The Knowledge of the Holy: The Love of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Stop for a second and think about the attributes of God we have discussed so far: one-ness, self-existence, self-sufficiency, eternity, infiniteness, mercy, grace, etc. While all these attributes are awe inspiring, without love, they can at worst be terrifying and at best leave you tepid. Who wouldn’t be fearful of a God who is everywhere, eternal, unlimited, and all-knowing if he was a loveless being? And even if you have such a being who is merciful and full of grace, but doesn’t love you, you’re left with a cold relationship based on your loveless god’s pity. Love is the part of God’s nature that sets Him apart and makes Him desirable.
We have to be careful though. Many, as Tozer has pointed out, have taken John’s statement “God is love,” and have turned that phrase to mean “love is God.” The result has been anything that seems loving, some have turned and worshipped as God. But generic love is not God, but God is full of sincere and fervent love. While “love” has been used to describe just about anything humans do, God’s love acts as God does. Everything He does is done with love.
This love that we experience from God manifests in many ways. Love wills the good of another, so when true love from God rests on our heart, we are able to live without fear because “love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:8). When our knowledge of God’s love and His sovereignty are perfected, we are able to live fearless lives confident that His love will mean our good. God’s love also reminds us that He desires friendship. The fact that God has set His love on us means more than just He is a good person. It means He desires relationship. With you. There are staggering implications to this. Finally, love means that the person who loves takes pleasure in the person He has set his affections on. God is fully pleased with you. There is no more need to try and please. You are as loved as you are ever going to be.
Finally, Tozer reminds us that love never lies dormant. It’s always moving. It’s always extending itself to the one it loves. And this is true of God. Jesus told us “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13). And in the cross and since the cross, no one has laid down their life for us more than Jesus. He sacrificed Himself for us, He is always praying for us, and leading us in laying our lives down.
One of the things that makes the topic of love so important is that Christianity is really the only “religion” that is based upon a relationship of love with it’s God. Talk to any Muslim that you know and they don’t really have an understanding of a God who loves them. Many of the other religions have many gods or no god who very seldom enter into relationship. It’s only in Christianity that God has the heart of a Father toward His children. Human beings were made with a need for love. Our need for love was ultimately designed to be fulfilled by God. We remain empty until we receive it.
And this is why it is so critical that we understand God as a God of love. Christianity lived out of a place of encountering God’s love is electric. It changes a person. But Christianity lived outside of experiencing God’s love is like a clanging symbol. It means nothing to the world and frankly it’s irritating. It’s a code of ethics with no cause that changes no one. But when we are touched in our hearts with the warmth of God’s love, it melts our cold hearts and makes us alive on the inside.
When we experience this love, it changes us. Fire begets fire on this walk that we are on and we begin to live out the same principles of love that God has shown us. We will the go want good things for others, we extend friendship to them, we give of ourselves. The worlds finally gets to see people alive from the inside, living out the message of the cross. The result will be stunning. It’s what the world is waiting for.
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secret
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Grace of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Grace. It’s a word we use so often we sometimes forget what it means. In the last five years of church history, the word has taken on a whole new dynamic. There are men that are called “hyper-grace” believers and there are others being called legalists for not emphasizing grace enough. And if we’re not careful we can talk much about a word we barely understand, all the while thinking we totally understand part of God’s nature. Because grace is something that God is, our understanding of it is essential in this hour.
Hang with me here. Because I know that on Friday we talked about God’s mercy. And while Tozer (and I) will acknowledge that in God these two attributes are one, they are experienced in our humanity in slightly different ways. Mercy is God in his goodness confronting our guilt. But grace is God bestowing benefits upon undeserving people.
Picture the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). He has squandered his father’s inheritance and has realized what a terrible wrong he has done. He then returns home to a father, unsure of his father’s reaction and willing to be a slave just to survive. When he returns home, a watching father runs to his son while he’s still a long ways off and embraces him. The son repents. Now we know the father forgives this son. This was mercy. But when the father sends for the robe, the ring, sandals, and the feast, this is grace. Grace is what causes God to take us from the ash heap and seat us with princes (1 Samuel 2:8).
