God Loves You

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God Loves You
by Philip Owen

“GOD LOVES YOU Even in 2011,” read a church sign that I saw recently. I don’t know what the person who authorized the sign had in mind with those words. Obviously, Scripture makes the simple declarative statement that “God is love” (I John 4:8). And just as obviously, God’s character does not change with the turning pages of the calendar. Beyond that, however, without any further context, the statement could be seriously misleading. Did the maker of the sign intend to suggest, for example, that because God is love, it doesn’t matter what we believe or what we do, or that it is sufficient just to trust that everything will turn out all right in the end because God loves us? If that is what the sign’s author intended to suggest, then he has communicated a damnable error and is encouraging people along a path that will bring them straight down to hell. Only a little honest, unprejudiced consideration of the truths revealed in Scripture will result in a realization that whatever Scripture means when it declares that God is love, it never means that we are free to believe, think, or do as we like without consequence.

The God who is love is the very same God who warned Noah: “The end of all flesh is come before me . . . and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. . . . And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. . . . And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle . . . and they were destroyed from the earth” (Gen. 6:13, 17; 7:23). The flood was real. The flood was not a “natural disaster.” The flood killed all mankind with the exception of Noah and his immediate family, only eight people. God took credit for the flood and its results because the God of love is a holy God who judges sin.

The God who is love is the very same God who brought an ignominious end to Israel, the ten northern tribes. The prophecies of Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah are filled with stark predictions of dire judgment on the sinning people whom God had chosen. Speaking through Hosea, God declared, “Ephraim [Israel] is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb” (9:16). Through Amos, God declared, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (3:2). Secular history reveals Assyria to have been one of the cruelest of nations. It was they whom God used to bring His Northern Kingdom to a violent end.

The God who is love is the very same God who sent Judah, the two southern tribes, into Babylonian captivity. Following a lengthy siege against Jerusalem, Judah fell to the conquering Babylonian army. God foretold the dire straits that would befall His chastened people during that siege: “And I [the Lord] will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friends in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them” (Jer. 19:9). God brought the alien army against Judah, took responsibility for the circumstances that provoked their cannibalism (though not excusing this sin, but through it revealing the depths of depravity to which they had sunk), and claimed credit for the dissolution of the nation and the captivity of the survivors.

The God who is love is the very same God who provides a detailed account of future horrendous universal judgment yet to fall on the earth (Rev. 6-18). Matthew observed that “except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (24:22). Like successive waves, mankind succumbs to seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments. God takes full credit for this great future devastation.

Finally, the God who is love is the very same God who punishes unbelievers in hell, telling us that at the end of time, “the dead [unbelievers], small and great, stand before God . . . and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:12, 15).

Without doubt, God is a God of love. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). But God always judges man’s sin—either vicariously in the death of His Son or personally on unbelieving sinners. And as for believers, like Israel and Judah of old, He is faithful to chasten—severely when necessary—wayward saints. God is ever gracious to forgive sin in the Person and through the death of His Son, but only catastrophe awaits those who presume on His love.

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God Loves You by Philip Owen

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God Loves You
by Philip Owen