Our focus here is on the fourth expression of God’s love, namely, the affection he displays toward his elect people, the beloved of God. This doesn’t have to do with that love by which we are brought into a saving relationship with God but rather with our capacity to feel and enjoy the affection of God (Jude 21 John 15:9–10 Ps. Carson points to how the experience of God’s love is portrayed as something that is conditioned upon obedience and the fear of God. Finally, the Bible speaks often of God’s love toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way. The elect may be the nation of Israel, or the church, or specific individuals (see esp. Then there is, fourth, God’s particular, effectual, selecting love for his elect. Third is God’s saving love toward the fallen world (John 3:16). Although the word “love” is itself rarely used in this way, there is no escaping the fact that the world is the product of a loving Creator (see the declaration of “good” over what God has made in Gen. Second is God’s providential love over all of his creation. There is, first, the peculiar love of the Father for the Son (John 3:35 5:20) and of the Son for the Father (John 14:31). Carson, “ On Distorting the Love of God”). Carson identifies five distinguishable ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God (see D.A. Seeing and savoring and being satisfied with the glory and majesty of God is the most loving thing God could ever do for us. He is asking the Father to give us that one experience that alone can satisfy our souls forever, far beyond any other gift or sight or experience. So, when Jesus prays that the Father would glorify him so that he in turn might glorify the Father, he is demonstrating his love for us (John 17:1). The latter, of course, would be the knowledge and enjoyment of God himself. The preeminent expression of love is when the lover, at great personal cost, gives or imparts to the beloved the most enthralling, beautiful, and eternally satisfying experience possible. The most exalted of all such benefits is God’s selfless gift of himself to his creatures. Love is the benevolent disposition or inclination in God that stirs him to bestow benefits both physical and spiritual upon those created in his image (and is thus in this respect synonymous with grace). What, then, does it mean to say that God is love? Sadly, though, “love” is one of the least understood and most widely abused concepts in our world, even in the church. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, Volume VI: God Who Stands and Stays, 341). His love, like all other divine attributes, reflects the whole of his being in specific actions and relationships” (see Carl F.H. Henry rightly declares that love “is not accidental or incidental to God it is an essential revelation of the divine nature, a fundamental and eternal perfection. As John states so clearly, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Of all that we are justified in saying about God, perhaps the most foundational truth of all is that he is love.
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