Relearning who God is: How God’s description of himself upends our expectations

From the article: “Yes, our sins will be passed down to our children and grandchildren. But God’s goodness will be passed down in a way that inexorably swallows up all our sins. His mercies travel down a thousand generations, far eclipsing the third or fourth generation.”

One of the problems with modern Evangelicalism is the lack of clarification about who the people are who experience the “goodness” the Scripture is talking to here. Almost always, Evangelicals seem to teach the goodness and love of God extends unequivocally to everyone. Every person. But there are categories of God’s love and goodness. If you are not a Christian, you are outside of the goodness of God. Period. It is sad to see how little many care about this important fact. They talk to their audience, whether in a sermon, Sunday School, small group, or blog, and act like God loves them, all is good, and the goodness of God is flowing their way.

Ironically, you’re finding fault with the author’s generalization by … making a generalizaiton

Almost always, Evangelicals seem to teach the goodness and love of God extends unequivocally to everyone. Every person.

It’s not clear to me what you mean by that… but I haven’t observed a particularly strong emphasis on this point, and I do a lot of observing.

I can’t speak for the author as to what he meant, but a bit more context may help some readers.

But God is not a softie. He is the one perfectly fair person in the universe. God is not mocked; we reap what we sow (Gal. 6:7). Sin and guilt pass down from generation to generation. We see this all around us in the world. But notice what God says. His covenant love flows down to a thousand generations; but he visits generational sins to the third or fourth generation. Do you see the difference? Yes, our sins will be passed down to our children and grandchildren. But God’s goodness will be passed down in a way that inexorably swallows up all our sins. His mercies travel down a thousand generations, far eclipsing the third or fourth generation.

Interestingly, though, God’s goodness and love does extend to “everyone. Every person.”

44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Mt 5:44–45)

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Jn 3:16)

What I mean is what I have seen in many places. Many churches teach “God loves everyone.” Many evangelism programs focus on “God’s love” as the reason the person should accept Jesus. Very little emphasis is made on the person’s sinful condition or need for salvation. If you have not seen this you need to get out more. Children are taught “God’s love” more than they are taught mankind’s perilous situation in need of a savior.

When it comes to LGBTQ, the motivation to accept them is “God loves everyone.”

When it comes to accepting illegal immigration, the motivation is “God loves everyone.”

What is happening is the specific is being supplanted by the general. Does God love everyone? In one sense. But that is not the defining issue. Man’s problem is not a lack of God’s love, it is his/her sin. That sin has made it so that they are separated from God.

Does God love the sinner? As you quoted, yes, in a sense. He sends the rain and food and warmth. But a person only loved this way by God is still separated from God…

But the love of God referred to most often in Scripture is towards the family of God, the elect, not the “world” in general. But all too often we imply this love applies to everyone when it is restricted to the elect.

The OP talks about God’s love to a 1000 generations being greater than the sin that extends to 3 or 4 generations. Yes, with the caveat that you are SAVED. If not, you and your descendants are in trouble. We need to more carefully make this distinction.

You will be hard pressed to find examples of evangelistic encounters or sermons in the New Testament where the evangelist tells his audience that God loves him (or them). But that is often the most emphasized part of modern evangelistic declarations. Why this glaring difference? We need to pay more attention to the evangelistic messages of Christ, Peter, Paul, and others.

While it is good to pay attention to the evangelistic sermons of the apostles, remember to account for the fact that, many times (not all the time), they were talking to Old Covenant members who already had a background to understand part of the story.

There are not too many evangelistic calls to straight-up Gentile pagans in the New Testament. God “is” love; it’s a metaphysical reality that defines who He is. In this age where Christians have no common point of contact with unbelievers to understand the concept of “God,” I see no problem with explaining his character by including references to “love” as the most properly basic thing about Him. Of course, as Mark says, it’s not the only thing.

