Is agapē a mystical magical word that means God's sacrificial gracious love?

by Dan Phillips

Over a month ago, I Tweeted this little hyperbolic jab:

"Agape means 'self-sacrificial God-like unconditional love.'" #SignsYourPastorDoesNotKnowWhatHeIsTalkingAbout

— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) August 18, 2015

At the time, some folks asked for me to expand on the serious, chewy center. And now, I will. Ahem.

Anyone and everyone who's tried to get serious Bible teaching has heard it. It goes something like this:

There are four Greek words for love: erōs, storgē, phileō, and agapē. They have very different meanings. Erōs means sexual love, storgē means family love, phileō means the love of friendship, and agapē means God's love, a gracious, sacrificial love. Only the Holy Spirit can give agapē.

Sometimes the folks who say these things are very dogmatic and categorical, saying things like "when reference is made to God’s LOVE, the word used is always agape" [Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Los Angeles, CA: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983), 78].

You could probably supply your own; we've all heard them. But are they true?

First, I'll say as I've said before, if you don't know Greek, I'd encourage you — in as friendly and brotherly way as possible — not to talk about what "the Greek" says, unless you're directly quoting someone who does. I don't mean to be snotty or insulting about it, or to hurt any feelings; it's just the safest way to proceed. "A man's got to know his limitations," as a sage once observed.

For instance, someone who's studied Greek will wince at the statement that there are four words for "love." There may be four Greek words that have been translated by the English word "love," but there are more than four Greek words that mean "love." Or even just staying with the list, it's a mildly fingernails-on-the-blackboard experience to hear the list erōs (a noun), storgē (also a noun), phileō (hey, wait — the noun is philia; phileō is a verb), and agapē (oh, now we're back to nouns). The speaker might as well say "I don't actually know Greek, but this is a traditional list someone started at some point."

All that may seem like inside-baseball stuff, so let's just get down to this: does it hold true that "when reference is made to God’s LOVE, the word used is always agape," and that agapē means "God's love"?

Well no, not at all. For instance, John 3:35 says "the Father loves the Son, and has given all things in His hand." The verb is a form of the verb agapaō. So far, so good. But wait a minute, look at 5:20 — "the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things which He Himself is doing," and so forth. There, the verb is phileō. What? Two things: (1) it simply isn't true to say that "agape" is "always" used of God's love — unless you want to say that the related noun and the verb are unrelated (?!); and (2) agapaō and phileō are not like two distant continents, utterly dissimilar from each other in meaning.

While it is true that agapē and agapaō are the words characteristically used of God's love, it is not true that the terms themselves have as their own inherent meaning "God's love," or even "God's kind of love." For instance, if we consult uses in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was current in our Lord's day, we find the verb used of Shechem's "love" for Dinah (Gen. 34:2). Ew. It also describes Samson's "love" for Delilah (Judges 16:4), Amnon's "love" for Tamar (2 Sam. 13:1, 4; again, ew), and Solomon's "love" for the pagan women who led him away from Yahweh (1 Kings 11:2). That's just a sampler.

Then in the NT, the verb is used of tax collectors' love for those who love them (Mt. 5:46; cf. Lk. 6:32), Pharisees' "love" for the first seats (Lk. 11:43), the "love" of the lost for darkness rather than light (Jn. 3:19), the Jewish leaders' "love" for human praise over God's glory (Jn. 12:43), Demas' "love" for the present age (2 Tim. 4:10), forbidden "love" for the world (1 Jn. 2:15), and so forth.

That's just the verb. The noun is also used of Amnon's sick infatuation with Tamar (2 Sam. 13:15). In the NT, however, the noun is used more exclusively of God's love or ours. But so are forms of phileō, alone or in combination. The verb phileō is used of the love we must have for Jesus in 1 Cor. 16:22. God's saving love for man is called philanthrōpia in Titus 3:4, shortly after which Paul refers to those who "love" him and his coworkers in the faith (3:15, using a form of phileō). Jesus' love for Lazarus is described with phileō in John 11:3 and 36; but His love for Lazarus and Mary and Martha is described with agapaō in v. 5.

I could go on, but I hope I've established: the verb agapaō is not a magic word used exclusively to describe God's love. It does not, all by itself, mean God's love, nor is it the only word used to describe God's love, nor does it necessarily describe God's kind of gracious, chaste, sacrificial love.

Having said that, I will say this, which may for a brief second seem contradictory, so stay with me: the agapē-words are the ones the Greek writers most readily reach for to describe God's love (shown and mandated), and they best serve those uses.

Let me illustrate by a question: Does the word "devotion" mean "a mother's committed, dogged, tireless, self-sacrificial love for her child"?

No, of course it doesn't. We could also speak of a drunk's devotion to the bottle, or a druggie's devotion to his crack-pipe, or a terrorist's devotion to his jihad, or a pagan's devotion to his false god (—did I just say the same thing, twice?). The word does not inherently mean "a mother's committed, dogged, tireless, self-sacrificial love for her child."

However, if you want to describe that kind of love, you may well reach for the word "devotion." Because it serves well in that use. You'll just have to check the context.

And so it is with the Greek words translated love. I don't think any two of them are completely synonymous in the sense that they are completely interchangeable. But you really get the meaning by examining the use.

So with agapē and (please!) philia. We know about God's love, not by reading a study bible or a word-study or a lexicon, but by studying passages using and illustrating the term's meaning, such as Romans 5:6-8 or Ephesians 2:4.

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Love, love, love — hey, listen!

by Dan Phillips

Last Sunday I got to launch a series I've been excited about ever since I settled on it. Before, actually. It's in the book of Ephesians.

Yeah, I know; and actually I resisted it. I thought about preaching this, and I thought about teaching that; but I kept coming back to Ephesians as containing a storehouse of what I thought would best serve my dear ones here at CBC. So I finally yielded, and with the yielding came a measure of peace and a lot of excitement.

The first sermon served as an intro to Ephesus and the impact of the Gospel thereon, and was titled The Lifecycle of a Work of God. Let me just lift out (in a different way) one theme that struck me anew and afresh, even after having studied Ephesians for 470 years.

I take it that the letter was actually written to churches in Ephesus (as I'll develop a bit this coming Sunday, DV). That fact leads to a really interesting thread. To wit:

Paul first comes by Ephesus in autumn of 52 AD (Acts 18:18-21). He's on his way somewhere else, but as a good soul-fisherman he can't resist dropping in a line to see what happens. Instantly he gets a couple of hard strikes, and resolves to come back if he can.

Come back he does, for an extended stay, around 53-56 AD. Paul's ministry there is very effective and very fruitful, and probably leads to the planting of the seven churches of Revelation (cf. 19:10). Then he departs, only to call a pastors' retreat for the Ephesian elders, and urge them to serve, feed, and guard the flock as he had (Acts 20:16-38; Spring 57 AD).

