True
love-- wherever you find it, whatever form it assumes, whether you know
it as the love of God to you, as your love to God, or as your love to
the brethren,--always consists in God's love of us not in our love of
God. This is clearly and indubitably revealed in the one great act of
God's love: the sending of His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.
Therein you taste and see not only that God loved us, but that His love is sovereign and free, self-existent and independent.
Love is the bond of perfectness. It is a spiritual bond that is
established and functions only in the sphere of moral perfection. Not in
darkness, but in the light; not in the sphere of the lie, but in the
truth; not in iniquity, but in righteousness; not in corruption, but in
holiness-- in a word, solely in the sphere of ethical perfection does
the fire of love burn, does the light of love shine, does the bond of
love knit being to being. The wicked do not love, whatever other bond
there is between them. Love is the bond of perfection.
It is the
attraction of person to person in the sphere of the light. It is the
longing of spirit for spirit, a seeking and finding of each other, a
living into each other's life, a giving wholly of each to the other, a
complete passion for the other, a seeking of each other's good, the will
to please each other, a perfect delight in each other-- all in the
sphere of ethical perfection.
Herein is love...
Not that we loved God, but that He loved us.
Impossible it would be to make a statement of this kind to describe and
characterize the bond of love between two human beings. Between them,
love is and must be bilateral, two-sided, mutual. The love of the one is
incapable of kindling love in the other. The bond of love can be
established between them only when the love of each meets and mingles
with the love of the other, and it can be maintained only as long as
each constantly continues to meet the love of the other.
Not so with
the love of God. It is strictly unilateral, not only in origin but also
in its continued operation. It does not consist in our loving God and
in His loving us because we love Him. Nor is the nature of love that God
and we simultaneously bring our love to each other. It dare not even be
said that love is established between God and us by Christ's position
between God and us, so that Christ causes God to love us and kindles the
flame of the love of God in us. Love is of God. Before we loved Him, He
loved. Before Christ was sent into the world to be a propitiation for
our sins, He loved us. To be sure, we love Him too; but even then love
is of God. His love is the great, the eternal, the unquenchable fire
that kindles all our love and that lights all the candles of our love.
Even as in the firmament the light is of the sun, and this light of the
sun is reflected in the moon, so love is of God, and our love is never
more than the reflection of His love. Herein is love... Of Him, and
through Him, and unto Him is love. Sovereign is the love of God.
Herman Hoeksema
All Glory To The Only Good God, 91-94
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