[G. N. Barkman]

You will be hard pressed to find examples of evangelistic encounters or sermons in the New Testament where the evangelist tells his audience that God loves him (or them). But that is often the most emphasized part of modern evangelistic declarations. Why this glaring difference? We need to pay more attention to the evangelistic messages of Christ, Peter, Paul, and others.

Explicit maybe not as strongly, but implicitely yes. John 15:13 is one of the key foundations for the evangelistic message. We are no longer strangers, but son’s and daughters, and what would He withhold from His own children? When you accept Christ, your life will be a challenge, but God will care and protect us and offers us hope that we are protected. For He protects those that He loves. We transition from one who is accursed to one who is loved.

In our theology class at church last week, we began the topic of the doctrine of man. The “book” answer about why God created us is “for His glory.” The Westminster and Heidelberg catechisms flesh that out by explaining God also created us to enjoy Him forever - Yahweh is the source of our fulfillment and happiness. We only find true purpose when we’re in relationship with Him.

I suggest the controlling center of God’s plan, the synopsis of the bible’s storyline, is that God desires a community in relationship with Him, in the the perfect world as He originally made it to be. Those of us influenced by a more classical theology proper will naturally shy away from any hint that God “needs” us, or that we “complete” Him. I understand. Yet, I think we’re missing something rather big if we deny that God chose to want a relationship with us He didn’t need (cf. Hosea 1-3), and has spent all of human history pursuing that relationship by saving His people from all over the world. In other words, God created us so we’d glorify Him and enjoy Him forever … and so He could enjoy us, too.

Why did He do this? Love.

I’ll leave these excellent comments by Emil Brunner as food for thought, as he reflects on what the imago dei is:

God, who wills to glorify Himself and to impart Himself, wills man to be a creature who responds to His call of love with a grateful, responsive love. God wills to possess man as a free being. God wills a creature which is not only, like other creatures, a mere object of His will, as if it were a reflector of His glory as Creator. He desires from us an active and spontaneous response in our ‘reflecting;’ He who creates through the Word, who as Spirit creates in freedom, wills to have a ‘reflex’ which is more than a ‘reflex,’ which is an answer to His word, a free spiritual act, a correspondence to His speaking. Only thus can His love really impart itself as love. For love can only impart itself where it is received in love. Hence the heart of the creaturely existence of man is freedom, selfhood, to be an ‘I,” a person. Only an ‘I’ can answer a ‘Thou,’ only a Self which is self-determining can freely answer God. An automaton does not respond; an animal in contradistinction from an automaton may indeed re-act, but it cannot re-spond. It is not capable of speech, of free self-determination, it cannot stand at a distance from itself, and is therefore not re-sponsible.

The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, in Dogmatics, vol. 2, trans. Olive Wyon [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952] , pp. 55-56.

Here is Barth, also on the imago dei:

Neither heaven nor earth, water nor land, nor living creatures from plants upward to land animals, are in a ‘Thou’ relationship to one another as an ‘I,’ not can they stand in an ‘I-Thou’ relationship to one another, nor can they enter into such a relationship. According to the first creation saga, however, man as such exists in this relationship from the very outset … He willed the existence of a being which in all its non-deity and therefore its differentiation can be a real partner; which is capable of action and responsibility in relation to Him; to which His own divine form is not alien; which is a creaturely repetition, as a copy and imitation, can be a bearer of this form of life.

Church Dogmatics, 3.1 [reprint; London: T&T Clark, 2004] , pp. 184-185.

So, in conclusion, I think it’s very good to stress God’s love to unbelievers.

[TylerR]

So, in conclusion, I think it’s very good to stress God’s love to unbelievers.

Yes, but you have to explain God’s love, and not let them use their definition of love. Also, I have met tons of Christians who use “love” loosely.

If you really want to open a can of worms add in “who did Jesus die for, everyone or the elect only.” That is “love” as well.

Quoting Brunner and Barth… watch our brother.

