The Greatness of God’s Love to His Elect

God takes pleasure in election because it magnifies his name. Between God the Father and God the Son there has flowed a love and joy so full and complete, and . Verse 7 says it was not because of their greatness.
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As he beholds his people in his dear Son, he loves us as he loves his Son, delights in us as he delights in his Son, and is pleased with us as he is pleased with his Son.

2. Conditional Election

This is exactly what our Savior declares in his great, high priestly prayer in John Having loved us from eternity, he will never call back his love in time. There is nothing we can do to destroy, or even lessen, the love of God for us John The love of God is not dependent upon, or regulated by our faithfulness to him Mal. And we know the love of God by the gracious operations of his love which he has performed on our behalf.

No one believes in the love of God who does not believe in election. And no one can talk about the love of God in Bible terms who does not talk about predestination. We read the love of God clearly spelled out in the precious blood of Christ. Had Christ done everything else and left this undone, had he not poured out his life's blood unto death for the atonement of our sins and the redemption of our souls, we could never have known the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But because he died for us, his love is made manifest. How can it be, That You my God should die for me! There is no possibility that it will expire. The nation began to drift away from God and gravitated toward spiritual decay. This lifestyle was the product of their concept of God. They needed a word from their God, and God spoke to them through His prophet Malachi. The name Malachi literally means, "My Messenger.

His message was one of rebuke, calling the nation to repentance. His message was one of warning, reminding the people of both the temporary consequences and future judgment of sin. We must understand that the message of Malachi is also a timely word for the church today. We have been entrapped by the same spiritual pitfalls that consumed Israel. Our concept of God is also foreign to the Scriptures and based too often on feelings and circumstances. One pastor identified five incorrect perceptions of God popular today: Allow me to be very clear.

If we have adopted a god contrary to the God revealed in the Bible, we are committing idolatry. Our study in Malachi will present a side of God some of us never knew existed, a side of God you may feel uncomfortable with. But the question is will we accept God for all that He is? Will we allow Him to change our thinking compared to the expectation that He must change if He is to be worthy of our thinking? Will we appreciate the full revelation of God even if it fails to square with our feelings and expectations?

Will we allow the true character of God to shape our lifestyle?

The Love of God

With the disinterest in sound theology and in-depth Bible Study, the church is adrift amongst a sea shallow thinking. A superficial understanding of God leads to a superficial relationship with God. And such an attitude has led to: Irreverent worship, indifference toward sin, inactive faith, incompetent preachers and inaccurate Gospel presentations.

Does God Love the Non-Elect? // Ask Pastor John

This message of Malachi written roughly 2, years ago is desperately needed today! We need to shake the dust off our spiritual lethargy and reorient our lives to the character and demands of our Creator. We need to recover the greatness and majesty of God for a church that has too long measured God by human standards.

We need to present the true Gospel that exceeds every message this world has to offer without shame or compromise. About two weeks ago I agonized through a horrific Gospel presentation. After five minutes of jokes, the call consisted solely of "coming to Jesus" without any explanation of what that means. There was not a word about biblical faith, repentance, sin, the work of Jesus on the cross or the character of God. It was only ten seconds of, "You must come to Jesus. Again, is that accurate? I would not deny a common love that God has for all His creatures. But can we with the authority of the Scriptures, give people this affirmation?

My Bible says that all unbelievers are "children of wrath" Eph. Of these people the Bible says, Jesus will " deal out retribution because they do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" 2 Thes. If God passionately loves these people why would He send them to hell? If God passionately loves these people why should they change their lifestyle? If God passionately loves these people what makes the Gospel more attractive than any other message?

And if God passionately loves these people, does His love for them not change if they become His children and enter into His covenant of grace? Their message is always one of repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. However, those who come to God on His terms do have the assurance of His love. On the contrary, God's love constrains to the death of Christ and is supremely manifested therein. In a word, the saving love of God is giving:. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God , who loved me and gave himself for me " Gal.

He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. The citation of such texts could continue seemingly without end see also Rom. But after a survey of only these few it is evident that, in the words of Henry, "almost invariably the New Testament Epistles expound God's love for us by reference to the cross. To eliminate the death of Christ for sinners would eviscerate the very heart of divine love as portrayed in the New Testament" VI: The saving love of God is also sovereign.

John Murray explains as follows:. Love is not something adventitious; it is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be. He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love. Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects.

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It was of the free and sovereign good pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the 'I am that I am'" RAA , Concerning the statement, "Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated," he writes: There was no more reason in Jacob why he should be the object of Divine love, than there was in Esau. They both had the same parents, and were born at the same time, being twins [neither one had done anything good or evil]: Because it pleased Him to do so" Thus, to say that love is sovereign is to say it is distinguishing.

It is, by definition as saving love, bestowed upon and experienced by those only who are in fact saved i. Although there is surely a sense in which God loves the non-elect, He does not love them redemptively. If He did, they would certainly be redeemed. God loves them, but not savingly, else they would certainly be saved. All this is but to say that God's eternal, electing love is not universal but particular. It is also to the saving love of God that we trace the cause of our predestination.

Although God certainly foresees all that comes to pass, more than bare foresight is envisioned here. The foreknowledge of which Paul speaks in Romans 8: But what precisely does it mean? It is used in a sense practically synonymous with love, to set regard upon, to know with peculiar interest, delight, affection, and action of. There is no reason why this import of the word 'know' should not be applied to 'foreknow' in this passage, as also in When this import is appreciated, then there is no reason for adding any qualifying notion and 'whom he foreknew' is seen to contain within itself the differentiating element required.

It means 'whom he set regard upon' or 'whom he knew from eternity with distinguishing affection and delight' and is virtually equivalent to 'whom he foreloved'" I: It is, therefore, God's eternal and distinguishing love, conditioned upon no other grounds than His own sovereign and immutable purpose, that explains and accounts for our predestination unto conformity to Christ.


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This same love of God is the reason for our adoption as sons. It was "in love" that God "predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance [not with our foreseen faith but in accordance] with his pleasure and will" Eph. It is because God loved that he predestinated. To call us sons of God! We should not in the least be surprised that this love of God is described as "great.

THE LOVE OF GOD IS IMMUTABLE

It is a great love because it can never be exhausted, its depths never plumbed, its purpose never thwarted by the sin of man Eph. And again, the context will not permit this love to be universalized. Murray writes that it is a love. The same kind of relationship obtains between the 'great love' and the saving actions as obtains between love and predestination in Ephesians 1: This is not to say that God does not "love" in any sense those who are never saved i. It is simply to say that only those who are, in fact, saved are especially God's "beloved" and the objects of a divine affection that actually issues in their being saved.

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The saving love of God is eternal. It was "before the creation of the world" Eph. Charles Spurgeon describes this eternal love: Before there was any created being; when the ether was not fanned by an angel's wing, when space itself had not an existence, where there was nothing save God alone — even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved with love for His chosen. Their names were written on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul. Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the world — even from eternity!

This love is not only eternal in its conception, it is irrevocable in its purpose. Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?


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