“Like a rose trampled on the ground,
You took the fall, and thought of me—above all.”
(Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche)
I remember the Sunday a dear couple came up after the service to let me know their displeasure with this song we had just sung. “Beautiful song. Badly mistaken lyrics.” They were right. If I was foremost in Jesus’ thoughts when He hung on the cross making atonement for sin, then He is an idolater. As much as He loves us – and He does – He thought of His Father’s glory above all, as He always did, because there is nothing greater in this universe.
The point of the last post on John 3:16 was that God’s love for us is not the supreme truth in this passage. It’s not the recipients of the gift that are exalted, but the value of the Gift – Jesus – to the Giver – the Father. The greatness of the salvation we receive is measured by the greatness of the Father’s love for His Son. He gave Him up to die for rebels like us.
The Father thought of His Son, above all. And the Son thought of His Father, above all. Contrary to Whitney Houston, the greatest love of all is not loving yourself, or even God’s love for His children. The greatest love of all is the divine love that has always existed between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We Christians don’t think enough about this. Preachers don’t preach enough about this, and admittedly there are mysteries here to baffle the angels. We’re talking about intra-Trinitarian love – the perfect, infinite love that has existed forever between the three Persons of the Triune godhead. Bruce Ware says this—
“God . . . is a socially-related being within Himself. In this tri-Personal relationship the three Persons love one another, support one another, assist one another, team with one another, honor one another, communicate with one another, and in everything respect and enjoy one another. They are in need of nothing but each other through all eternity. Such is the richness and fullness and the completion of the social relationship that exists in the Trinity.” (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, p.20)
Within the Trinity lies the very headwaters of love itself. Love before time. Love before creation. Love that was eternally given and received between Father, Son, and Spirit. From this source overflows the love with which the elect have been loved by God from all eternity (Ephesians 1:4).
This should mean everything to us because this is how we are loved by Jesus. Read this slowly—
“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. (John 15:9, ESV)
Go ahead and rub your eyes: In the same way as – in the same proportion as – the Father loves the Son – this is how Jesus loves us? That’s what He said. The Father loves us exactly the way He loves His own Son. He said it again—
“. . . You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.” (John 17:23, ESV)
How has the Father loved the Son?
“. . . You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24, ESV)
The Father loved His Son perfectly before time began, and He loves His elect with the same eternal love. Not only are we loved with the same love, but He puts that divine love within us—
“I made known to them Your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26, ESV)
We are loved with divine love and that love is in us because God is in us—
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” (John 14:23, ESV)
We are loved in the same way, and with the same love with which God loves Himself. Are you getting this? No, you’re not. Just smile and nod.
This is how we are loved, but why we are loved? How do finite creatures get to share in infinite divine love? Again, it’s not because of us, but because of Him. I’m speaking to believers now. We were marked out, before time, to be a love-gift given by the Father to the Son. We see it in these verses—
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast ` out.” (John 6:37, ESV)
“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.” (John 6:39, ESV)
It’s worth the time to also look up John 10:29; and 17:2,6,9,24. We, the church, are collectively a love-gift from the Father to the Son, like a Bride given to her Husband. Why? Because the Father loves the Son, and gave Him this gift of fallen sinners from every nation, tribe, and tongue, so that the Son could redeem them by His death on the cross, thus displaying the glory of His mercy, love, and grace.
This helps answer the “why” of the Son’s love for us: The Son loves us because we are the love-gift of His beloved Father. He loves His Father’s gift, therefore He loves us. And it’s the Son’s love for His Father that moved Him to redeem this love-gift (which wasn’t at all lovable, see Romans 5:8), and give them back to His Father as His own love-gift. And the Father loves those given to Him, because these redeemed, blood-bought saints now love His Son—
“For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God.” (John 16:27, ESV)
Because the Father loves the Son, He gave Him the gift of unredeemed sinners, that the Son might be glorified by turning these sinners into saints, and giving them back to His Father. Because the Son loves the Father, He loves us. Because the Father loves the Son, He loves us.
You might be wondering, where does the Holy Spirit fit into all of this? He is Christ’s Gift to us (see Acts 2:33) to impart a deep experience of the love of God for us—
“. . . God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5, ESV)
The overflow of the love between Father, Son, and Spirit splashes all over us to let us know deep in our souls that we are beloved children of God.
Now let’s surface from our dive into this Mariana Trench of theology. Go slowly, decompression can be a problem. What does all of this mean to you and me? Shouldn’t it shake us from our man-centeredness? This universe is not all about you and me. And aren’t you glad? Salvation is not even all about you and me. This universe, and our salvation are both a means to an end, and that end is to display the glory of God. It’s because the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father that the plan of salvation was conceived as the greatest means of expressing and displaying the glory of God.
Yes, we are the blessed beneficiaries of this eternal plan. We get to share in this staggering, infinite, divine love. And yes, it should humble us and move us to exalt God and His glory. Above all. But it also gives us great security. We are enclosed and protected within a love beyond our comprehension and as impervious to change as God Himself. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39) I don’t have to worry that Jesus’ love for me might flicker or fade because of my sinful stumblings when I hear Him say, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.” (John 15:9, ESV)
The greatest love the universe has ever known is not God’s love for us, but God’s love for Himself. He loves us not because of who we are but because of who He is.
Thank you Doug. You are so right and it's a good reminder that everything in all of creation and beyond is a demonstration of God's love (the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and to His glory. That we get to be part of it somehow is so miraculous and undeserved, but we so often run the risk of thinking God is primarily focused on us.