no shock. The whole idea that Newton spoke of when he wrote Amazing Grace, it's foreign to many. And really it's foreign to us. It's foreign to my own heart when I don't keep before my mind's eye certain facts that are fundamental.

Facts about God and about me. The very things that we've been talking about in the sermons leading up to this. So I guess we could simply say it this way. What you think of the person who's talking and what you think of you, the person who's listening, that really does affect how you weigh their words.

So if we have a wrong view of God, the idea that he loves us, it's just not astonishing. So if we go back and start with those early sermons in the book where God is described and sin is described, then for the next statement that comes across your ears to be that God loves you, it is one of the great wrecking balls of Scripture.

It's just like he says here, his opening line to the whole sermon, he says, redeeming love is certainly the most delightful of all themes to every real Christian. And that's true when we're thinking rightly.

And while Witherspoon doesn't develop this idea of order to the degree that you just did, there are a couple of quotes I thought that really pinpoint the fact that he does agree with that. He sees it.

So, for instance, he said the believer can owe but little if the deliverance is not great. If you don't see what you've been delivered from, you don't love much if you haven't been forgiven much. And then another one.

Why is the love of Christ so cold a subject to the generality of the world? Is it not because they have no sense of their guilt and misery? So, just what you've said, the order is important.

Yeah.

And when we talk about attributes, you know, when we discuss the attributes of God, classically they've been divided into two large categories. The greatness of God, so infinite goodness, and the goodness of God.

And this one falls under goodness. But there is a particular danger with that. When someone tells us that the Bible explains the eternity of God, we come to that and we say, I don't know anything about eternity, so I'm going to let the scripture explain it.

But when we say, I'm going to talk to you from the scripture about the love of God, we say, well, I know what love is. And so we are tempted then to kind of think of a human type of love, just expanded to a God size.

And then the result is we have fashioned God in our own image. The uniqueness of God's love is really one of the main points of the sermon and what makes it so helpful even to a mature Christian.

Yeah, we can't fall into the danger of defining God's attributes by us and what we understand them to be. We have to define them by God himself. So let's get into the sermon, and we won't be able to cover all seven of these, certainly not in detail, but we do want to hit some of the high points that we think are most significant.

And I think we have to start with the first one. We do have to include it, that the love of Christ is an everlasting love.

When we think of everlasting, we don't want to limit ourselves to thinking just it will last a long time. So like our love can falter. God's love won't falter. But think of everlasting. Think of going to a timeline and picking a place on the timeline of human history.

So a dot, and then draw an arrow going both directions. So if you could go, like Tozer said, if you could go to the beginning of human existence, the beginning of creation, and then you're at the edge of that void.

Tozer says, just in your mind, just leap off into eternity past. God is there, and God is loving his people. And if we go to the opposite edge of eternity future, where we cannot imagine what it's like to exist without the passage of time, without thousands of years mattering.

And if you could go to the furthest reach of your imagination in the future and just jump off the edge, God is loving his people there as well.

Yeah.

And like you were saying a moment ago about the difficulty of reckoning with eternality or being everlasting. When we think about this, it doesn't take long for us to realize that it's a concept that we don't completely grasp.

You can go back so far, and there's just nothing to really reckon with before that. Witherspoon makes the point, though, that while we have just a poor concept of this, it should not in any way be a stumbling block to our gratitude.

It's there. It's big. It's bigger than we can comprehend. But it is there, and our hearts should respond.

You know, when we think of God's omnipresence, that God is in every place that we go. So when we came into the office today to film this, God preexists us here. He's here. He's at our homes at the same time.

But think about temporal, the existence of God in every moment, because He's eternal. He's not just the oldest being, the unending being. He is a timeless being. So, you know, in a sense we can think that God is in every human moment all at once, past, present, and future at once.

That means every moment we enter into as believers in Christ, every moment God preexists me, and He has loved me infinitely in that moment and in this moment. If I ever stop and try to give some effort there, you know, to be careful, I find that to be such a motivating thing.

And we'll talk about that at the end, how this ought to move us.

Right. Well, second, the love of Christ is free and unmerited. And we do have to be careful when we talk about Christ's love being free here. It is not free in the sense that there's no cost to it, but it is free in that there's no obligation tied to it, to Him.

He's not obligated to love us, but He loves us freely.

Yeah, when we talk about free grace, it took me a long time growing up in church to figure out what that was actually speaking of. I used to think it meant that because He paid the price, He offered it to me and I didn't have to pay anything,.

Which there's truth there.

But free grace is that when God's love is undeserved, like you said, it's not obligated. Therefore, He is free to do with it what He wishes. So when we talk about the love of God for us, we're talking about His love for those who do not deserve love.

We have no claim upon that. We forfeited that in our foreparents, Adam and Eve's sin. And we've all joined in with that since birth. So if we can get that right in our mind, we can realize that. So every aspect of God's love is free.

That means in an unobligated, uncontrolled way, He is loving me. The old writers used to say it this way, He draws every reason for this love from Himself, nothing from us.

