The Love of God with R. C. Sproul, “The Complacent Love of God,” 8

The Three Types of Divine Love and the Meaning of Complacency

In our last session, I indicated that in the history of theology, we distinguish among three types of divine love, and I covered the first two in our last session. God's love of benevolence that refers to His goodwill that He exercises to all people, and His love of beneficence, which indicates His activity by which He pours out benefits, what we call the benefits of common grace, to all people, such as the sun and the rain and so on.

But I left for today a look at the third type, which is the most important aspect of the love of God, which is called God's love of complacency. And I think I mentioned that when I talk about God's love of complacency, people's eyebrows tend to go up and puzzled looks appear on their face, because when they think of complacency, they think of an attitude of indifference or an attitude of smugness, because we frequently use the term complacent to refer to somebody who's at ease in Zion, who's resting on his laurels, who's not all of that passionately engaged in any particular enterprise.

And that's one of the strange quirks of the evolution of language, because actually the root meaning of the notion of complacency is exactly the opposite of that. In fact, just to check up on this, I recently looked at a modern dictionary to see how that dictionary defined the word complacent or complacency, and they indicated that the Latin root from which the word derives comes from the idea of that in which someone finds great pleasure or delight.

I mean, hardly the idea of indifference or of smugness. And in fact, in this particular edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the number one primary definition even today of complacency is delight or that which is pleasing.

And then only the secondary meaning is this idea of a kind of satisfaction or smugness. Now, you see this concept of smugness comes from the idea, well, once I become delighted in something and it satisfies me to the utmost, then I sort of relax and become smug about it.

That's the way the word has evolved in our own language. But when we're speaking theologically about God's love of complacency, we're talking about that love by which the Father takes delight and is pleased by his relationship with people.

Christ as the Supreme Object of Divine Delight

Now, we said all along that the number one object of God's love, the perfect object of his pleasure and of his delight is his Son. Again, we remember that when Jesus is baptized and the dove descends from heaven and the voice is heard audibly where God says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

And so in that context, God announces his love of complacency for Jesus. He is the one in whom the Father is well pleased. And when we look at this as it is applied to others apart from Christ, we see that it is the distinctive love that God has for the redeemed, that God takes delight and pleasure in those who are his.

In fact, this is probably the concept of divine love that stands behind that difficult passage that we've already examined in Romans 9 where Paul says, quoting Malachi, with respect to Jacob and Esau, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.

That is, that Jacob receives this transcendent love of complacency, the love that God has for his elect that differs from the general love of benevolence and the love of beneficence that of course Esau would have received the first two kinds of love from God, but he wouldn't have received the saving love of God, the redeeming love of God in which God takes delight in his people.

But again, we have seen that the love of God in the Scriptures is inseparably related to God's electing grace. Now, let's take a moment to look at the golden chain, which is so important to our understanding of this concept as it appears in Romans chapter 8.

The Golden Chain in Romans 8 and the Effectual Call

I think we all are familiar with Romans 8, 28, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. Now, notice that in this text, Paul does not say that all things work together for good for everybody, but that promise of the divine providence that brings good even out of evil, that which brings so much comfort to us in the midst of calamity and in the midst of tragedy, is that even those most difficult trials and tribulations that we encounter in this world, God is using, working them together for good.

For whom? For those who love him. And those who love him are indeed those who are called according to his purpose. So those who love God with this kind of love and are loved by God with the love of complacency may be called, may be called the called, which indeed is where the word election comes from.

Those who experience being called out of, ekkalao, who are called out of the world, who are separated from the mass of fallen humanity to receive the specific saving grace of God. And this is where we get the meaning of the term church.

We get it from the Greek word ekklesia, those who are called out of. And we use the English word ecclesiastic or ecclesiastical based on this concept of the called. However, there is much confusion about this whole idea of the people who are numbered among the called.

And the reason for that is that the Bible uses the term to call with respect to God in more than one way. At one point the Bible says many are called, but few are chosen. And we see repeatedly in the book of Acts, for example, that when the apostles are proclaiming the gospel and proclaiming the word of God, they call the audience, they call those who are listening to the proclamation to respond to the gospel.

