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GOD IS LOVE

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Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 11, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 11

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GOD IS LOVE.

By James White

The declaration, “God is love,” is twice given in First John, fourth chapter, where the beloved disciple labors to impress the Christian church with the importance of love. He says, “He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.” Verse 8. “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Verse 16.
As evidence of the matchless love of God to fallen man, the apostle appeals to the fact that God had given his Son to save all who would believe in him. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Verse 10. And from this standpoint he appeals to the church in these forcible words, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
The mind and heart of the beloved John were imbued with the spirit of love, kindness, and affection. He was one of the favored three who were with Christ on the mount of transfiguration. They not only beheld his glory upon the mount, but sympathized with him in the garden of Gethsemane. At the last supper, the beloved disciple rested his head upon the bosom of Christ and felt the throbbing of his great heart of love.
The love of Jesus and John was reciprocal. John is spoken of as the disciple whom Jesus loved. He had been with Christ, and had felt in his own loving heart the power of that love which Christ had bestowed upon him. Were he living in our time, when ministers and men are ever talking of the love of Christ, and seldom speak of the love of God, we might expect that the absorbing theme of John would be the matchless love of Jesus. But we go back to the first century, about sixty years after the ascension, and we hear the disciple whom Jesus loved exclaiming, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” 1 John 3:1.
Hammond, the sensationalist, in his revival meetings in San Francisco and Oakland, California, represented God as a cruel tyrant, seeking to destroy the sinner; and in contrast, represented the Son of God as a being of benevolence and love laboring to wrench the sinner from the hands of his Father. To illustrate, he said:—
“Mary had a little lamb. Mary loved her pet lamb, and the lamb followed her wherever she went. But when the lamb was grown to be a sheep, and Mary’s father had forgotten her tender love for her lamb, he sold it to the cruel butcher. This well-nigh broke the tender heart of Mary; and a benevolent gentleman purchased the lamb, saved it from the cruel butcher’s knife, and gave it back to Mary.”
In Mr. Hammond’s application, the sinner is represented by the lamb; God, by the cruel butcher; and Christ is represented by the gentleman, who, in love and benevolence, purchased the lamb from the butcher.
Mr. Hammond fairly represents thousands of popular clergymen of our day, who contrast the old covenant with the new, God with Christ, and make the Jewish and Christian dispensations antagonistical. These gentlemen do not seem to understand the relation the gospel of Christ sustains to the old moral code. These, too, they make antagonistical,—the gospel opposed to the law, and superseding it. Their difficulty arises from not clearly comprehending the mission and work of Christ at his first advent.
The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments speak of Christ, not as a lawgiver, but as a prophet, or teacher of the will of his Father. Moses speaks of Christ in these words:—
“The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” “And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” Deut. 18:15, 17, 18.
To this agrees the prophetic statement of the psalmist relative to the mission of Christ. “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.” Ps. 40:7, 8.
The mission of Christ was not to set aside the moral law, and supersede his Father by introducing the gospel in its stead; but to magnify the law, and honor its divine Author. “The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake; he will magnify the law, and make it honorable.” Isa. 42:21.
The direct statements of the Son of God himself relative to his mission and work touching this subject, are decisive. In his first published sermon, his memorable sermon upon the mount, his inaugural sermon, in which he set forth the principles that were to govern his church, and the dangers to which his people would be exposed, he says:—
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” Matt. 5:17–20.
Christ, before the assembled Jews in the temple, announces: “My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me.” John 7:16.
“When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.” John 8:28.
“For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.” John 12:49, 50.
On the occasion of the last supper, Jesus began to gently inform his disciples that he would soon leave them and go to his Father. They began to be exceedingly sorrowful. His presence was the joy of their confiding hearts; his absence, their grief. He would comfort them: “Let not your heart be troubled,” said he, “ye believe in God, believe also in me.” John 14:1. He continues:—
“If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” John 14:7–11.
The Trinitarian understands that the words of our Lord to Philip prove that Jesus Christ is “the very and eternal God,” and that in this sense the Father and Son are one. This oneness between the Father and the Son is illustrated in the last agonizing prayer of Jesus for his disciples. He prays for them in these words: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” John 17:21.
When it can be proved that the object of the prayer of the Son of God was, that the disciples might be one body with twelve heads, then it can be shown that we have a Deity which has one body and three heads. “Great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” 1 Tim. 3:16.
And we have never been able to see how the inexplicable doctrine of the trinity relieved that which Paul declares to be a mystery. Those who had been with Christ, heard his words of wisdom, and had witnessed his miracles, had not seen the invisible Father who had sent his Son, the very being to whom the Son prayed; but in Christ they had seen the mind, will, and love of the Father, which Christ had come to exhibit among the children of men.
God is love. In love he created man. Said the Father to the Son, Let us make man in our image. In creation, the love of both the Father and the Son appears the same. Life is a great blessing. The dying sons and daughters of Adam cling to life as God’s greatest gift. Suppose this globe were a ball of purest gold, and that it were offered to the most wretched specimen of humanity, as the purchase of one year of his miserable existence, he would turn from it, exclaiming, Let me live.
And when all was lost in the fall, and man was plunged in hopeless ruin by the representatives of the race, the love of both the Father and the Son was manifested in the remedy through Jesus Christ. What matchless, paternal yearning must have moved the great heart of the Eternal as he beheld a ruined race, made in his own image, and looked upon his dear, beloved Son, who alone could constitute an atoning sacrifice adequate to the transgression of the divine law. And what yearnings must have heaved the bosom of the divine Son, as he contemplated the scene before him—his separation from the Father, his agony in bearing the sins of the whole world, and the disgrace of the cross, that he might remove from those who would believe on him, the disgrace of the fall. Here we see love and agony united in both the Father and the Son. No human mind can grasp it, and no language can tell the story. It is infinitely high, and glorious beyond our conception. So grand, so high, so glorious, that the beloved John could do no more than to point to it, and exclaim: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”
By the divine law is the knowledge of sin, and in Jesus Christ the repenting sinner may find the remedy for his transgressions. The Holy Spirit is given as a comforter to the believing and confiding, and as a reprover of the very sins which are written against the sinner in the ledger of Heaven. If the sinner rejects the terms of salvation which are so easy to him, and spurns the plan which has been provided at immense cost,—if he tramples under his feet not only the law of God, but the blood of the covenant shed to redeem him from the transgressions of that law, what will our loving God do with him? Will he take him, reeking in his sins up to a holy Heaven to mingle with angels, and the good and holy of all ages, there to look into the face of an insulted God, and the face of a despised and rejected Redeemer? Heaven to him would be the veriest hell. Under an overwhelming sense of the oppression of the holiness of the scene, of which he had never had a foretaste, and which he had never learned to enjoy, he would call for the very gate of Heaven to be opened, to let him out into his natural element, among congenial spirits in transgression, and hatred of the spirit of holiness.
Again we inquire, What will the God of love do with the sinner? Will he consign him to an eternity of agony in the flames of an orthodox hell? Let the beloved John answer, “God is love.” What, then, will he do with him? Let the psalmist answer, “Yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.” Ps. 37:10.
If the place of all sinners, after diligently considering it, shall not be, what disposition will be made of them? God in love will let them cease to be. In the language of the prophet, “They shall be as though they had not been.” Obad. verse 16. When redemption shall be completed, and the earth shall be cleansed from sin and sinners, all the holy intelligences of a clean universe will respond, “God is love.” J. W.