Psalm 47 has all the excitement of a coronation – and the King is the Lord himself. He is Lord of all the earth, sovereign over creation, sovereign over the nations. And he loves “Jacob” – the people of Israel who are his people.
Why should God love Israel – or us? Not because of their great strength. They were nothing special.... But God chose them and loved them. But his plan and his love extend to all the nations. His plan is that The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham.
When John says in 1 John 4 that “God is love” that is not a new, freshly invented “New Testament concept”. It is one that goes back to the beginning. Before Moses says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength” (Dt 6) he says “Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength” (Dt 4. 37: the first mention of of God's love ). God's love – “Ahav” – has always been there. He made men and women for relationship with himself.
I have been reading the “minor prophets” - the wee, short books at the end of the old testament. They record God's anger at the mess his people have got themselves into, his grief over their unfaithfulness to him, his judgement and his promise of restoration and healing. For Hosea it was the unfaithfulness of God's people worshipping idols. For Amos and Micah, it was oppression violence and injustice. For Haggai it was the self-seeking complacency that left the temple in ruins. For Malachi it was giving God second best.
And that is how he loves, in response to the fact that his people broke their covenant with him. They went far away from him, worshipping the grotesque fertility gods of their neighbours. They oppressed each other. God wanted them back. He wanted them cleaned, set free, and treating one another with justice.
See also
Jeremiah 31. 3
God's everlasting (through all generations) love (Hebrew "ahav") and covenant-keeping (Hebrew "chesedh") … not extinguished even by the nation's sin, offers hope of national restoration.
Zeph 3. 7
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love (Hebrew "ahava" – feminine form with same meaning) he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’ There is a tenderness in God's love. Look how he longs for us to be walking with him.
The love of God is not a hard-nosed, cold determination to pursue us and possess us – it's not a psychopathic love that turns to hate if it doesn't get what it wants. Stalking, bullying, and physical violence sometimes follow when that happens. In south east Asia it often leads to acid attacks against young women. God's love is tough enough to do what it takes to win us back to him – but at heart it is tender and sacrificial.
Remember from last week? Esteem? Enjoyment/yearning for presence? Extravagant sacrifice? Expectant hope. God comes to us what that sort of love.
- We are his creatures; we bear his image; he esteems us.
- He made us for his presence and when we put ourselves at a distance, he yearns for us.
- He goes to extravagant lengths to save us
- He believes in us.
1 John 4. 7-21
“This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”
Because God is love, all true love is “of God”, comes from Him. People who don't follow Jesus can be show much love. That is because we are created in God's image so when anyone shows love it can only come from God. But true, real love starts with God, reaches out to us, and takes root in our lives as we respond to God's love by loving him and loving others. That's the love that shows we are “born of God.” (verse
This is how we know what love is like.... v 9-10, love is not just described but defined: love is God sending his son for us. Love is reaching out to the beloved. Love is forgiving sins whatever the cost. But why does a loving God need a sacrifice? That is the wrong question. For John, sacrifice and love explain and illustrate each other. A loving god aches to heal the hurt so a loving God bears the wounds inflicted on him by mankind.
See also
John 3. 16. For god so loved the world...
1 John 3. 16. This is how we know what love is....
Romans 5. 8 God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ephesians 2. 4f But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.
And that is how God wants us to love one another.
“We love” John says “because he first loved us”. Some Greek manuscripts actually say “we love him” or “we love God”. Although it's not in the best manuscripts, that seems to be the point. We love – God first and then one other – because He first loved us.
The evidence that our faith is for real, is found in possession of the Spirit and acknowledging the truth about Jesus! (v 13-18). Is is alos found in love – for the invisible God, demonstrated in love for visible brothers and neighbours with often visible faults and weaknesses.
With all our strength. Sacrificial love that bears the pain, takes the initiative, heals the hurt.
With all our heart. Esteem, Enjoyment, Extravagance and Expectancy in our relationships with each other, and in the way we live in the world.
We finish with two “Jesus” stories: one an encounter with Jesus, the other a parable Jesus told :
Luke 7. 36-50: a woman weeping at Jesus' feet, drying his feet with her hair, pouring her precious ointment on his feet, in an extravagant expression of love, and Jesus says “He who is forgiven much loves much. “
Matthew 18. 23-35: a man owes ten thousand talents (one talent was twenty years wages for a labourer. So the guy owed about 3 billion pounds! Silly money!) and is forgiven. But he then goes and starts beating up one of his mates who owes him a hundred denarii – maybe £4500 (A denarius was a day's wages so a hundred denarii was four months wages: a fair amount of money but nothing in comparison!) God's love and forgiveness is meant to make us love and forgive.
The New testament will never allow us just to say “Thank-you” for this love. It is never enough to love God back, in response to the love he has show to us. Consistently, God's love shown to us in Christ woos us to love him in return – and always to show that by loving one another, loving our enemies, loving the lost and the broken.
Galatians 3. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
© Gilmour Lilly February 2016
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