Week 4: The Rule of Love

Recommended Reading:
Chapter 5 (22 pages)

Key Quotes:
Chapter 5
"God's saving love for us, then, is an incorporating love, a covenantal love. The Father loves the Son, and we are then incorporated into it by marital covenant. "I will betroth you to me forever." (98)

"Biblical love always begins with the love of God, and therefore it will affirm only what is from God…Biblically, godly love takes pleasure in the other person's good, and that good is always God. Biblical love therefore gives itself to seeing God exalted in a person's life." (104)

"If God-centered love seeks both to affirm that which is from God and to see God exalted in the lives of others, church members will increasingly view their gathered and scattered lives as opportunities to display God's glory." (109)

Engagement Questions:
Chapter 5
1. In what ways have we twisted God's love for sinners?

2. In what ways this week can you display God's glory and seek God to be exalted in the life of those whom you have covenanted with locally*? To your family? To your co-workers/neighbors?
*This assumes you are a member of a local church, if not, I strongly encourage you to commit yourself to a local church.

Definitions
Love: "Love is affectionately affirming that which is from God in the beloved, and giving oneself to seeing God exalted in the beloved." (102)

Summary:
Chapter 5
In the previous two chapters, we established the foundation for God's love as being directed towards God. This is incredibly important for us to acknowledge because if God is a lover of anything else, then he immediately becomes an idolater and can no longer be God. In this chapter, we take a look at God's love towards sinners. I appreciate how Dr. Leeman carefully handles this expression of love because too often, today, we see it mishandled and this leads to very shallow understandings of God, even shallower responses to God in obedience and, in the worst cases, straight up heresy. 

This chapter can really be broken out into two sections. The first section deals predominately with who we are, sinners. We are all undeserving of love and have nothing in and of ourselves to offer up to God to merit/earn His love, nor is there something about us that is utterly attractive that God cannot help to love us. In a nutshell, Dr. Leeman presents us with the Gospel. The Gospel begins with us examining and acknowledging our own sinfulness. There is nothing perfectly beautiful in us, but Christ is perfectly beautiful. He was, and is, the perfect Son and is given to us by the Father for a purpose. Yes, for our salvation, but in the context of love, while He generally loves the world, He particularly loves His people and saves them for His glory and names sake. And because of the Son and God's love for the him, we, as Christ's bride, can receive salvation and Christ's glory becomes our own.

And this leads us to the second section of the book, which deals with our and the church's response to God's love for sinners. We want nothing less of God's glory to be shown in us, in our neighbors, and in our world. And so, we are enabled, through the Spirit, to love others in a manner which is meant not to exalt the other person or ourselves, but for God to be exalted. And so, we see that boomerang analogy we read about in the previous chapters of everything returning to the One from whom, through whom, and to whom all things belong, God. In the church, we also see that this love centers how we worship. We make disciples, not for the numbers, but so that God will be exalted. We live as a people of compassion and justice because we know that we cannot say that we love God while we hate those who bear His image. In effect, God's people and His church, when they rightly understand Godly love, will not emulate the spiritually idolatrous Israelites who sought the pleasures and comforts of this world. We find our safety, security, satisfaction, and self not in our possessions or other things, because our only love is Him, and Him alone.

Grace and Peace,
Alex Galvez

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