Are you endangered by loving God?
By Tim Bootsveld
You’ve heard the phrase “knowing just enough to be dangerous,” yes? This phrase describes people who have a superficial knowledge of a particular field but remain ignorant of the pitfalls known to the more experienced. If these novices had the foresight to get more training and experience they could conceivably navigate safely. But no, having no idea what they don’t know, they run headlong into pitfalls they might otherwise have avoided. Depending upon what they are attempting, they really may pose a danger to themselves and others.
Many Canadian Christians are in such a state. They know something about God, but assume they know all they need to know, and that may be just enough to place them and their loved ones in real danger. This danger is sourced in something that seems so cute, cuddly, and comforting that even many who pose as spiritual guides do not see it for the danger that it is.
What is this terrible danger? It is none other than focussing too much on one aspect of the love of God.
But how could God’s love possibly prove to be a danger? Is not His love like a warm hug from an old friend, or a cup of hot cocoa on a cold day, or a good book near a warm fire? Are we in similar danger from too many puppies? On what basis should we fear the comforts of God’s love?
“Many Canadian Christians . . . assume they know all they need to know [about God’s love], and that may be just enough to place them and their loved ones in real danger.”
Here is the danger. God’s love is too great, too deep, and too variegated for mere humans to fully understand. We cannot conceive of its depths or heights (Rom. 11:33-36). Moreover, God’s love is bound up with his purpose—for the individual, and for the world. Without a clear understanding of these principles we risk reducing God’s love to sentimentality. We comfort ourselves in thinking of God’s love as that of a doting father or indulgent friend. But this shallow, sentimental understanding of God’s love can leave us unprepared for some of its aspects. Notice, for example that in one of the most famous expressions of God’s love in all the Bible, the apostle Paul reminds us that God’s love is designed to strengthen us for battles both spiritual and physical.
Romans 8: 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Do not fail to catch Paul’s point. God’s love is fierce and transformative. It strengthens us for the difficulties of life. But if we believe that the total sum of God’s love is that He is thinking good thoughts toward us, or that He sees us as treasured creations, or that He is a father who is looking to gratify the desires of his sons or daughters—if that is the totality of God’s love toward us—then we are in danger. We should not desire to be comforted by such love. Why not? Because if our vision of God’s love never rises above the sentimental, we will be unprepared when trouble comes. We will begin to doubt God loves us at the very moment when His love should be most strengthening. If God’s love is only sentiment and snuggles, then we should despair and weep over the loss of God Himself.
Yet apart from sentiment Canadian Christians almost never hear of God’s love. I have talked with many and have heard them repeatedly confess the comfort they receive from this sugary, sentimental view of God. These are the people who know “just enough to be dangerous,” as previously described. And if you know how wrong this sentimental view is, then you have a duty to warn your neighbours about it. They need to know that even if God is their Father and they are His children, a false view of the love of God puts them in danger! Remember, God was our Lord’s Father first, and He was sent to the cross.
“God loves us, yes. But God is also a righteous judge, and a righteous judge will not acquit the guilty.”
Still don’t understand? Then imagine yourself as a judge. You are a good judge. Those who are innocent, you acquit, and those who are guilty you sentence according to the law. Justice is your meat and drink. Righteousness and integrity are your creed. But as you sit upon the bench one day your own son is brought before you charged with a crime—and then found guilty. When your son sees his father sitting in judgement, do you think he should wipe his brow in relief? Should he thank his lucky stars? No. If you are truly a good judge, your child knows that you will not let your love for him sully your commitment to right judgement. He knows you will set aside your love and judge according to what the law says the penalty should be. He knows it will break your heart to do it. But he also knows that, notwithstanding his personal relationship with you, if he is guilty, he will be condemned.
God loves us, yes. But God is also a righteous judge, and a righteous judge will not acquit the guilty (Ex. 34:7). But who are the guilty? Well, you, me, and everyone else. We are all guilty a thousand times over. We have broken all the commandments, and the weight of judgement against us is something from which love alone can never save. Think: For God to be a good judge—an impartial judge—He cannot allow bias to influence His decision. In fact, because God is God, sinful sentimentality and personal preferences can be allowed no place in His thinking, which means bias can have no place in his decision making. Why not? Because when passing judgment, bias is always sin. God’s love is limitless, but it is never sentimental, never unconditional. When it comes to judgment God has no feelings. If we are relying on God to overlook our crimes because he loves us, we will be stunned by the blow of God’s gavel on the block. Even as the objects of God’s love, if we are guilty we must be condemned.
Here is a puzzle too few Christians take the time to think through. God`s love wishes to bring us close, but God’s judgment demands we be driven afar off—quite the riddle when you think about it. But the riddle has been solved. Before the creation of the world God devised a way for justice to be satisfied so that His love can flow unhindered. And it is with a deeper knowledge of God`s love, at a place far deeper than mere sentimentality, that reconciliation is found.
God’s deep love is a sacrificial love. It is a self-giving love. God’s deep love is willing to endure suffering on behalf of those whom he loves. Jesus tells us that greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). And then Jesus, the only man who ever possessed perfect love, did more. On the cross He gave Himself for His enemies (Rom. 5:10). For God to be merciful His justice had to be to be satisfied, and through Christ’s suffering on the cross it was.
“We try to diminish our rebellion against [God] as being a small thing that can be papered over with sentimentality. But sentimentality cannot save us. Only the sacrificial love of God can do that.”
But some may argue that God would still be in the wrong. If it would be wrong for Him to forgive without Christ’s atoning sacrifice, then He would still be just as wrong to forgive afterwards. But forgiveness is a disbursement of justice, is it not? If you damage your neighbour, justice says that they have the right to demand reparation from you, and in making reparation, justice is fulfilled. But if your neighbour willingly and sacrificially refuses to exercise their right to reparation, and instead accepts the cost of the damage themselves—that is, if they swallow the cost and forgive you—then justice is similarly fulfilled. Fulfilled through sacrifice.
Explain this riddle to your neighbours, and suddenly Jesus will begin to make sense to them! Jesus loves your neighbours, yes, but not in the grandfatherly way that your neighbours likely suppose. No, He is the King of the universe, and the Righteous Judge of all mankind (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 11:5-7; Ps. 58:11; Ps. 94:2; Ps. 98:9; II Cor. 5:10). He knows our crimes against him. Nor can our rebellion against Him be erased or merely forgotten. Sin carries with it a stench of death that clings to everything we do in this life.
We try to diminish our rebellion against Him as being a small thing that can be papered over with sentimentality. But sentimentality cannot save us. Only the sacrificial love of God can do that. And so God, who loves sacrificially, came into his own world in the form of a servant. He came willing to suffer for us, with strength enough to carry our sins into death and leave them there. Afterwards He was mighty enough to return out of death in order to proclaim His accomplishment on our behalf. He accomplished through sacrifice what could not be accomplished through sentimentality.
So ask your neighbours to imagine themselves as judge over the land. Ask them what they would do if their own child was brought before the bar and found guilty. They will feel the contradicting impulses, both to love and to do justice. But they should be able to see that if sentiment is always triumphant, not only would it fail to change their child’s heart, if every judge behaved according to sentiment it would break the world. Your neighbour should then be able to see that something more is needed to solve this conundrum. It is the same with God, who sits in judgement over the world. If He is only moved by sentiment (which, if He is God will not happen because it cannot), then He must inevitably leave us in our chains, forgiven, but still infused with sin. Thanks be to God that His sacrificial love can break those chains and bring about true reconciliation and true freedom.