You remember, for example, when the apostle Paul was in Athens at the Areopagus, where there he confronts the philosophers, and he said, the former days of ignorance God has overlooked, but now God commands all men everywhere to come to Christ, because he's appointed a day in which he will judge the world and so on.

And he calls these people to respond to Christ. Well, what was the response? We read the text and we see that some people there on the spot embraced Christ. Others on the spot clearly rejected the call that Paul had given and thought Paul was a madman of sorts.

And the third category were those who said, well, we'll hear more from this fellow. That is, they reserved judgment for the moment. They said, we want to think about this, we want to hear more about it, but they didn't respond positively, they didn't respond negatively, they were somewhat neutral.

So that's just one example of the many times where we see the gospel being prepared where people are called to come, but they don't all come. And that we call the external call of the gospel. That call that is outward.

Anytime I preach the gospel and I proclaim it to a group of people who are there and call upon them to respond, some will respond, some will not. So that not everybody responds to the outward call, or what we call the external call.

That's obvious. On the other hand, the Bible uses the term to call in another manner, which we call in theology the inner call, or the internal call, and sometimes even called the effectual call of God.

And this has to do with the operation of the Holy Spirit that takes place inside the person. Not just an external call that is heard with the ears, but it has to do with the supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit on the heart or on the soul by which those who formerly were dead in their sin and trespasses are now made alive, are quickened, and are given ears to hear and eyes to see what previously they were impervious to.

That we call the internal call. And that is the call that God gives to the elect. The elect are called in a specific manner. And we see that right in the same context of this text where the Apostle Paul says that all things work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to his purpose.

Then in his next breath, what does he say? For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called.

And whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. Now I'm submitting to you that what Paul is talking about here is not the external call of the gospel, but the internal call that indicates the supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost.

Now how do we know that? Well in this segment, where several aspects of what we call the order of salvation are set in a linear fashion, which mentions foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.

Now if we look at the way this is structured in the text, we see that the phraseology of it is what we call an ellipse. That is, it's elliptical insofar as that there are certain ideas that are tacitly understood that are not explicitly spelled out in the text.

But I think virtually all commentators on Romans agree that that is the structure of this text. So that what is being said here is all of those whom God has foreknown, he's also called. So everyone that God foreknew from the foundation of the world, he has called.

Now in what sense is Paul speaking of foreknowledge here? Or let me ask the question a different way. How many people in the world, and in the history of the world, did God know about from the foundation of the world?

Well, God knows everybody in the cognitive sense, in the intellectual sense, from the foundation of the world, because God knows everything. He's omniscient, and he knows your name, my name, everybody's name, from the foundation of the world.

Foreknowledge, Predestination, and the Internal Call

Now, I remember that when we deal with the difficult doctrine of predestination of election, the most popular view of that doctrine among Christians, because I remind you that every Christian has to have a doctrine of predestination if that person wants to be biblical, because the doctrine of predestination is taught in the Bible, and so it's not optional for us whether we believe in election or we believe in predestination.

The question is how do we understand those concepts? And the most popular view is what's called the prescient view of election, or we could call it the foreknowledge view, and that's the idea that God from all eternity knows in advance who will respond favorably to the invitation of the gospel, that from all eternity God knew that Paul was going to preach the gospel in Athens at Mars Hill, and from all eternity God knew who those people were who would respond positively and who those people were who would reject the teaching of Paul, and then on the basis of his prior knowledge, his foreknowledge, looking through the corridor of time, he chooses for salvation those whom he knows in advance will respond positively to the gospel.

That's the most popular view, and the proof text for that idea is right here in Romans 8, because the argument is this, well, obviously Paul speaks of predestination here, but before he speaks of predestination, he speaks of God's foreknowledge.