Just a few years later, 61-62 AD, Paul writes them this magnificent letter. Among the themes he stresses (as I mean to show Sunday) is love — God's love for us, our love for each other, our love for God. In fact, you'll note that the last note in the letter is just that: "Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible" (6:24).

Then a few years after that, he writes his apprentice Pastor Timothy, whom he had especially tasked to remain at Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:3). And in writing Timothy, what does the apostle identify as the core emphasis of his ethical instruction? "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (v. 5).

Do you know where I'm going next? After 1 Timothy, did Ephesus disappear from the Canon? Not at all. Our Lord Jesus dictates a letter to them as the first of seven, in Revelation 2:1-7. He wants them to know that He is glad to see their action, their hard work, their persistence, their doctrinal purity (vv. 1-3). He only has one problem, one concern — but it's a serious one. So serious that, despite all the other pluses, if they don't rectify this, He'll remove their lampstand.

What's the problem? You know what it is: they have abandoned their first love (v. 4).

My point here isn't to do an exegesis of that verse, as I do to a degree in the sermon. My point is the simple theme:

1. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul stresses love.
2. In his letter to a pastor of the Ephesians, Paul stresses love.
3. When Jesus needs to upbraid the Ephesians, it is for having left their first love.

But what is even more interesting is the connection. The very last words of Ephesians, rendered very literally, are "Grace with all those who love our Lord Jesus with incorruptibility." Who love Jesus, that is, with a love that doesn't degrade, doesn't break down. Then Paul reminds Timothy to keep up that theme. (We could stick in here that tradition says the apostle John served in Ephesus; and what was a big theme of his? Yep.)

But then fast-forward, and what has happened? The Ephesian Christians' love has degraded. It has broken down. And that, despite repeated apostolic warning.

We can marvel at Paul's pastoral heart and foresight, and at his proactive ministry. We can also marvel at the obtuseness of this people, who'd had the blessing of what we'd all agree is just about the best pastoral care that any group of churches has ever had.

But what it leaves me with is the painful desire I feel for those I have served, whether as a pastor or as a father. You can see an issue coming at someone you love, see it with crystal-clarity. You can be pro-active. You can plead, instruct, warn, urge, thunder and weep.

But without faithful reception, even the most urgent transmission of truth only ends up being another bit of evidence in the final judgment

"He who has ears, let him hear."

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Of leprechauns, mermaids, and "loving homosexual couples"

by Dan Phillips

If I were to ask what leprechauns, mermaids, and loving homosexual couples have in common, I'm pretty sure this readership would have the answer. I'd like to help you explain why you answer as you do.

What they have in common with each other is, of course, that they are all mythical creatures, living only in fantasy and imagination and every movie, TV show, and commercial in existence... or at least that's true in the latter case.

Also mythical. Sorry.

This is a truth that has obviously not reached everybody. In fact, apparently it hasn't even reached those who made the decision to become spotlight-Christians, performers whose entire career is predicated on their claim to be Christian — which is to say, lifelong and advancing students of the words of God (John 8:31-32). I have in mind here folks like Dan Haseltine, lead singer for the group Jars of Clay. Note this tweet of his:

So many gay couples display more loving characteristics and healthy relationship practices than most traditional married couples....
— Dan Haseltine (@scribblepotemus) April 24, 2014

This "loving gay couples" meme is heard so much today; it's hard not to think in response:

The whole stands or falls, of course, on the definition of "love." If "love" means sexual arousal, well then, okey doke, sport, I guess if you say so. Or if it means fondness, affection, attraction, or a hundred other emotional and even volitional states... well, how would we even have the discussion? If it's all about emotion, the "discussion" is really beside the point, isn't it? Feelings are thought...well, felt... to be self-validating. After all, you've got to follow your heart, right? And your heart is all about what you feel. Right?

Unless you start with the fear of God (Prov. 1:7) instead of the lordship of Ego and Eros. Then, everything changes.

To begin with the fear of God is to acknowledge, from the outset, the Lordship and ultimacy of God, and the dependence and fallenness of man. It is to acknowledge that our hearts cannot be trusted (Prov. 28:26 {NAS]; Jer. 17:9). It is to acknowledge that real life is only found in knowing God through His word (Prov. 3:18; 4:13; John 6:63, 68). It is to see that rebellion and unbelief are the sure way of death and misery (Gen. 2:17; Pro. 8:36; Rom. 6:23).

As we learn from God how He wants us to treat others, we learn that He wants us to love them, even if they are our enemies (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 5:44). We learn that love is not primarily about feeling. Love is about doing what is for the greatest good of the other, even if that costs us (cf. Exod. 23:4-5; Prov. 25:21). We see the grandest display of love in the Father's gift of His son for our salvation (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9).

So, you see, there never was such a thing as a "loving homosexual couple." Nor was there ever yet a "loving adulterous couple," or a "loving fornicating couple." Accomplices? Yes. Co-conspirators, co-perpetrators? Sure. But loving? Never.

Love is a commitment to the good of the other — and rebellion against God is never for the good of the other. Sin against God is never for the good of the other. Turning away from life and love and forgiveness and reconciliation, and embracing guilt and wrath and doom and despair, wrapped in a straitjacket of rationalizations and distractions — these things are never about the good of the other.

Real love will point someone away from sin and death, and to Christ, the Gospel, life and forgiveness. If that Christward call to repentant faith is absent, so is love.

This is one of those cases where the crystal-clear thinking that the fear of God teaches can stand as a bright beacon of witness to God's wisdom, in our murky, fogbound culture.

That is, if fitting in with the culture isn't our highest ambition. Which it never will be, once our own world has been tilted by the Gospel.

Postscript: this and related matters are opened more fully in "Adultery De-Glamorized," a sermon on Proverbs 6:24-35.

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Not Just factual Information

by Frank Turk


We've been reading Jonah to better understand what it means to say that God is Love in the same way that God is Holy or God is Just.  When Berkhof finds himself needing to define the communicable attributes of God, he finds himself saying this:

The presence of God, as described by the Old and New Testament writers is clearly a personal presence.  … God is represented throughout as a personal God, with whom men can and may converse, whom they can trust, who sustains them through trial, and fills their hearts with the joy of deliverance and victory.  And, finally, the highest revelation of God to which the Bible testifies is a personal revelation.  Jesus Christ reveals the Father in such a way the He could say the Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14:9) (64)

In Berkhof’s view, this question of “communicable attributes” means that in some way, God is not so far above everything that he cannot be found.  But it also means that God is not just found in theory, or found by analogy or in philosophy or doctrine.  In Berkhof’s view, God can be found because he is in fact personal – and the ultimate expression of the personal-ness of God is in Jesus Christ.