So to disprove my assertion that NT evangelists did not usually proclaim God’s love in their sermons or personal evangelistic conversations, you quote Scripture spoken to believers, not unbelievers. Hmmm. Or, you quote Systematic Theology texts, which also have nothing to do with how the NT evangelists proclaimed the gospel to sinners. Or, you employ a line of logic which says its OK to do this because, after all, God is love. No one here disputes that wonderful truth, least of all me. Or you assume that the reason the love of God was not proclaimed is because Jewish audiences already knew this and presumably didn’t need to be informed. Yet they also knew that they were sinners, but that didn’t keep NT evangelists from stating it again. Furthermore, we have enough examples of evangelizing Gentiles to recognize that God’s love was not considered an important truth to proclaim to them.

Sacred cows can be very difficult to slay.

I have no sacred cows! I completely understand the need to not present a Jell-O God to the world. I was not trying to refute anything or save any sacred cow; I was just providing some context to explain why I believe we shouldn’t fall into the opposite ditch of just presenting a God of wrath and justice … while forgetting love was what motivated Him to bother with His elect in the first place (cf. Ps. 8, Hos 1-3).

As for the warnings regarding Brunner and Barth, I wager that (like Carl Henry) they’re quoted more than they’re read or understood. I’ve read a great deal of Brunner and a modest amount of Barth. I wager most evangelicals know Barth and Brunner are “bad,” but have little idea why and have read little to nothing of their writings.

For what it’s worth, Brunner’s eschatology is Jell-O because he has a very low view of scripture. There are some areas where he’s brilliant, and others where I fear he was on drugs. Barth’s doctrine of scripture was much more robust.

P.S. I love quoting Pannenberg, Moltmann, Barth, Brunner and Bloesch in my DMin papers, because it sometimes makes the professors visibly uncomfortable. It’s always the little things that make life worth living!

My goal is to stay squarely in the middle of the road mapped out for us in Scripture. If Jesus and the Apostles did not proclaim the love of God to sinners, there must be a reason. I hardly think we will land in the opposite ditch if we endeavor to present the gospel as they did. Do you?

You wrote this:

If Jesus and the Apostles did not proclaim the love of God to sinners, there must be a reason.

Really? Come, now …

I don’t want to be dismissive, but this line of argument is not profitable to me. It reminds me of Zane Hodges saying “repentance” isn’t necessary, because the Gospel of John doesn’t have it. I will leave this discussion, now. I fear we will just end up talking past one another.

Suffice it to say I feel we can sometimes become imbalanced on the side of wrath and justice. Brunner’s doctrine of God, in particular, has challenged my own conception of how to frame the Gospel without degenerating into Jell-O. Moltmann, too. Those are major red flags to some of you, and I understand.

God bless.

To Tyler and Greg,

To Tyler,

Why did He do this? Love.

Isn’t “glory” the right answer here based on Ephesians 1? I am not saying love is not a part of it, but glory certainly is. And the idea that God enjoys us? I would be interested to read some more on that based on Scripture.

To Greg,

If Jesus and the Apostles did not proclaim the love of God to sinners, there must be a reason.

I wonder what you make of John 3:16 which is in the conversation with Nicodemus who most would consider to be an unbeliever. Romans 5 puts love before salvation (“while we were still enemies”) as does Eph 5 (Christ loved her and gave himself for her). So I wonder if omitting love from discussions with unbelievers accurately presents the gospel.

Have I misread this thread? Are some actually trying to deny that God loves sinners? This is central to the gospel.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— (Eph 2:4–5)

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Ro 5:8)

4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Ro 2:4)

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 Jn 4:9–10)

Of course God’s love for His own is different. The relationship is completely different. But there is precisely zero salvation for anyone if God does not first love the sinner who is dead in trespasses and sins and not at all interested in redemption.

There can’t really even be grace, in any meaningful sense, without God loving the unlovable first. What could grace possibly be in that scenario? Unmerited favor is an expression of love.

So… take away the love of God for sinners and you have taken away the gospel.

(It doesn’t follow, though, that if you declare the love of God you have declared the gospel. There is more to gospel than love. But there is not less!)