It's only those whom he foreknew that he predestined. But if we insert into this text what is implicit and tacit in the text, namely that all whom God foreknew he predestined, and if indeed God knew everybody from eternity, then that would mean that he predestined everybody, and now the text proves more than the prescient folks wanted to prove, because now it would prove universal salvation, or universal predestination, which is clearly in opposition to the teaching of sacred Scripture.

But they may say to me, but R .C., you haven't filled in enough of the gap. Not only is the gap that God simply is speaking about a knowledge from all eternity of those in the future, but it's limited to his knowledge of those who will positively respond.

That's assumed by those who argue, and it's okay. That's fine. But now the problem becomes acute when we get beyond predestination to the calling. If all whom God foreknows in a certain sense will be predestined, and all who are predestined are going to be called, and all of those who called are justified, what does that do to the idea that this text indicates an external call only?

Because certainly the Bible does not intend to teach that everybody who's ever heard with their ears externally the call of the gospel end up being justified. The fact that all who are called in the sense that Paul is speaking of calling here are in fact justified and glorified indicates categorically that the apostle here is speaking of something other than the external call.

He's speaking of those who are called inwardly. And it's those who are called inwardly, all those whom God does something to inwardly are justified. There's nothing in this text that says that all whom God knows in advance will respond to the external call will be predestined.

That is that their response is not the grounds of predestination, but the point of the text is all whom God predestines will receive this internal call, and all who receive the internal call will in turn receive justification and glorification.

So we are predestined not because we respond to a call, but we are predestined to respond to that call. That's the point that the apostle is making here. And it's to those who receive this special grace that the promise is made that all things work together for good for those who love Him and who are the called, because what the effect of that internal call is, is that before I loved God, He loved me with a love of complacency.

And with that love of complacency, He quickened me from spiritual death. He called me internally, and where my heart was hostile to Him prior to that internal call, now He has quickened not only spiritual life, but religious affection, because without that electing grace and the regenerating power of the Holy Ghost, I am by nature at enmity with God.

I have no affection for Him, but now once I have received the inward call and my heart has been changed, that which I formerly abhorred, now I love, and Christ becomes the object of my affection. Now, again, remember, this is a spilling over of the Father's love for the Son.

Notice that the purpose of this election and predestination is that we might be conformed to the image of His Son. And so that the delight that God has in the elect is the spilling over of the delight that God has for His Son.

And God is not willing that His Son not be the firstborn of many brethren. And as Jesus tells us in the prayer in the upper room in John 17 and so on, He speaks of those whom the Father has given Him.

And that's what the elect are, the love gifts that the Father gives to the Son. It is because of God's love of complacency for Jesus that we become the objects of His love of complacency ourself. And so when we look at this foreknowledge here, obviously before God could elect anybody, He doesn't have His eternal decrees addressed to whom it may concern.

For Him to elect Jacob from all eternity, He has to be aware of Jacob from all eternity. He has to know of Jacob before He can assign Jacob to receive the grace of election. So, but the point is that this foreknowledge means more than simple intellectual awareness.

Foreknowledge as Foreloving and the Intimacy of Knowing God

If we examine the word or the verb to know in the Bible, we know that there is one sense in which the Bible uses the verb gnosis to refer to intellectual awareness. But there's also a deeper meaning to that verb or to the noun knowledge that refers to the love of intimacy.

Abraham knew his wife, and she conceived. So it's not simply saying that the moment he was aware of her intellectually, she became pregnant. No, the Bible uses the verb to know as a euphemism for sexual intercourse to indicate the deepest level of personal intimacy.

That's why Paul in Romans says natural man knows God intellectually, and in 1 Corinthians he says natural man does not know God. That is, he knows God in one sense. He has an intellectual awareness, but he doesn't by nature have this knowledge of affection, this knowledge of intimacy.

And so the love of complacency is found even here in the concept of God's foreknowledge, because His foreknowing, beloved, is a foreloving. When did God take delight in you? From the foundation of the world.

That your election is a result of His eternal love for you. And here's the supreme case of God's loving the unlovely. And that's what happens when He loves us.