The Apostle John utterly agrees with Berkhof.  He just has a more personal way to say it. When the Apostle John wants to talk about this,  he says, “God is love.”  He actually says a lot more than that in 1 John 4:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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.11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

God is Love, and we know what love is because of God loves through a person – through his own Person.  This is what we mean when we say, “[the love of God] may be defined as that perfection of God by which he is eternally moved to self-communication.”  We mean:  God wants to tell us about himself, and while the telling is important, and gracious, good in a moral sense, it turns out that it is also something more.  It is the way God is made personal to us and for us – initially by words and stories, but finally, and perfectly in Jesus Christ.

For John, the only way to know God, and to know love, is to know what Christ has done.  That is: God loved us, and sent Christ to be the propitiation of our sin.  That’s a perfectly fine theological word there, “propitiation.”  But what John means is that God sent Jesus to deal with our sins because he loves us, and in order to make God content with us – to overcome wrath for the sake of God’s contentment with us.

What is at stake in the question of God’s love, then, is not merely factual information.  What is at stake is whether or not we actually know God, whether or not we actually can relate to God, and whether or not we have any hope in God.

Jonah, unfortunately, doesn’t get it.

5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. 

And then [Jonah] asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

 In God’s view of this, what’s at stake here is that Jonah not just know the words.  Jonah can say the words, “you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”  Jonah can understand them well enough to run away from what they mean.  What is at stake here is that God self-communicates to Jonah so that Jonah will know who God is.  What is unfortunate for Jonah is that when he meets this God in the salvation of his enemies, he is angry at God.  He would rather die than know this God.

See: God makes it clear that there is a huge gulf between Jonah’s ideas about justice and love and God’s own ideas about justice and love.  The example he uses is the analogy between the plant and the city.  God tells Jonah that even though he (Jonah) had nothing invested in the plant, and wasted nothing on it, he enjoyed it, and had pity for it.  But the contrast is stark: God makes it clear how much greater it is that was at stake in the city, and how much more God had invested in it – both in time and in resources.  Yet the city, which plainly had its evil deeds come before the Lord for judgment.  And God says himself these people have no idea how desperate their own plight is.  For God to say they were a people who did not know their left hand from their right is for Him to say that they are utterly ignorant, and may have no moral compass at all.

Yet even here, in the seat of an empire which has opposed God’s people for generations, God offers forgiveness for repentance.

Now, as we set ourselves up for the home stretch, there’s a subtext to this story which, it seems to me, gets missed.  It’s the same subtext which John presents in his letter when he says explicitly that God is Love.  It’s clear that Jonah thinks that God has or possesses love, right?  That’s actually the starting point of his complaint when Nineveh is spared: God is full of Love.  And then Jonah is brash enough to admit that it’s not just God having love or somehow feeling love which is aggravating to the prophet: the fact that God will actually love somebody – in fact, almost anybody – pushed the prophet to the brink of death.  But as God chastises the prophet because this man who was saved from the giant fish now has more pity for a plant than a city full of people, God makes a point which is a necessary corollary of the fact that God is Love:  God requires love in return.

When Jonah is first irate over the repentance of the city, God says, “Do you do well to be angry?”  The implication is, “are you right to be angry over my love for the city?”  But then when Jonah is beside himself over the death of the plant, God says again, “Do you do well to be angry” but makes the point, “for the plant?”  See: Jonah has two sorts of anger here, but both are motived by his own self-centeredness, his own self-love.  He is angered by the welfare of the city because these are his enemies who are spared; he is angered over the death the of vine because his own pleasure is at stake.  When God draws this comparison for him, God is plainly saying, “Jonah: who do you love?”

In the Old Testament, we know for certain this is the ultimate question – it is captured in the greatest commandment, after all.  “You shall love … who?”

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”  (Deu 6:5) 

Jesus says this is the greatest commandment.  But why is this true?  Is it because God demands it out of whimsy or ego?  Certainly not: BEFORE God makes the demand that he be beloved, he makes it utterly clear:

Deu 4: 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. 36  Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, 38  driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day, 39 know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 

God requires Love because he has, before any demand he has made, Loved first.  This is why Jonah’s reaction to God is such an affront: he knows all the words.  He can recite the orthodox formulas.  But he cannot muster up a reflection of this attribute of God either for his fellow sinners, or for the loving God who stands above them all.

This is God’s point to Jonah, and 1000 years later this is John’s point to his fellow believers.  When John says, “God is Love,” he is saying something in the context of his opening to this letter which must be remembered:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

John is trying to tell us about how and why God has come to us so that we may not only understand John, but to be with God.  The goal is not merely to have God’s favor:  the goal is to have God, to hear Him, to see him with our eyes, to touch him with our very hands.  It means to have everything in common with Him – the kind of fellowship you can share only with the closest of family.

Think about what a different book the book of Jonah would have been if, rather than the Chapter 4 we receive it instead said, “and when Jonah looked upon the city, and upon his own salvation from death in the belly of the fish, he worshipped God and gave praise to him for his lovingkindness.  And God was with him.”  It could have been a story utterly foreshadowing the New Testament, utterly proof of the kind of faith Abraham had, in which God is both trusted and loved and believed for the best.  Jonah could have been a friend of God.  Instead it is a book which spells out for us in detail the difference between the kind of love Men as capable of contrasted with the kind of Love God brings into the world.

There is nothing unorthodox about Jonah’s confession – but when he finds God actually being full of Love, Loving with patience, Loving to the point of forgiveness, he is enraged.  He thinks he has himself been wronged even though he is also himself a benefactor of such things.  When John sees the love of God, his reaction is different.  What John knows about God is superior to what Jonah knows about God – even though they have the same words for it.

Jonah has seen what God has done – and would die for both shame and anger.  John has seen it, and he is overcome by it for joy.  Jonah wants to repudiate God’s work to sake the lost, and John sees it as his only hope – the only way to even know what love is.

I think both men would know all the words to the children’s song about this rudimentary doctrine. “Jesus Loves Me.  This I know, for the Bible Tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong – they are weak, but He is strong.  Yes!  Jesus loves me!  The Bible tells me so!”  The question, it seems, is which one believes it.

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I Feel Sorry for God

by Frank Turk

So look: in Jonah I see a guy who is like me. He wants to be a minister to God the way he wants to minister to people and not necessarily the way God wants him to minister to people, and not necessarily to the people God wants him to minister to. And he's serious about it. He's a prophet to Israel, darn it! He's not going to Nineveh -- Nineveh?! where the King of Assyria lives?!? -- and tell them that God is planning to judge them! God ought to judge them! They're sinners! Let them die in their sin! Look at all the beer cans in their trash, and can't you smell that cigarette smoke?

And look at how Jonah preaches to the Ninevites when he actually goes: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Jonah does not say, "Judgment is coming so repent", but only, "Judgment is coming". God's judgment. Because He didn't want the Ninevites to get any bright ideas. God told him to tell them they are under judgment, and that's it: that's all he’s going to do. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" That way he can be faithful, and he doesn’t have to worry because God going to deliver judgment. He said so.