And that view of love that He's free to do with it what He wishes is made all the more wonderful when we realize that He does then place it upon us. When you consider that we are a people who are not just apathetic toward Him or needy, but that we are actively rebellious, He turns His love in that direction.

While we were yet sinners, Christ loved us.

And again, as long as we are under the delusion that something of our efforts and something of our resolutions can in any way earn this love, and therefore it's obligated, because if it's something that we deserve, then God would be sinful not to give it to us.

And it would be compelled by righteousness, so to speak. But as long as we live under that, and we all do, as long as we live under that illusion that something about us does require God to offer us love, we will never really feel the full saving weight of being loved, even though we're unlovely.

Another thing he mentions is it's unsolicited. To me, this is even sweeter than unmerited. And this is not a topic that we often hear, perhaps because we don't consider it, maybe we don't agree with it.

But even the phrase unsolicited love sounds strange to us. No soliciting, that means no selling. Unsolicited love in modern language would be this. There is nothing about the love of God that the lost man, woman, child really wanted.

We didn't cry out to him and say, I don't deserve your love, but I so desperately want this pure and holy love that comes from a pure and holy God. We really would have preferred, honestly, for God to stay at a distance.

So the picture in our mind that humanity is just pleading with God, won't you love me is actually a false picture. We didn't seek it. We didn't want it. And yet God brought it. God hunted us down with this love.

So when we're thinking biblically of the love of God, there's a love that is infinite. It's in every moment before we are in every moment, past, present, future at once. It's undeserved, as you mentioned.

There's nothing in us that cries out for love or calls for love, that merits love. And it's a love that's so pure that in our fallen self-centered state, we didn't even ask it. But not only does he provide this love, this love storms the gates of our heart and conquers us.

That is humbling, too. I think we've talked about this before, but in what other realm of life would we accept that? That I love someone. We would be offended if someone told us, I love you, but there's nothing about you that's lovely.

I just choose to love you in spite of you. That would make us so angry, proud. God humbles us, and we hear that, and it's okay.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's a great test of where you're at spiritually. The proud church member hears that. There's nothing about you that I find lovely, but I've decided to love you anyway, and it is so offensive.

And the humble Christian hears it and says, I'm so glad to hear that, because there's no other love I could ever have expected.

Fourth, this love of Christ is a distinguishing love.

Yeah, so distinguishing. Again, it's a strange phrase, but it really is a precious one. When we think about ourselves, I mean, I know what I think about Chuck, and I don't know what Chuck thinks about me.

I'm not asking. Everybody that we are around a lot, they have certain qualities that we think. So Chuck, if you guys don't know Chuck, Chuck, you're generally a quiet guy, a thoughtful guy, a kind guy, gentle, but not a pushover.

There's a theological rebar in your soul. And so I think of a lot of things. We've been friends for over 30 years. There's a lot of things that that distinguishes you. And there's things about ourselves that we think.

We think people think of us a certain way. So I mean, I'm not going to say what I think people think of me, but we're like, so if I walk into a room and everybody turns, there's just this quiet voice inside of us that says, they think this, and it might be very embarrassing or you might be puffed up.

But to realize that the single most outstanding, remarkable thing about you, that's so extraordinary, that it distinguishes you above every other feature, male, female, what race you are, education, no education, age, nothing compares to that distinguishing mark that God has set his love upon me.

And for us to come to grips with that is so sanctifying.

Yeah, I was thinking about the passage in Peter. You were not a people, but now you are the people of God. And that is distinguishing. It's wonderfully distinguishing. And it is the work of God. And we cannot pretend that we understand why God does that.

Or we better not pretend that we look inside and say, well, here's obviously the reason why he does that. As you said earlier, he draws his reasons from himself. I was thinking about a hymn, How Sweet and Awful is the Place with Christ Within the Doors.

The hymn says, While all our heart and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cry with thankful tongues, Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?

And that is a mystery.

Yeah, it reminds me of a hymn by Isaac Watts when he talks about the distinguishing love that God gave to his people, even in eternity past, and was not given when angels sin. So the sinning angels fell and justice and wrath cast them down.

But man, vile man, prefers himself, and mercy lifts him to a crown. You know, one sin on the act of the angels and that one third that fell, there is no offer of grace. 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 sins in my heart.

And I wake up and the Scripture assures me that the mercies that Christ purchased for me are new again this morning.

Well, this love is a disinterested love. What does that mean, John, disinterested?

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a compliment, does it? Like, I love you, but I'm not really interested in you. It's not that. Disinterested is the old 17th and 18th century way of saying that the love that I'm offering you is not interested in what you can give me back.

Disinterested is what we would call unconditional. God loves us simply because, in the mystery of his perfection, he has chosen to love what is unlovely. And he doesn't do it because he's going to get something back from you.

So that really answers, I think, one of the great lies that I hear a lot, and that is something like this. God loves you, but it's because he intends to use you. So you're going to work in his kingdom, you're going to serve in his army, you're going to worship him, and at the end of this life of service, you haven't really given God that much.

