Calvin, always of great benefit in the enunciation of beautiful Scriptural truths, says this,
"God, who is the highest righteousness, cannot love the unrighteousness He sees in all. All of us, therefore, have in ourselves something deserving of God's hatred. With regard to our corrupt nature and the wicked life that follows it, all of us surely displease God, are guilty in His sight, and are born to the damnation of hell."Are we screwed up? Yup. It always bothers me when people "Hate the sin but love the sinner." This is exactly how Christians should live. But it stings me when people say that that is how God acts. God does not just hate the sin and love all sinners. God hates the sinner. That is why, if he remains a sinner he will spend eternity in hell suffering physical, eternal, conscious torment. Hence, we should tremble. If we do not tremble before God in light of this truth we will never understand the gospel and will never find any hope in God. This is rough truth no doubt but Calvin does not leave it there (praise God it never ends there),
"But because the Lord wills not to lose what is his in us, out of his own kindness he still finds something to love. However much we may be sinners by our own fault, we nevertheless remain his creatures. However much we have brought death upon ourselves, yet he has created us unto life. Thus he is moved by pure and freely given given love of us into grace. Since there is a perpetual and irreconcilable disagreement between righteousness and unrighteousness, so long as we remain sinners he cannot receive us completely. Therefore, to take away all cause for enmity and to reconcile us utterly to himself, he wipes out all evil in us by the expiation set forth in the death of Christ; that we, who were previously unclean and impure, may show ourselves righteous and holy in his sight."I find this repeatedly to be the constant theme of my life. I pray, "God, I've got nothing. I come with nothing. I have no righteousness. I shouldn't even be in your presence arrogantly believing that I the finite should be speaking to you the infinite. I should be dead even in thinking about it. But here, look, I have Jesus. He is holy. May I therefore come into your presence and rest in you since He is holy?" You know what the answer is every time? "I sacrificed my Son that you could come into presence and enjoy rest. You are a sinner, and I do not easily forget sins, but you are covered by the blood of my Son. I will choose to see His righteousness over your sin. Enter." I am beginning to think that real assurance comes from the fact that every day, every single day, is marked by a struggle with sin in which we come and lay prostrate before the God who created us and beg for mercy through Jesus and find it given again, and again, and again. Calvin again,
"Therefore, by his love God the Father goes before and anticipates our reconciliation in Christ. Indeed, 'Because he first loved us" [I John 4:19], he afterward reconciles us to himself. But until Christ succors us by his death, the unrighteousness that deserves God's indignation remains in us, and is accursed and condemned before him. Hence, we can be fully and firmly joined with God only when Christ joins us with him."So what's the key to being sure? What's they key to real lasting hope?
"If, then, we would be assured that God is pleased with and kindly disposed towards us, we must fix our eyes and minds on Christ alone. For, actually, through him alone we escape the imputation of our sins to us - an imputation bringing with it the wrath of God."That is what the gospel is about: the death, resurrection and mediating work of Jesus Christ. When it all seems futile and like I am failing miserably and shall never earn my way to heaven I should look up and realize I will never earn my way to heaven! No kidding! It's all found in Jesus. My hope is in Jesus. No one, especially myself, will find a reconciled and peaceful audience with the Father lest it be through the shed blood of Christ. Hallelujah!
He died for our sins. He brings us to God. We can be assured of this.
R.D. Thompson
8 comments:
Interesting thoughts. But one question, how can God love us and hate us at the same time?
I don't think I understand God's love. Calvin seems to be saying that He loves us because He created us, and while I realize that we do nothing deserving of His love, His creating us doesn't seem like a much better reason
No more better reason than if you made a really screwed up clay pot! You'd still like it...Well maybe.
Welcome to not understanding everything about God's love. You're not alone. One great verse on God's love is in Romans 5 when Paul points out that men certainly will never die for other men, "But God demonstrated His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."
God made man and said, "This is very good." Naturally, if God thought it was good He would want to redeem it.