But God does something else here which Jonah says he knew all along was God’s intention: God spares the Ninevites.

In that is Jonah's complaint to God: "Let me die, because I know you show steadfast love." Listen: Jonah's complaint was not, "God, you promised to smite the evildoer, and you squelched -- you broke your promise! Now that I know God is a promise breaker to Israel, I just want to die!" It was, "I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That's why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were full of love, and grace, and mercy, and patience, and ready to forgive!"

4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

The Hebrew there is, “It is right that this burns you?”  And that’s a fair question: how is it, exactly, that Jonah is grieved because God loves sinners?

You know, this problem comes up in other places in the Bible.  In Malachi, God chastises Israel because Israel has given up all hope that God will judge the wicked – because he shows patience with the wicked.  They think God is a slacker because the wicked are not judged immediately.  Mal 2:17 says,

“You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

And then it comes up again in Luke 18, phrased a different way:

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

It’s sort of darkly-funny that a people who are themselves so unable, unwilling to keep the Law can be also so intent on making sure God is judging other people.  And that is God’s point in questioning Jonah: I had not idea that Me loving Sinners was so deeply horrible to YOU.
Jonah, unfortunately, doesn’t get it.

5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. 

And then [Jonah] asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

Jonah was mad at God for sparing Nineveh, and God said to him, "Jonah: Doest thou well to be angry?" That is, "Jonah: is that the right thing to do? Is that what this is all about?"

Jonah, apparently, knew that when God is calling forth judgment, He is also extending an offer of clemency -- that is, the willingness to forgive for the repentant. In Jonah's words, He's a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. And that has Jonah in a bunch -- in fact, he'd rather die than think about it any more.

And God, sparing the Ninevites after He has also spared the disobedient Jonah from the belly of the big fish,  says to the prophet, "Is that being angry good for you?" Really, I'd feel sorry for God if He wasn't the Universal Creator and Sustainer, the Sovereign of all things -- because He's always got to explain himself to people like Jonah. And Us.

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Not My Way

by Frank Turk

For those of you who would rather hear the whole Sunday School lesson as one 47 minute lecture, you can find it at my home church's web site.  FWIW, I commend all the sermons there for your edification.

What I first realized about me as a Christian was that I am still afraid of God. Think about that: here I am, a guy who has received only blessing and mercy from the Almighty Creator of all things, and I am still afraid of Him. Now, in some respects, many people would rightly say, "Hey Frank: the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, so good on you." But that's not what I mean at all.

Sure: I have a healthy fear of the Lord in terms of His right and ability to judge me, and in that I know I am still without any merit before Him as a sinner. But what's actually really scary, really gut-turning to me about God is that He's going to ask me to do something which I will hate to do and would refuse to do because it offends me.

You know: it would be great if God would ask me to write a book.  God can’t offend me by asking me to write a book.  But what if God asks me to evangelize someone at work – a client, for example, who leads a godless lifestyle – and give him the Gospel whether or not I get to keep my job after I do it?  What if God asks me to make friends with people who live in the trailer park near my house because they are all lost, all people too lowly to be reached out to because frankly, they are messy?

So look: in Jonah I see a guy who is like me. He wants to be a minister to God the way he wants to minister to people and not necessarily the way God wants him to minister to people, and not necessarily to the people God wants him to minister to. And he's serious about it. He's a prophet to Israel, darn it! He's not going to Nineveh -- Nineveh?! where the King of Assyria lives?!? -- and tell them that God is planning to judge them! God ought to judge them! They're sinners! Let them die in their sin! Look at all the beer cans in their trash, and can't you smell that cigarette smoke?

But there’s more to it than this.  It is not only that God may ask me to do something which offends me: God himself may do something that offends me.  That is: His way will not be my way.  What God intends to do probably doesn’t look like what I have planned in my Outlook calendar.  And the problem comes to a head when there has to be a reconciliation.

It’s easy to teach our children the words, “Jesus loves me, this I know.  The Bible tells me so.”  It’s another thing entirely to remember that God’s love is not like my native idea of love which has a very small circle, and lets very few people in.

That speaks to how Jonah preaches to the Ninevites when he actually goes: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Jonah does not say, "Judgment is coming so repent", but only, "Judgment is coming". God's judgment. Because He didn't want the Ninevites to get any bright ideas. God told him to tell them they are under judgment, and that's it: that's all he’s going to do. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" That way he can be faithful, and he doesn’t have to worry because God going to deliver judgment. He said so.

But God does something else here which Jonah says he knew all along was God’s intention: God spares the Ninevites.

That’s Jonah's complaint to God: "Let me die, because I know you show steadfast love." Listen: Jonah's complaint was not, "God, you promised to smite the evildoer, and you squelched -- you broke your promise! Now that I know God is a promise breaker to Israel, I just want to die!" It was, "I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That's why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were full of love, and grace, and mercy, and patience, and ready to forgive!"

Jonah’s complaint is not about the lack of God’s justice.  It’s about the overwhelming size of His love, and to whom He is willing to show it.

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Whatever He Pleases

by Frank Turk

For those of you who would rather hear the whole Sunday School lesson as one 47 minute lecture, you can find it at my home church's web site.  FWIW, I commend all the sermons there for your edification.

There is nothing wrong with making children’s songs up for the rudimentary doctrines of the faith, is there?  Of course not.  I think the danger is in whether or not we assign a doctrine as foundational and necessary as this one only to the children’s catechism and hymnal.  Is this a doctrine that we know all the words for, but somehow they are only words to us?

We’re going to rethink this today in through Scripture, from the book of Jonah, and then in the first letter of John.

Let’s open to the end of the book of Jonah, the end of Chapter 3, and then into chapter 4.  Let me just put you in context quickly.  The city of Nineveh is the enemy of Israel.  It was in Assyria, and it was the center of worship for the idol Ishtar as well as a capital for their empire for a time.  And the Assyrians were, of course, enemies of Israel – they worshipped Ishtar, after all, and not Yahweh.

So God calls Jonah to Nineveh, and Jonah does what?  He runs the other way.  He catches a boat in the opposite direction, causes the ship to nearly sink, is cast overboard, and swallowed by a great fish.  After three days in the belly of the fish, Jonah gets spit out on dry land, and God tells him again, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

 And Jonah goes and declares the word of the Lord to the city, and that’s where we’ll pick up the text, Chapter 3, verse 6

6 The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9  Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

Listen: if I was the king of Assyria, the things I could understand would be war and judgment -- because I am good at war, and I run a tight ship. What I say goes, and what I expect is that I'm going to do what I said I was going to do. We don't read the Five Disfunctions of a Team in my court -- I killed that guy because he was boring me to death with his blah blah blah about "trust". You know what I trust? I trust that when I tell my executioner here to cut your head off, he'll do it and not ask me about whether to use the big axe or the small one for your scrawny little MBA neck. And then everyone will trust me to do what I say.

