What a difference it will make if, for example, we recall that the love of God is rooted in the Father’s love for his Son and his resulting will to see the Son honored (John 5:22-23). Then we will not infer from “God is love” that he easily overlooks sin, because we will grasp that Christ-dishonoring sin is itself an offense against the very heart of God’s love. The statement must remain tethered within its immediate context in 1 John 4, within the broader context of John’s writings, and within the ultimate context of God’s entire self-description in Scripture. 7. God’s love must be “read” especially within what Scripture teaches about his triune life. Whereas it may be immediately obvious to us that God will not decide to stop loving us, for some reason it is less obvious that his love is different from our love in other ways, such as in being self-sufficient, sovereign, unchanging, all-knowing, just, and passionless (yes, rightly understood). This may seem obvious to us, but that is only because we have to some extent already learned how to read the Bible properly. While we may and must speak truthfully about his love, we can never fathom it, because it is divine love, as different from our love as his being is different from our being.

It may be easier just to think “God is love” and to fill that statement with whatever our human minds suggest. Our fallen minds cannot piece together a picture of God from what he has made-indeed we suppress his natural revelation-but in his inspired Word he himself can use those things to describe himself, and then he can illuminate our minds to understand and believe those descriptions. When he says “rock” of himself, we are not to map all the rockiness of a rock onto him point-for-point. There are differences of administrations – or ministries. For that reason alone (and there are many others besides), introducing your students to this stirring classic is one of the best moves you could make. Or perhaps they are rightly named “God” and God is not dead as Nietzsche had it, but is becoming increasingly unhinged from the lived religious traditions. This life is received from God and has its foundation in His power. He even records the Lord Jesus saying that the Father loves him because he lays down his life (John 10:17). Love is not unique for being a trinitarian attribute: all the attributes of God are the attributes of the one God who is three persons, but we must never miss the trinitarian character of the love of God.

John delights to write of the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the Father. 9. Understanding the different manner of God’s love helps us to see its immeasurable magnitude. Christian-themed movies have come of age, and a essential viewers is wanting to see them. How clever it is for him to circumvent the press – who would have put words in his mouth or skewered the facts – no matter how noble. New groups however, have been discouraged from establishing a base in Eritrea. However, the court rule allowed the continuation of the gender segregation in public buses on a strictly voluntary basis for a one-year experimental period. However, the Huguenots were threatening riot in the streets if something wasn’t done, and it was a very hot summer. Together they will form a self-regulating mesh of meaning. Its many pictures of God form a self-interpreting mesh of images. 4. The pictures of God in the Bible regulate themselves, including pictures of his love. And that includes its pictures of his love. Love is perhaps the most obvious attribute for consideration from a trinitarian perspective, but we more readily observe that than grasp the theological consequences of it.

The consideration of the love of God in its proper biblical contexts is not an exercise in abstraction of interest only to obscurantist systematic theologians. Revealing how we often confuse God’s love with human love, this book looks to the Bible to explain how and what God loves-helping readers understand that God is fundamentally a God of love. God Knows is published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway. When we do this God becomes in effect just a massive projection of our own selves, a shadow cast onto a screen behind us with all of our own features magnified and exaggerated. No human mind can comprehend God. The player can passively control Atreus by dictating where he fires his arrows with his bow, either in combat or for puzzle-solving, as well as what magical spectral animals he can summon to further assist with combat. Google has instructions on how to look for and remove your personal information online, as well as a form to use to request removal of content either from its search results or other Google properties. Thus he is a lion, a rock, fire, even moth and dry rot (look it up!).