As I’ve pointed out before, Tozer likes to remind us of the foundation he has already laid in previous chapters. Because God is eternal and immutable, it’s not as if God suddenly developed grace as a part of His nature in response to our need. Instead, God has had grace in His nature since before the foundation of the world. Men in the Old Testament received grace. The sacrifice of Jesus has always been pointed to as the channel of this grace. And men and women since the New Testament have been recipients of grace. All of this comes through Jesus, who was looked forward to in the Old Testament and who has been looked backward on since His death and resurrection.
We do well to remember, as well, since grace is part of God’s nature, it is also infinite. There is no end to God’s grace. Tozer compares God’s grace to our need. Picture mankind’s great sin. If all of them were to be numbered, it would seem innumerable. And yet, Scripture makes it clear, where sin abounds, God’s grace abounds much, much more (Romans 5:20).
One of the things that I love about grace that we forget is that we don’t deserve it. Usually we don’t forget this when we are asking God for grace for ourselves. We usually remember this very easily. But we do forget this when we are dealing with others. Grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve. GRACE (as some have very nicely described it) is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. We get access to this by the free gift of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection. And so when we’re dealing with others, as those who have tasted God’s grace, we should be gracious, giving beyond what people deserve. This is the question we need to ask ourselves: Has my life been a picture of God’s grace to others?
At the same time, we should understand that grace is not given as a license for sin. Yes, we can sin and be recipients of grace. Sinning happens. But true recipients of grace are not content to take advantage of grace. Because grace is access to God’s riches and power to overcome sin is part of God’s riches, we should be quick to use grace to overcome sin. Paul, who was accused of being hyper-grace in his day, said “Should we go on sinning so that grace may increase? No!” (Romans 6:1-2). Grace, in the economy of God, for a person who is constantly late is a watch that they could not afford. Grace empowers, it doesn’t entitle.
And so my encouragement today is for you and I to become hungry to receive and know God’s grace more than we already do. Let’s enjoy the ring and the feast that our Father has brought to us. Let’s show that grace to others who still think their father only wants slaves. But lets also use the grace given us as more than just an excuse for sin. Let’s use it to overcome those things that have held us back. Let’s truly experience real grace and show it to others. .
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 19: The Grace of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secret
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Mercy of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Yesterday’s post ended talking about this crazy paradox that believers in Jesus are called to navigate: We serve a just God who shows justice and at the same time is completely full of mercy. This idea is so hard for us that Christians for centuries have tried to understand how God’s justice and His mercy mingle together. But make no mistake, the fact that we are not immediately consumed when we sin, the fact that there are more chances to repent and change, and the fact that Jesus died to save us from sin all point to a God unfathomably rich in mercy. Our job is to respond to that mercy appropriately.
Tozer tells us early that the mercy God has is a deep motivation from inside the Godhead to show compassion to those who do not deserve it. He spends time talking about how only mercy can take a man or woman who was once God’s enemy and show that man or woman goodness. We should live in the wonder of God’s mercy.
But because of our human nature we spend a large amount of time confused about God’s mercy. We sometimes feel like the God of Israel (or the Old Testament) was a the just judge whose judgment is only held back by the mercy of Jesus as demonstrated and taught in the New Testament. But Tozer reminds us of the ground we have already covered. God is one and not conflicted. He is eternal and not prone to divine mood swings. Mercy emanates from Him because He is eternally merciful, not because He had a change of heart.
The challenge for us, then, is to live as if mercy from God is real and constant. We cannot believe in mercy but exist as if it’s some kind of heavenly lotto we hope to win one day. We have to begin to live lives that reflect having tasted God’s mercy. This is harder than it sounds. It starts with believing that God is truly merciful. We have to renew our minds with the idea that mercy isn’t God’s temporary disposition. It’s who He is. As we renew our minds, we begin to walk in the experience of God’s mercy. The sins and regrets of the past slowly have less and less power over us.
This is the area where I need to grow significantly in. Over and over I’m struck by Tozer’s description of God as someone who isn’t merciful on a whim. My mercy is short-lived, but God’s mercy is constant and we can grow in our ability to live in freedom by believing God’s mercy is ever toward us.
Can we, by faith, walk in a greater experience of God’s mercy? I believe so. Let’s not (as Tozer says) “starve outside the banquet hall.” This was never God’s heart for His children. He desires that we know Him as the God of all mercy and comfort. Pray for me today, that I would know God’s mercy as a truth of who He is and not a divine mood swing.
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 18: The Mercy of God
Day 19: The Grace of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secret
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 