But in that, the king of Assyria knows that God will do what He pleases. All the pomp of his court will not impress God anymore than the pomp of the house of David impressed him, the Assyrian king, when he came and plundered those so-called sons of Abraham. So if God is going to render judgment on Nineveh, what's the only course of action?

If I were the king of Assyria, I'd do what I expect the weak and puny kings around me to do when I come with my army and send in the messenger that I am here to clean house: I expect them to beg. If they want to keep anything at all, and not pay a dear price for resisting me, I expect that they treat me like I can do what I say I can do. So listen: you people remember that 5 Disfunctions guy? If you don't want to end up like him, beginning right now, do as I do and beg God to spare us. He's sent this messenger to us who says we have 40 days, and we have already lost 3 days because this guy walked from front to back, so close the businesses, close the market, and get out the sack cloth and ashes. And to show I'm serious, I'm going to do it too -- because if God is coming to judge us, the only thing we have to show is our plea for mercy. He can do whatever he pleases.

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O YAHWEH, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

In case you didn’t understand this part, Jonah hated the Ninevites.  They hated Israel. They were enemies of Israel, and made war on Israel. But when God said to Jonah, "you're my prophet -- go tell Nineveh that their time of judgment is at hand," what did Jonah do?  You'd think that Jonah, having heard from God that Nineveh was up for review, would have gone to tell the Ninevites that their day is done. Ladies and Gentlemen: your day is over!  You and Ishtar are about to meet the Holy and Living God, and He is not happy!

That's what I'd think if I heard the words from God, "Arise, go to Las Vegas, or Washington, or New York, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me." Yes! Thank you, God! The battle belongs to the Lord! Let's go and make a footstool of your enemies, Lord!

But that's not what Jonah thinks. See: when God tells Jonah, "Go tell Nineveh that their evil deeds are on my list," Jonah goes to other way. And here in what we call Chapter 4, Jonah explicitly says it is because he knows God.  It’s not that He knows God is Just, or that God is Holy, or that God is a Jealous God and can stand no other gods before Himself.  Jonah says God has this thing that He does -- being gracious and merciful, slow to anger and ... steadfast in love. That’s what the ESV says – the NASB says “abundant in Lovingkindness”. Jonah ran away from what God told him to do, and away from the Ninevites, not because God is known to be triumphant over His enemies: he ran because Jonah didn't want them to hear or experience the steadfast love of God.

And let's be as clear as possible: he didn't preach to them the steadfast love of God, did he? "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" was what he preached, according to 3:4 -- only the judgment. But what he feared was that God would love them and show them love because that's what He does. That's who He is. The King of Nineveh declared a fast and repentance, and he even demanded the animals somehow participate (according to 3:8), and when God saw them repent, He spared their destruction.

Think about that: God loved these sinners. Jonah was angry because he knew God loves sinners. God loved them and spared them, even though eventually the Assyrians would again turn to persecuting Israel. Jonah disobeyed God because he knew God was going to show love to sinners.

Now, there’s a reason I chose this passage rather than the prodigal son, or 1 Cor 13, or John’s first letter, or John 3:16.  I admit that I love the New Testament, and Paul who was wrote most of it – especially when you understand the Luke was Pauls’ disciple – and I empathize with Paul.  Who is it that studies theology who doesn't want to someday be considered like Paul, the chief of sinners.  But here’s the thing: I am probably more like Jonah.

I think my first real spiritual insight into myself after being saved was when I realized that I am almost exactly like Jonah.

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Don't Miss the Point

by Frank Turk

For those of you who would rather hear the whole Sunday School lesson as one 47 minute lecture, you can find it at my home church's web site.  FWIW, I commend all the sermons there for your edification.

You’ll remember that we have been talking about the Goodness of God as demonstrated by the Psalmist in Ps 34, having done a quick sprint through the life of David.  We talked about how the Goodness of God is not a childish piece of theology but a core piece of understanding how God Comforts us, and God Counsels us, and Covers us in Christ.  When I taught this stuff live, we demonstrated the goodness of God by getting out of class early.

Now: the reason we got out early, in discussing the Goodness of God, is that we either had to stop where we were, or dive head-long into another hour at least on the principle example of the goodness of God.  Louis Berkhof says this about the Goodness of God:

When the goodness of God is exercised toward his rational creatures, it assumes the higher character of Love, and this Love may again be distinguished according to the objects upon which it terminates.  In distinction from the goodness of God in general, [the love of God] may be defined as that perfection of God by which he is eternally moved to self-communication.  … He does not even withdraw his love completely from the sinner in his present sinful state, though the sinner’s sin is an abomination.  … At the same time, he loves believers with a special love, since he contemplates them as his spiritual children in Christ.  (P 71)

We respect our theologians for their precise language, and we agree with Berkoff’s definitions.  What he says here is utterly true, and completely orthodox.  But consider this:  what if a man approached a young woman and said to her, “I am moved eternally to self-communicate to you, and make you the object of termination from me of any and all of the goodness I have – because you are certainly a rational creature.”  I think it is unlikely that she would be influenced in any positive way toward him – whether she was a good reformed girl or not.  The reason, I think, is because such an expression, falls short of the declaration and command Paul makes in Ephesians,  “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.”

It is certainly right, in the case of systematic theology, to examine the point that the goodness of God gets serious, and specific, and somehow specialized, when God deals with mankind, and with particular men and women.  But somehow it also seems to miss the point to say that this is only about God expressing Himself.  It is not merely that God is eternally moved to self expression, and terminates his goodness on the rational objects in His created order.  Somehow, we have to get it right, as the apostle John expressed it:

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. 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.

The topic today is the Love of God.   It seemed really obvious to me when Paul asked me to teach a little this summer that if I were to cover the Goodness of God, I would also have to cover the Love of God – because, as Berkhof says, it is Goodness’ higher character.  And as we covered last time, it is the ultimate expression of God’s goodness that he loves us somehow, in such a perfect and final way, according to the Psalmist, that it must lead us to the purpose in the work of Christ.

But think about this for a second:  I was able to find over 200 essays on the Providence of God, and over 150 essays on the Sovereignty of God, and 125 essays on the Glory of God – but less than a few dozen on the Love of God.  Most systematic theologies spend less than a full page on the topic, preferring to spell out Justice, Holiness and so on.  These are the grown-up topics of theology – the ones that really engage us and make us feel like we are in big church.

Just as with God’s goodness, we again sort of classify as one of the rudimentary parts of theology and faith.  We make up a child’s prayer to express Gods goodness –“God is Great, God is Good, let us Thank him,” – and we make up preschool songs for the sake of God’s love.  “Jesus loves me, this I know – for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong.  They are weak, but He is strong.  Yes: Jesus loves me.  The Bible tells me so.”