The problem is, is that people want to over stress one or the other. Either it's God's love or God's wrath. G.K. Chesterton has a word or two for those people, that is, the Christian faith is packed with paradoxes.
On one side you have the irreconcilable fact that God is Holy (the only attribute mentioned three times, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" not "Love, Love, Love!") and that sin CANNOT be in His presence. God hates sin and thus hates the unreconciled sinner. Hence, people go to hell (which is an obvious Biblical doctrine with more argumentation and weight given by Jesus than any other doctrine).
On the other side you have John saying, "God is love," and Paul saying that the salvation of the reconciled sinner is sure and certain (his point in Romans 5) because God has demonstrated his love towards the sinners who have turned to Him in faith, even when they were godless, helpless sinners.
How do you put those two together? I am only beginning to work that out. I'll probably never completely nail it. Basically, God is free to do whatever He wants. Not that He is capricious, this just means that He is holy and "higher than the clouds' according to Elihu. If we fail to recognize that God HATES us in our sin and because of our sin then we will never actually think we're being saved FROM anything. If we fail to realize that God loves His creation (He DID make it) and is working to redeem it (as in Ruth and Romans 8) and WANTS to work for its good, then we'll never have any assurance.
I don't think "balance" is the right word. I think "tension" and "paradox" suit better.
Either way you shouldn't dare to abandon one or the other.
that's like the defautlt answer if people don't know what else to say, "God does what he wants."
at least we can know that he does love us, and that he sent Jesus to die for that very reason, so if we cling to him we don't really need to worry about the rest.
well, that makes me look like i'm losing the "balance." of course we still need to realize that we are sinners and should try not to sin, but even that we can't do on our own.
mm...I didn't quite say "God does what He wants." That's part of it no doubt and that IS what the Book of Job SAYS so I suppose if the Bible says it, I ought to as well.
No really, that is THE point of the entire Book of Job.
I DID say that God HATES sin and therefore sinners because He is holy. I definitely said God does what He wants but that wasn't my entire answer.
Be careful not to misrepresent me. I gave a real, and certainly a more coherent, answer than JUST God does what He wants.
If I had JUST said, "God is free," that wouldn't have been a whole answer. But I most assuredly said more.
I stick with my answer: God is Holy and Just, God is Loving and Forebearing. We MUST NOT abandon either truth lest turn God into Immanuel Kant and C.S. Lewis's God of fluff ("God must forgive everybody because that's his nature..." No it's not) or Islam's God of fatalism (God is outside of man COMPLETELY).
Paradox friend, paradox. Sounds like you could use a good run through G.K. again :)
ok sorry i misinterpreted you, i just have trouble making sense of all that.
No problem =) I misinterpret people constantly!
Just pondering... does love of necessity need a reason? And if it does need a reason, what is the nature and what are the characteristics of the reason that it needs? Can we think of a good love and a bad love? Or maybe we cannot think of love as bad, since true love is good (not the romantic 'true love', but love that is true in essence). If there was such a thing as bad love, would it not be hate?
Hmmm...
Those are excellent questions which in all humility I do not think I could begin to answer to the full.
I do not think there needs to be a reason for love. God loves because he loves. There is certainly nothing in us that merits his love beyond the fact that he made us and originally said, "This is good."
Now there is this thing in us which merits his hatred and that is sin. I say it again: if we do not understand that God hates sin and that we are going to hell because of it we will never understand the nature or the depth of his salvific love and will therefore not be able to clearly grasp the gospel.
"Bad love" is an interesting thought. "God is good and does good," or so says the Psalmist and "God is love" says John and, "God demonstrated His love," said Paul. There is no doubt about it: God loves his creatures. BUT, and this is where we MUST embrace the paradox, God hates sin. Period. God is love and he hates sin but I would hesitate to say that this was "bad" love so much as "just" love.
I think "just love" would suit what you are saying better.
To ignore these truths is to water down the gospel, one way or the other.
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