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The Love of God, is the Cross, (it’s not primarily emotions)
We live in a sentimental humanistic age and the notions and values have invaded the church as much as it has invaded Babylon itself. The fear of God and the holiness of God are regarded as sweet delusions of the past.
“God loves me so much he killed Jesus to save me”: is often, in Charismatic circles, essentially the idea.
This is arrogant and this is wrong.
The love of God that is in Christ Jesus is revealed to us, always in the cross. A cross that speaks of our dying in Christ’s death to Adamic self, not of Christ dying in our place.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
Romans 6:3
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Romans 6:6
see John 3:16
The love of God is revealed in the cross.
Thus God loved the cosmos once in the past, by giving His Son (in death and resurrection), so that those who believe and keep on believing will not be destroyed but have everlasting life. John 3:16
Jesus Love for us is revealed in His death and His blood
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
Revelation 1:5
Attempts to make the love of God a “sentimental state” instead of making it the action of the cross leads to humanistic fantasies of us being precious to God outside of Christ.
Love in the New Testament is always about obeying God’s commandments
This is not pressure to obey the commandment because of a sentimental affection for God. It is a spiritual transformation called “born again” which produces a new DNA that is synchronized to God Himself and spontaneously obeys the command.
This “born again” does take time and our growth in victory over sin is a process. (there is failure in the beginning)
“If you love Me, keep My commandments.
John 14:15
“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
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.3. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.4. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
1 John 5:2-4
Outside Christ there no love
I’m sorry to burst your bubble but outside of Christ you are dead meat. There is no relating to God outside of “Christ Crucified”. It’s not sentimental, it’s spiritual. God is Spirit
Please remember the purpose and work the cross is primarily not about “forgiveness” but “dead to sin and self”.
The Father loves nothing at all but the Son : A.W. Tozer
To the question, “How can a holy God love an unholy sinner?” there is a full and satisfactory answer. The answer, of course, is found in the teachings of the Scripture. It has been stated for us by the German theologian Eckhart: “The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and such things as He finds in the Son.” This is a fair summation of the doctrine of the love of God as presented on the pages of Holy Writ. “The Father loves nothing at all but the Son.” All the love of God is gathered up in Christ. The Father loves the Son with all the love there is, which is to say with all of Himself, and He loves directly nothing but the Son. In the Son and through the Son all things came into being, including man. God loves men not for themselves but for the sake of the Son. His love for them is reflected from the face of Jesus Christ and falls upon them only as they are related to the Son. Man was made in God’s image and Christ is said to be “the image of the invisible God.” In some mysterious way is the race of mankind related to the Son, and for His sake God can lavish His love upon sinful men and still be just and holy in doing so.
A marginal problem, of no practical importance, is whether or not God continues to love sinners after they have forfeited their rights under the patient forbearance of God and have been consigned to their final place in hell. To believe that He does would be to conceive of Him as being eternally frustrated. Were He to continue forever to pour upon lost men an unrequited love, He could never be at rest. His wasted love would torture Him without end forever. The truth is that God loves only the Son “and such things as He finds in the Son.” When impenitent men have made their final decision against the Son and have walked out of His light for good they will no longer be objects of the love of God. God’s love is, like Himself, unchanging and eternal, but it touches only those who touch the Son. The soul that rejects the Son by a final irrevocable act forfeits forever the love of the Father.