There is nothing wrong with making children’s songs up for the rudimentary doctrines of the faith, is there?  Of course not.  I think the danger is in whether or not we assign a doctrine as foundational and necessary as this one only to the children’s catechism and hymnal.  Is this a doctrine that we know all the words for, but somehow they are only words to us?

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"Love": a few opening thoughts

by Dan Phillips

From the fragments of profound thoughts I have whirling, this should be a deep, nuanced and crisply literary post. Unfortunately, but I haven't the time to craft such a post just now. It's being that kind of a week month quarter of a year. Maybe another time. Then, I'll delete this one in favor of the more artistic post, and you and I will just whistle a little tune together, and try to forget this one ever happened.

In that more pithy and developed post, I would start with a clever, amusing story about some time when the misunderstanding of a single basic word led to disaster. And then I'd segue masterfully into my subject, which is: LOVE.

You don't need me to tell you that "love" is an important word, both in our culture and in the Bible. The problem is that English Bibles and American English speakers use that same word, "love," but with very different cargoes. In the immortal words of Iniego Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I used to take my young 'uns to a local bookstore, where a talented young man would entertain the kids with a story and some fun every Saturday morning. He was, I think, a teacher in a state indoctrination center. One Saturday, he wore a shirt with this on it: "Love is what separates us from the Republicans." What did he mean by that? I think I know.

I can't speak for other cultures, but in America, "loving" people don't judge and they don't ever say "no"... which is to say that don't say that certain things are wrong, or shouldn't be done.

It necessarily leads to quite a tangle.

"Loving" people are against murder (except of the unborn), sexual violence (unless consensual), theft (unless warranted), tyranny (unless by their political party), oppression (unless of the views they oppose), and wealth (unless possessed by themselves or their celebrities). "Loving" people disapprove of people who disapprove of people. Well, certain people. Disapproval of homosexual behavior, for instance, is wrong because it is hateful; disapproval of disapproval of homosexual behavior is right because it is loving.

Now, I am skating atop depths right here which I'd like to develop, and to which I must return some time. But this American stance rests on so many illusions as to leave one reeling. For instance, I think of the uproar and outrage that the mainstream American media is trying to gin up against one particular presidential candidate, simply because of her and her husband's involvement in a clinic that allegedly tried to help homosexual people find freedom from their mangling and destructive passions.

As one reads the media, one becomes aware that the mere voicing of the accusation itself is damning enough, to them. I heard just newsreaders on the television Wednesday morning say that the couple were "accused of trying to help 'gay' people become 'straight.'" You see? That is an accusation. It is a bad thing to do. The subtext: because it is unloving, as defined above.

I doubt those reporters would speak of any therapist as being "accused of trying to help rapists control their impulses," or "accused of trying to help depressed people find joy," or  "accused of trying to help drug addicts beat their addiction." Not yet, anyway.

It is a reflection of the world's view of itself, which is framed in an all-encompassing matrix of deception (Jer. 17:9). The world is our great-great-grandparents' real firstborn. The world is the invisible bastard child born to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, long before Cain uttered his first cry. The world was begotten by the embrace of the foundational lie "You shall be as gods." This became the central motto. Anything, then, that affirms my godhood (over against God's godhood) is good and loving. Anything that challenges that view is bad and hateful.

It can't surprise us that God's view of love is very different. While the world's view rests on sheer and unbridled autonomy, God's rests on the truth of His Lordship. Love is at the center of both ethical systems: in the world, the autonomous self is the center. In reality, God Himself is the center. The two could not be more polar opposites or more mutually exclusive. The ramifications are countless.

Therefore, in American culture if not in others, "love" has come to mean "unconditional approval of what the world accepts."

By contrast, in the Bible "love" means something like commitment to pursue God's glory and others' good, as defined by God. That definition needs work, but I think it's a good start.

So it is that the real world, as created and ruled by God, is structured with love for God as primary, and love for fellow-man as derivative and secondary (Matt. 22:37-40). The fantasy-world, ruled over by the prince of lies, finds this ethical system offensive and repugnant... and immoral. Ironic, no?

But that is why a post like this, from nearly four years ago, caused such offense and outrage in some quarters. Actually putting God first, where theory becomes practice and affects real attitudes and real choices and real actions, is a horrible thing to the world. This is what offends the world about candidates such as the one I mentioned above: saying you are a Christian is a pardonable offense. But actually living it? Actually doing something about it? Unforgivable.

You see, the thought that anything or anyone (even God; particularly God) could take precedence over our (or anyone's) yearnings and passions and dreams... terrible! Terrible!

Ah, but that is where we have the eternal parting of the ways. If God is not God, then indeed it is a monstrous, hateful thing to try to deny anyone his desires; and chaos necessarily results.

But if God is God? If Jesus is true? Then what could be more loving than to turn someone (anyone) from damning, destructive ways to the saving and liberating knowledge of the true and living God?

"Love wins," indeed.

Defined God's way.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... truth and love? (Full post)

by Dan Phillips

"Doctrine doesn't matter. All that matters is that you love, love, love."

Breaking news: Jesus talked about love!

Well honestly, the way I see it mentioned hither and yon (not to be confused with hither and thither), you'd think there was a segment of the church which denied that statement. If so, I've yet to meet it. Certainly there are parts which aren't very good at it, but denial? Denigration? I don't think I've ever heard anyone deny or denigrate genuine, Biblical love — not the way folks have repeatedly denigrated doctrine.

But let's circle in on this. Jesus famously says:

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35)

Love, then, is the mark of a disciple. In this passage, our Lord does not say that doctrine is the mark of a disciple, or that correctness is the mark of a disciple, or even that truth is the mark of a disciple. So love, some would say, clearly supplants concerns about correct doctrine.

Not so fast. Why stop there? Jesus also does not say that monotheism is the mark of a disciple. He does not say that abstaining from murder, rape, or theft is the mark of a disciple. He does not say that wearing clothes or eating are marks of a disciple. He does not even say that believing in Him, in any sense, is the mark of a disciple.

So what have we established? Only that Jesus didn't say what He didn't say in this passage. Which, hopefully, all are agreed upon. We had better hope He said other things, somewhere. Because if all we had were this passage, we would not even know what this passage meant! I mean, what is love? Warm feelings? Cheesy sentimentalism? Coddling? Indulging? Unconditional approval and enabling? Indifference towards damaging (or even damning) error? Treacly benevolence?

So rather than camping on this passage as if it were the only thing Jesus ever said, without any context, what if we — oh, I don't know — considered everything Jesus said? Shall we?

