Loved “Even As”
“God Loves You”... Who Cares?
“God loves you!” We see it on billboards and bumper stickers. But here's the thing: we don’t care. We don’t slam on the brakes, pull the car onto the shoulder, and say, “What?! God loves me? Tell me more!” Our hearts don't soar with delight at this amazing news, even if we’re Christians. Why? At least one reason is that the claim “God loves you” is both generic and abstract. The word “God” often brings to mind a powerful sovereign – “the man upstairs” – who made everything and wants you to be good. “Love” in our society means all sorts of things, from a mild preference to unconditional loyalty. Even for Christians, who believe in the God of the Bible, “love” can feel cliché and empty of meaning. The result: the declaration “God loves you” is white noise. A fortune-cookie encouragement. Devoid of a foundation, it’s a house built on sand, easily blown over by the winds of the world.
But the Bible does say a lot about God’s love. God did not intend for us to shrug our shoulders at that notion. So what does he intend? What is the rock-solid foundation upon which the house of God’s love is built that recovers the good news of “God loves you” from the abyss of the abstract?
To answer that question, we need to go back, way back – long before you ever existed. In order to understand God’s love for you, we need to first take the focus off of you. The Bible’s claim is that God, the Father, has been loving long before you or I (or Adam for that matter) entered the scene. He has a deeper, supreme love that is the essential foundation for understanding His love for us.
The Father’s Eternal Love for the Son
There are several places in the Bible where God pulls back the curtain of time and gives us a peek into eternity past. The glimpses we get of the “time” before Genesis 1 show that God has forever been with His Son. Consider the opening words of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word (the Son), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was in the beginning with God” (Jn. 1:1-2). But we don't just see God with His Son. We see God eternally loving His Son. On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed… Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved mebefore the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:5, 24).
As we peer into “the happy land of the Trinity,”¹ we see a world of shared glory, intimacy, and beauty between the Father and His Son, a perfect fellowship of infinite love. This is who God has always been – a Father pouring out His perfect love on His eternal Son. When we hear God say, at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17), we’re simply hearing an echo of what the Father has been proclaiming for all eternity, long before He said “Let there be light” (Gen 1:2).
Here we see the most fundamental reality of God: He is the eternal Father who loves His begotten Son. When we hear the word “God” we often think of Him as Creator or the all-powerful Sovereign. While those are true realities of God, they are not most fundamental. There was a time when He wasn't “Creator.” But there has never been a time when He was not the Father loving His Son. It's for this reason many early church fathers like Athanasius said, “It is more pious and more accurate to describe God from his Son and call him ‘Father’ than to describe him from us and call him ‘the One who has never come into existence.’”² In other words, “Father” is not a cute nickname for God or an analogy to make us feel warm fuzzies. He is not like a father. It’s no mere metaphor. God is eternally the Father of His Son. Therefore, the most central reality of God’s love is not a love for you. There is a more fundamental object of His love - His Son.
That’s the foundation upon which the house of God’s love is built. Now we can begin putting up the scaffolding of His love for us.
Our Adoption “in the Son”
The Father Sends His Son
This eternally-beloved Son, the Father’s chief treasure, was sent to us, took on our weakness, lived the perfect life we were meant to live, died in our place taking the wrathful punishment we were meant to receive, and was raised from the dead in victory. In other words, the Son accomplished our salvation!
Now, if you’re a Christian, that’s a familiar story. In fact, if I asked you, “What is the gospel?” I imagine you would quickly answer something like, “Jesus died to forgive my sins!” That’s a typical summary of how we think about our salvation. And it’s true! Yes and amen! But Christ’s substitutionary death is only step one. Notice that aspect of our salvation is just the removal of a negative. We’ve only talked about the punishment we’ve avoided (saved from wrath). But there's an often-overlooked positive side of redemption as well. Your forgiveness opens the doorway into something.
The Father Adopts Us in the Son
The crescendo of salvation is not forgiveness; it is adoption. Paul writes,
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Gal. 4:4-7)
The Father sent His Son to remove your sins so that He could adopt you into His family!
