Psalm 119:76 Let, I pray, Your merciful kindness be for my comfort, According to Your word to Your servant. Again, “merciful kindness” is the Hebrew checed. Sometimes students of the Bible refer to checed as “covenant faithfulness.” In other words, it is God’s love or goodness that He has promised in His word. He promises comfort for His people in His word, and it is shown in His love. We will expand on this in the next couple of posts.
Gen. 22:2: Then
He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the
land of Moriah, and offer him there is a burnt offering on one of the mountains
of which I shall tell you. Before leaving
the OT for the NT I wanted to remind you of the first use of the Hebrew word “love.” There’s a reason why the NT tells us that God’s
love is defined and described and illustrated and proclaimed in the sacrifice
of His Only Beloved Son!
John 3:16 For God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life. To my friends who deny “unlimited atonement”
(it’s okay; I’m not criticizing), in your theology be sure you have a place for
God loving the world. The explanation I
have heard that He loves the world of the elect makes no sense in this passage. This would never have been considered if
someone were not trying to make a theological point.
1 John 3:16 By
this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to
lay down our lives for the brethren.
And here, as in the one to follow, is the entirety of the definition of
love.
1 John 4:8-10 He
who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God
was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
When it comes to “evolution”
there is truly no place for “love.” What
are we saying? Evolution is a closed
system. It is pure cause and effect. There
is no “god,” and thus no “personal God” and no “God of love.” The process, however long it takes, just
continues relentlessly. Love, with all
its variations, has no place in the system where there is no variation.
Further, evolution
is based on some thought of “upward” movement.
Some call it “survival of the fittest.”
According to the theory, the one at the top today must eventually give
way to another “king of the mountain.” The
cause-and-effect of evolution anticipates one species stomping on another. You don’t rise up the ladder by
lovingkindness.
With that in mind, consider the love of God as
we have seen it in these few passages.
In love, God has a good plan in operation. In love, God will do all that must be done
for His goodness to be experienced by those He loves. God’s love provides for “upward” movement in
a decaying/decadent world.
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