So we ask: is this the only thing Jesus ever said about love, or about what should distinguish His followers? Hardly. Let's start with the latter:  "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?" Jesus asks (Luke 6:46). So right away, we know that Jesus expects obedience to His words to characterize His real followers.  Nor do we see a hierarchy, as if one may obey some but disregard others. Jesus seems to think that He is our Lord, or He is not; and if He is, what He says should produce obedience in us.

Whatever He means by "love" in John 13, then, it must be characterized and framed by obedience to His words — which, as we just saw, leads us to the rest of the New Testament, and back to the whole of the Old Testament as well.

In fact, Jesus Himself ties those ideas together, repeatedly:

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15)

"Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. ...If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me" (John 14:21, 23-24)

"If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love" (John 15:10)

Jesus' concept of love walks hand in hand with His commandments, which in turn (as we've seen) point us back to the Old Testament (John 10:35) and the rest of the New (John 16:12-15) as well.

So would Jesus ever have tolerated a notion of love divorced from a specific, set doctrinal framework? Fantasy-Jesus, yes. Fantasy-Jesus thinks all sorts of things, largely things that will keep the world's good graces. The actual Jesus, however, the one who really lived and lives — He would never have conceived of such a view.

That Jesus (the real one) was once asked what were the two most important things in all the universe. Do you recall His answer?

 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40)

Love for God comes first. Then, and only then, is it followed by love of neighbor. And what, pray, is love for God? The concept is explained and given full color in the Old Testament, whence Jesus mined this gold. Let's just lift a snippet:

"You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always" (Deuteronomy 11:1)

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

Do you see it yet again? Love for God walks hand in hand with wholehearted acceptance of the full authority of all of God's words. But what is more, plugging in Deuteronomy, it means doctrinal loyalty, it means clinging wholly to the true God — which is to say as well, to the doctrinal truth about God — in the face of all opposing doctrines. It is loyal devotion to God, as His doctrine is revealed in Scripture alone.

Obviously a full treatment would fill a large book, but what we've seen is enough to decimate the false dichotomy of the lazy and anti-Biblical slogan "love, not doctrine."

But let's go one step further. This standard of love calls for all of us, heart and mind and soul and strength. If that is our standard, then what hope have we? We have never put together two consecutive seconds of such pure, true, singleminded devotion of God.

That is why we must flee for refuge in that sheerly-doctrinal/historical reality, the penal substitutionary atoning death of Christ. For there and there alone do we meet fierce and undeniable love which crashes upon our lovelessness, dashes aside our objections and rebellion, and saves and converts and conquers us.

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

"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 John 4:10)

And only in the light of such doctrinally-communicated-and-defined love can we go on to John's next exhortation:

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:11)

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Love and Truth: Together Forever

by Phil Johnson

The following blogpost is an excerpt adapted from an article I contributed to the current issue of Bible Study Magazine, the hard-copy periodical put out by Logos Bible Software. The full article contains an exposition of 2 John. This is just a teaser. Get the magazine.

t's not easy, especially nowadays, to keep love and truth together in a balanced way.

Our culture force-feeds us a postmodern notion of love. Tolerance, diversity, and broad-mindedness are its defining features.

Meanwhile, truth is generally held in high suspicion, if not treated with outright contempt. After all, if the very essence of love is to accept all points of view, how could it possibly be virtuous to believe that one idea is true to the exclusion of all others? Indeed, many in our culture regard emphatic truth-claims as inherently unloving. As a result, truth is regularly sacrificed in the name of love.

As Christians, we need to understand love from a biblical perspective. Authentic love "rejoices with the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love and truth are perfectly symbiotic, and each virtue is essential to the other. Love without truth has no character. Truth without love has no power.

In fact, when radically separated from one another, both virtues cease to be anything more than mere pretense. Love deprived of truth quickly deteriorates into sinful self-love. Truth divorced from love always breeds sanctimonious self-righteousness.

Nowhere in Scripture is the essential connection between these two cardinal virtues more clearly highlighted than in 2 John. Love and truth are the key words in the salutation of that brief 13-verse epistle, and the central theme throughout is the unbreakable interdependence between these two essential qualities of Christlikeness.

John is the perfect apostle to write on this theme. Jesus had nicknamed John and his brother James "Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder" (Mark 3:17)—doubtless because of their fiery zeal for the truth. At first, their passion was not always tempered with love, and we see a glimpse of that in Luke 9:54, when they wanted to call down fire from heaven upon a village of Samaritans who had rebuffed Christ.

In later years, however, John distinguished himself as the Apostle of Love, specially highlighting the theme of love in his gospel and in all three of his epistles.

And yet, as we see in all his epistles, he never lost his zeal for the truth. He did, however, learn to keep it wedded to a proper, Christlike love. And in his short second epistle, where he has some hard things to say in defense of the truth, he is careful to give first place to love. Before getting into the main issue (how to deal with supposed Christian teachers who deny essential truth) he accents once more the supreme importance of obedience to Jesus' command "that we love one another" (v. 5; cf. John 13:34-35).

Christians today desperately need to learn how to ground love properly in the truth. We must not succumb to pressure from our culture to spurn or bury the truth of Scripture under a false and foggy notion of love.

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From 2008: that troublemaker Jesus

by Frank Turk



Back in 2008, Dr. Piper said this:

Catch on to the affectional nature of Christianity, conversion. It is not merely a decision to believe a fact. It is a heart treasuring Christ and His glory more than football, sex, money, power, play, toys. You gotta make this an issue Sunday after Sunday so that they feel scared that they're not saved.

You know, I think some pastors are so afraid that somebody might walk up at the end of the service and say, "you really jostled my assurance this morning." If we don't -jostle- people's assurance when they're not saved, we send them to hell.

We must preach in such a way so that people can test -- Test Yourself! 2 Cor 13:5 says, "test yourself to see if you are in the faith". Well, one of the tests is do you love Football more than you love Jesus? Do you love Golf more than you love Christ? What does your heart say about Christ? Late at night, all alone, in front of an internet screen, mouse ready to click, what does your heart say about Christ over pornography?

And as I read the path of destruction at my blog, some parts of the internet sort of lost it over that very transparent statement.

What Dr. Piper did not say is that people should walk around the world wondering if they are saved or not – which is the impression one gets when one views that one sentence out of context, and is the impression guys like Sled Dog are giving in the meta.

Dr. Piper's point is the wholly-scriptural point that the believer is called to test himself, and see if the faith which he claims he has is a faith which is changing him. As someone pointed out in the meta, it's a matter of knowing by one's fruits what kind of branch one is.

But apparently that's out of line. Some will call it legalism, and others will call it "works-based faith", and some will simply turn their noses up at the idea that people ought to have a little bit of concern over whether what they say is actually what they mean. You know: when I say that I am a child of the living God, adopted into His Household rather than left for punishment where I belong – and that, bought at the price of the blood of God's one and only son – maybe I should act like that really happened and not like it's a political slogan, a talking point, or a t-shirt.