Loved “Even As” the Son Is Loved
We’re now almost ready to enjoy the treasury of God’s love. The foundation has been laid: God is the eternal Father pouring out His love on His Son. The scaffolding has been raised: that same Father sent the Son to pay for your sins and bring you into His family. Now, there’s one more step we need to take in order to complete the house. Even with the progress we’ve made, God’s love can remain abstract. We could still be tempted to think of his love as a favorable disposition: “He’s not mad anymore. He likes us now.” But is that the reality the Scriptures offer us? God’s generic favor? No.
I’ll let Jesus' words in John 17 bring us there. Here we walk on the holy ground of our salvation. Jesus prays to the Father,
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have lovedme may be in them, and I in them. (Jn. 17:22-26)
Did you see it? The true wonder of our salvation is revealed in two small words in verse 23: “even as.” The love that we receive from the Father as adopted children is not generic favor; it’s not a positive disposition; it’s not even a love similar to what He has for the Son. The love we receive from the Father is the same love the Father has been pouring out on the Son for all eternity. We are loved “even as” the Son is loved, in quantity and in quality. In our adoption, we get to share in the Son’s sonship. The wonderful reality in which you live, Christian, is that the eternal Father, who has been forever pouring out His perfect, ever-satisfying love on the Son, now pours that same love on you!
Perhaps an analogy will brighten the diamond. A few years ago my wife and I adopted our fourth child, Sunny. When she was 6 months old, we went before a judge to make it official. I assumed it would be a matter of paperwork and banging a gavel but I was surprised when the judge had me raise my right hand and said, “Mr. Lawson, do you understand that your obligations towards Sunny thus far have been primarily moral obligations, and that henceforth you are promising to love her, care for her, and provide for her as if she had been born to you?” The judge was capturing the same language as John 17. He just said “as if” where Jesus said “even as.” You see, Sunny is not my child by nature. She is mine by adoption. Yet thesame love I have for my “natural” children I now have for her.
That is exactly what happens to you when the Father adopts you. You are loved “even as” the Son is loved. When you are united to Christ, you are in a very real way “born of God” (Jn. 1:12-13). And now, as Michael Reeves says, “As the Father looks with pleasure and delight on this perfect Son of his, so he looks with pleasure and delight on all who are in him.”³ Or to quote the apostle John, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are (1 Jn. 3:1). God’s love has never been about vague sentimentality; it is of a far superior kind than that.
God loves you with thesame love with which He loves His Son. When the Spirit united you to Christ, you were plunged beneath the same waterfall of God’s love that has been pouring over the Son for all eternity.
This is why many of the church fathers often summarized the gospel like this: The Father sent His eternal Son (by nature) to make us sons and daughters (by adoption). You have the unthinkable privilege of sharing in the eternal Son's sonship.
Conclusion
Do you live in this gospel reality? This is the reality Jesus came to bring you into! May we forever banish generic, abstract concepts of God’s love. The house of God’s love is built on an unshakable foundation that will not fall when the winds of doubt or the storms of suffering beat against it. For those in Christ, “God loves you” means more than you can imagine. It means the Father has poured His infinite love for the Son on you. Far from being generic and abstract, this is wonderfully specific! Seen rightly, you can truly say, “Your steadfast love is better than life” (Ps. 63:3)! The most fundamental truth about God is that He is a Father. The most awe-inspiring truth about your salvation is that He is now your Father. And nothing can ever separate you from His love (Rom. 8:38-39). You are loved “even as” the Son is loved.
“So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in Him, and no more. Every other discovery of God, without this, will but make the soul flee from Him. But if the heart would be taken up with this, the supremacy of the Father’s love, it cannot choose but to be overpowered, conquered, and love Him. This, if anything, will work on us to make our dwelling with Him. If the love of a Father will not make a child delight in Him, what will? Practice this then: exercise your thoughts on this very thing, the eternal, free, and fruitful love of the Father, and see if your hearts won’t be changed to delight in Him. I dare boldly say, believers will find it as thrilling a journey as they ever went on in their lives. Sit down a little at the fountain, and you will quickly have a farther discovery of the sweetness of the streams. You who have run from Him, will not be able, after a while, to keep at a distance for a moment.”
- John Owen
Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything
Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians
Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ
Recommended Resources:
Life in the Trinity, by Donald Fairbairn
Delighting in the Trinity, by Michael Reeves
Rejoicing in Christ, by Michael Reeves
The Deep things of God, by Fred Sanders
