Understanding the Dimensions of God's Love

And so the benevolence of God has to do with his good will toward people. Let me remind you of the heavenly announcement that is reported by Luke in the Christmas narrative where with the appearance of the angels we read in chapter 2 of Luke in the eighth verse, "Now, there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night. [00:03:10]

And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were greatly afraid. And then the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord. [00:03:48]

And this will be the sign to you, you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger."' Here we have the angelic announcement, the annunciation in this case of the birth of Jesus the savior. And then we read, "Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.'" [00:04:19]

Now we're all familiar with that verse "on earth peace, good will to men." Other translations render it somewhat differently, and say, "Peace on earth to men of good will" because there is a grammatical ambiguity here which leaves open the question of whether that good will is an expression of God's good will towards us, or whether it is God's promise to people who are extending good will to one another. [00:04:52]

I prefer the classical rendition of this, that it has reference to the good will of God. And of course when we speak of the good will of God, we're being almost redundant. In fact we are being redundant, because God doesn't have any other will except a good will. We can assume that his will always manifests his character and his person, which is good. [00:05:22]

Now, one of the things we've been trying to do throughout this series on the love of God is to see how the attribute of divine love relates to other attributes of God. We've seen how that God's love is a holy love, it's an eternal love, it's a sovereign love, and so on. And now we see that his love is inseparably connected to his goodness. [00:05:55]

In John 3:16, that famous verse, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" and so on, which describes the will of God in sending his Son into the world. And when God sent the Son into the world this was not merely an expression of his will, but obviously it was an expression of his good will, that he was pleased to send his only begotten Son into the world. [00:06:28]

Now, I may also add to this the idea that when we speak of the benevolent love of God, we are talking again about his will, and that dimension of his will that we call the will of disposition. And this describes God's basic posture or attitude towards his creatures. Let me take a moment to look back into the pages of the Old Testament to a text that I think is important with respect to this issue. [00:08:14]

In Ezekiel 33 beginning at verse 10 we read these words, "Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus you say if our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?' Say to them, as I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. [00:09:12]

Turn away from your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel'." I believe it was from this text that Francis Schaeffer borrowed the title for perhaps his most famous work, "How Shall We Then Live," because Ezekiel mentions that basic question here. But notice that in this particular verse he says that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, because his basic attitude, even to fallen mankind, even those who are exposed to his wrath, is a disposition of kindness, of well-being. [00:09:57]

Now, it's so important that we understand this because some people, based on the principle of God's love of benevolence, have drawn from this idea the whole concept of universal salvation, that is, if God is basically benevolent in his disposition to all mankind, and he loves benevolently all people, then obviously in the final analysis no one will perish, no one will go to hell, because for God to send somebody to hell would be to be in violation of this characteristic of his being, namely his benevolence. [00:11:35]

But here we see in Scripture just the opposite. That in this close conjunction between these two statements, on the one hand he warns the people of the consequences if they don't warn the impenitent wicked about turning from their sins, and then says if they are warned and they do not turn from their sins then they will perish in their iniquity. That despite the added qualification that we get from the book of Ezekiel, that God doesn't take any pleasure in the death of the wicked. [00:12:20]