Systematic Theology (part 21)

so the goodness of God we looked at the rich young ruler as the text and we defined the goodness of God as all that God is and does is worthy of approval and he is the final standard of goodness so we saw how

God in his character is good how God in all that he does is good and because this is a communicable attribute how we are meant to live out this goodness of God as God transforms us into the image of his son so we saw primarily from that text where the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he says good teacher and then what good thing must

I do in order to be to have eternal life and Jesus points back to the truth that God alone is good the standard of goodness is

God and God alone there's no other standard and he talks about what it means to trust in him and exclusively to give up all his riches in order to have eternal life so today we're going to be looking at another attribute the attribute of love we're going to do today a little differently so hopefully all of you have this handout a two -sided print basically these are just verses that are grouped together in a certain way and my goal is similar to what we've been doing with the other attributes we're going to focus on God's attribute of love look at a few verses as we reflect upon God's love and then look at it as a communicable attribute how are we called to love today and and to reflect this attribute that God himself has given us now before we so if anyone needs any copies of the printout please raise your hand

I think I probably need to leave this somewhere in the back uh

Ferdy you can grab one so as we start can someone define love if you had to say what love is how would you how would you define love it's one of those hard abstract concepts yes ma 'am okay so there is a sense in which love in biblically talks about from the bowels you know you have that deep affection and a feeling of care and well -being toward another person and that would be love very good commitment so this is not just a feeling that comes and goes so I feel like I have love but rather we are committed to love the people even when we sometimes don't have that warm and fuzzy feeling very good excellent so uh this is not just merely a feeling or an emotion but it actually results in doing something that causes the well -being of the other so it's and James warns against us he says don't just say you know be warm be filled but rather you want to feed or clothe the person who has a need and you thereby show your love because empty words don't really demonstrate the love of God in our hearts was there another hand yes unconditional positive regard wow you always give me the heavy words but that's true love ought to be unconditional isn't it

I mean if we say it is conditional then basically we are just talking about a transaction business transaction

I get something and I give you something quid pro quo whereas the love of God as we see in the Bible is always unconditional he loves first we're going to see that and we love we toward God it is because he loves us we love him back and because he changes the heart he gives us a heart that is able to love

God and when we love our neighbors we are to love them not because of something we get from them but because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts excellent so these are all good oh yes go ahead excellent so it's a decision and I think you know combining the commitment and the unconditional aspect of it we actually make that choice to love and to love freely and I think you know we want to keep both these sides in our mind as we start to look at the text one of which being this choice to to love the other person

I'm going to read the definition here for the love of God God is freely and eternally giving of himself for the good of others and this is using first John 4 8 where it says

God is love and let me repeat that one more time God is freely that is he's not coerced to he is eternally he is always loving the other persons of the trinity and then the objects of his creation and his redemption that is believers and he's freely and eternally giving of himself for the good of others so we get to benefit we he is a benevolent

God in his love toward us and we gain by his love and affection upon our lives so the first half of it

I want you to think of is the commitment and the action that results from love and then one of the things that I tend to minimize sometimes is this affection and the deep -seated care and desire for the well -being of the other that that is in our hearts now the in the contemporary church today you can see sometimes a little bit of an imbalance you know you see a lot on when you say love is just warm and fuzzy we visited a church this past week and some of the things they were talking about I couldn't quite grasp and then

I realized they were focusing on on this aspect so much that they kind of lost the objective unchanging eternal truth of God's love so there are people who just say love means you don't be feel warm and fuzzy that's not true but there is a deep -seated affection of God and we're going to see some texts for that but ultimately agape love is a self -giving love it's a commitment that God has made to himself to love others freely so with those two in mind let's get into your text so some of you who came in if you don't have a handout

I think the last row there are some that you can pick one from and let's begin with I have two sections there are sections on the love of God it has a title

God on the top and we're going to look at some of those categories and then we're going to look at man and look at some of these categories this is one of those attributes

I want to take some time to get a little deeper we've been going kind of very quickly through but this is

I think a very central part of the gospel and we should be very clear on what the love of God is and how we are to love others so we're going to begin with this example so right on the top you have genesis 39 21 and genesis 39 is one of those chapters that you should remember in your head who knows what genesis 39 is about joseph yes and it's one of those chapters that will just rock your world if you just read it slowly and prayerfully it is just amazing what

God does in the life of joseph from the beginning of 39 to the end of 39 and the way in which his life kind of goes up and down up and down it seems like he's in a yo -yo you know from a human perspective completely thrown about by the fortunes of life you know if you looked at it without the