But it is a little, and you've scratched his back, and now, eternity, he scratches your back.

He gives you heaven.

And so it's almost like, okay, he's very generous, but he is using me, and that's why he loves me. And that's the way the enemy presents him to us. That is as far from the truth as possible.

It also tends to present God in a view that says he's needy. He needs us. We need to accomplish these things for him, or they don't get done kind of idea. And that's also far from the truth. He doesn't need us.

He's not using us. It is not a, he doesn't love us with the condition that we meet those things, as you said. Witherspoon, in making this point, says, it was giving to those from whom he could receive nothing and emptying himself of that glory to which the whole creation could not make any addition.

And not just any one individual of creation, but the whole of creation could not add anything to his glory. And so how foolish it is to think that it's a return. He's looking for the return, the benefit, like we do.

Yeah. Yeah.

Even at our best, we do expect some benefit, some return from pouring out our life, loving someone, even if it's just the kind of the deep satisfaction that, well, at least I'm the kind of person that was willing to sacrifice, you know.

You know, with your family, with your kids, you would like to, when you die, you would like them to want to put something nice on the tombstone, like, he was a great dad. You know, he was patient with me.

He loved us. And you think, well, look, can I at least have that? You know, okay, you're not going to pay me back for all the, you know, all the diapers, but can you give me that? And, but what if, what if our love simply was fueled by love and not the thought of, well, I love you and I'm going to benefit a little bit from you.

I mean, I joking, I joke with my kids all the time. My kids are, Chuck knows my kids are like all getting out of college age and doing some further education and about to finish that. And I say to him, I want you to get out and get a really good job.

And I want my Christmas present to represent this new job. But, so that's not, so I'm a good picture of an interested love, not disinterested. A couple of great applications for the sermon. One is that when a person rejects the claims of Christ, a man may measure the guilt of that by what he thinks of Christ's love.

So if he thinks Christ wants to use him, as we mentioned, and he rejects this King's claims, then, you know, his guilt in his own mind, his feeling of guilt is pretty small. Well, the guy was just trying to use me.

If he thinks that the love of God is a small thing, it's, you know, hey, everybody's loved and it's just a common thing. It's not a distinguishing, wonderful thing. And he rejects it. Then he has a small sense of guilt.

If he thinks he earned God's love, but then told God, no thanks. It's not a big deal. But if what Witherspoon has said is really scriptural, summed up in these points, and it's true, then to not love him is the most heinous of sins.

You know, if you talk to a man and say, are you a sinner, do you need a savior?

They'll say, well, yeah.

Most of us will say, well, sure, I'm a sinner. I'm not perfect. And if you ask them, would you be willing to write down on a piece of paper your two or three most embarrassing, shocking sins? Well, they probably wouldn't do it, but if you could get them to do it, I doubt that not loving Christ back would ever be on their list.

And yet, it's the great sin.

Yeah, if you think of the great commandment, to break that commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, if it's not obeyed, then it must be a great sin. And that also leads, then, to the second of these applications, that love is the motive for obedience.

John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

So clearly, the fuel for obedience for the Christian is not trying to get something back out of God, not earning, not keeping my station, not a self-centered, you know, now that I'm a Christian, I need to really be wholehearted because I'm getting a lot out of this, you know?

But rather, in a sense, almost a self-forgetfulness that you only feel when love is at the heart of a relationship. And it's for love of the other person who has loved you so conqueringly that you almost forget that you exist and you just want to show love.

You know, when we think about the law of God, if we think of it as a ladder that we're climbing to become better people or maybe to get into his kingdom, we know that's wrong. But what is the law of God?

The law of God is like a beautiful path that God has laid for us to say to us, if you want to walk near me, if you want to love me, this is the path. And so the law becomes a friend to us now. And, you know, it's like a little kid that wakes up and says, I want to give something to my parents to show them I love them.

What are they like?

Well, the law shows you, walk here. And it becomes a sweet expression of love rather than some sense of a heavy burden.

So rather than having a taskmaster behind you driving you down that path, then you have the Father in front of you saying, come.

Yeah.

Come near. Witherspoon said that love reconciles the heart to the most difficult duties, the hard things that you would rather not do, you pick up and do because love.

Yeah.

Yes, it does. It really is the fuel that moves every aspect of Christian virtue. When I was a young Christian, before I was a Christian, I used to think that the most powerful word in the Bible was a word like holiness, wrath.

After I became a Christian, the man that led me to the Lord asked me, John, what do you think the most important word in the Bible is? That's a very subjective thing. We don't have a passage that says it.

But for the first time ever, and I would still agree with my answer back then, but for the first time ever, immediately the word that came to my mind as the single biggest word in the whole Bible was love.

And I used to think that was such a small word, the love of God.

I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the holiness of God, now that's impressive. But after being saved, I had seen myself for who I really was. And to be saved, to be loved then was like a wrecking ball against every little paper fortress I raised up against Him.

And it would just crash down, and the love of God would be there. And you feel, how can I not follow this King?