Maybe I should act like there's a real God who really did this stuff and I'm, at least, grateful.

Moses said it this way:

And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God— lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.[Deu 6, ESV]

And this is interesting because when Jesus gets questioned about the greatest commandment, this is the one he cites, right? "Love the Lord your God"? Go open your Bible and check it out, in case you don't repeat the Sh'ma to yourself every morning.

It's Moses who starts that crazy idea that men owe their affections to God, and Jesus signs off on it.

So when Dr. Piper said that people who love football more than they love God might not have faith in the savior of men, maybe what he means is that Moses knew something about faith in God which the rest of us would do well to reconsider.

Listen: Hosea knew a little bit about love, and God told him to say this --

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Look at the comparison there: the burnt offerings are the requirements of the Law, and they are contrasted with what the KJV calls "mercy" and the ESV here calls "steadfast love".

God doesn’t want your penance, or your religious work, or your bulls and sheep and rams: God wants your love, dude. And love, it turns out, is not a fruity emotional cocktale – even in that little snippet from John Piper which is getting so many angry eyebrows this week. Setting our affections on God is not the same thing as sending Him a Valentines Card every day.

But here's the thing: that troublemaker Jesus was also on about how our affections relate to our standing before God. There are a couple of places I think this is demonstrated pretty clearly, but here's one that is simply to obvious to ignore.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. [ESV, Mat 6]

Right? And this version of this statement is even less invasive than the parallel passage in Luke 12, amen?

Where your -treasure- is, there your -heart- will be. Jesus' words here say explicitly that your treasure -shows- where your heart is.

Think about this: if Donald Trump, who is a billionaire egoist, drove through your town and stopped at your house because he saw your posts on my blog, and he rang the doorbell, invited himself in, and handed you the closing papers on your house, the title for your car, and receipts for 10 years worth of utilities to your house paid in advance, what kind of person would you be?

That is, what would you feel? You'd feel something – maybe stunned at first, or embarrassed. But my guess is that you'd feel grateful. You'd feel grateful – and then the question is what to do about that.

And what Piper is asking here, exhorting here, is that Christ has done more for you than the billionaire egoist can do for you, and if you don't feel grateful, maybe you haven't really received the gift. It could be other things – maybe you haven’t considered the gift; maybe you haven’t examined the gift. But to do those things, you have to be somehow awakened to the fact that you ought to make sure you received the gift.



You know, I drove my first car for 14 years, and the morning it wouldn’t start anymore I was a little put out, but a couple of weeks later my wife bought me my new car. And you know something? Every time I get in it, I wonder if it's really mine, and if I deserve it, and if I will take care to show that I am grateful. Not to the car: to my wife – even though I'm the breadwinner in the house. And for the record, I thank God for his generosity that I have it.

For a car. How much more should we think that way about our salvation? And why on Earth would anyone think that challenging people to examine whether or not they are still grateful, and whether that gratitude has any spiritual bearing on them, is wrong? It's not hardly wrong.

Think about who you are this weekend. Be in the Lord's house with the Lord's people on the Lord's day and let your assurance be challenged – because unless your assurance is changing you, unless it is putting your treasure in things which cannot rust and thieves cannot steal, you have a false assurance.

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The Portrait

by Frank Turk

All this thinking about how to love people reminds me of a story. I heard it in church about a year and a half ago, so it shouldn't offend too many people.



There was a young man -- a doctor -- who was sent off to war, and he left behind a young wife and a 7-month-old baby girl. He was away at the war for two years, and was faithful to his wife. In writing to her frequently, he sent back a portrait of himself to her and the baby as a promise that he would return home soon.

He returned two years later, and the baby was now a toddler who didn't know him. In fact, in some ways she didn't want him in their house. He was a stranger, and he didn't belong. She only knew the portrait.

One Saturday the young doctor was sitting on the couch reading the paper when the toddler got up from her bed and slowly came down the stairs. He didn't want to antagonize her, so he just sat and read, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She started in the kitchen, then the dining room, then came into the living room sort of watching him, sizing him up. She came to the other end of the sofa, and then pointed at the portrait.

"That's my daddy. Some day he's coming home," she said, looking at the portrait.

He lowered the paper, and looked at her -- both bursting with pride at her confidence and aching on the inside from her ignorance.

She looked at him again, and pointed at the portrait. "That's my daddy," she said certainly, and looked straight at the young doctor.

Then there was a curious silence as her face changed.

"You're my daddy," she said breathlessly.

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You: Burden

by Frank Turk

I'm short on time (again) this week, so I am pre-blogging my Wednesday entry in the hopes of getting it out there for your edification, and so that I can work 12 hours on Wednesday and hopefully get my desk cleared off so I can go on vacation.

Here's the thing: yesterday, Dan had a great post in which there was this bit:

And then I saw Romans 15:13 — "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." God gives joy and peace. Thank God. How does He give joy and peace? In believing. But wait — I'll believe when I feel joy and peace! That will tell me I'm really a child, an elect child of God!

"No," Paul would say to me, to you: "you have it backwards. You don't get joy and peace, and then believe. Believe, and then you will know joy and peace."

Right? Amen?

In which Dan rightly intended for you, the smoldering wick, the bruised reed, to take refuge. How you "feel" should be about knowing Christ is the one who gives you what you need, not in how you have given what you need to give.

And many people needed to hear that. I needed to hear that. Inside my personal echo chamber, the me I see in there is the me who doesn't do what he ought, and does what he ought not to do, and who can save me from this wretched state? Praise be to God: it's the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I can see me that way. You can see you that way.

But the real trick in the Christian life is to see others that way. That is: just as you are Christ's in spite of your pitiable state, the other believers you encounter are Christ's in spite of their pitiable state. Maybe they work too much. Maybe -- though of course this can't be true in Reformed circles -- they are social misfits. Maybe they are essentially emotionally blank. Maybe they have never thought about a stranger's impressions of their actions.

Maybe they are just tired and they don't have the energy for you. You are a burden, you have to admit, even after a good night's sleep.


So that refuge in which we can rejoice in Christ for our own personal sake, and escape the real and right fear of our sins in Christ -- it's actually bigger than us. It's bigger than one person.

Paul said it this way:

But now in Christ Jesus you-all who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And he came and preached peace to you-all who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you-all are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you-all also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. [Eph 2]

See: it's somewhat basic to say, "Christ died for me." It's probably the most basic thing you have to get to start this discussion. But Christ didn't die for "me" -- He died for "US".

If there's a refuge against the dark shadow of doubt in Christ for you personally, it should be greater than just you personally. It should be the place where you overcome the smallness of you and get joined together in the holy temple of our God -- which is not a building, but a body and family.

The joy for you is all our joy. You should come and see it with us -- in spite of us, and because of Christ.

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