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A Primer on the Glory of God, Part 1: What is God’s Glory?

Isaiah 6:1 ¶ In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

First, we must begin with my basic presupposition: to speak of God is to speak of the God who has eternally existed as one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Any reference to God’s glory can speak of the three in One, or of any of the individual persons in the Godhead. We determine this based on the context of the passage in question.

In relation to God’s glory, notice two things here. First, notice the language of fullness. In verse 1, Isaiah sees the train of the Lord’s robe ‘fill[ing] the temple.’ Second, the seraphim declare that ‘the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Jonathan Edwards picks up on such language relating to fullness as he describes God’s glory (externally) as “the emanation and true external expression of God’s internal glory and fulness.” God’s glory is his own internal fullness, or “his infinite fulness of good.” God is an “infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence, and beauty” (Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner), vol. 1, p. 100). In light of God’s fullness, which fills the temple, and indeed fills the earth, it should be no surprise that he is declared, not simply to be holy, but, to be ‘holy, holy, holy.’ There is a fullness to God’s holiness.

The Hebrew term in Isaiah 6 translated glory is כָּבֹד (kabod). The word generally denotes weight, abundance, honor, wealth, or riches, with weight being the primary reference. To speak of God’s glory is to speak of his weight or abundance. He is not simply holy, he is ‘holy, holy, holy;’ he is holy to the brim; he is, as it were, weighed down, or filled up, with holiness.

God’s abundance cannot be contained:

  • 1 Kings 8:27 ¶ “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

He is ‘full of grace and truth’:

  • John 1:14 ¶ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

His love and faithfulness know no bounds:

  • Psalm 36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

His joy is full:

  • Psalm 16:11 ¶ You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy.

He is rich in wisdom and knowledge, his judgements are unfathomable:

  • Romans 11:33 ¶ Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways

To speak of God’s glory, therefore, is to speak of his fullness; in all his attributes he lacks nothing, being perfectly complete. He is, as it were, operating at maximum capacity. A glorious house is a full house; a glorious stomach is a full stomach; a glorious mind is a full mind; and a glorious God is a full God.

Next, notice the result of the revelation of God’s glory in Isaiah 6: ‘…The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke’ (v. 4). Because God is glorious, because he is weighty in his abundance, his presence shakes whatever it touches:

  • Exodus 19:18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
  • Psalm 68:7 O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah 8 the earth quaked.

However, it is not only the temple, or the earth, that shakes when God reveals his weight; Isaiah himself is shaken: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone…’ (v. 5).

The first great test of your experience of the glory of God, therefore, is whether it has shaken you to the foundations. When such fullness intersects with sinful man, it undoes him from the inside out like an earthquake. This is why, in the presence of Jesus Christ, some men and women fell before him as though they were dead, some gave away the great majority of their wealth, some gave up their occupations, and all gave up their claims to greatness and personal glory. When you have experienced such weight, you realize that you yourself are light. ‘All have sinned,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23). If you were put in the balance with God, the scale would tip dramatically, flinging you to a place that you do not want to be. You will either be shaken by his glory, or, ultimately, crushed by his glory.

From this context the gospel comes to us. The Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal God of glory, makes himself nothing in our place, that we might be weighed in the balance and want nothing. He ’empties himself’ that we, by faith, might be counted as though we lacked nothing. The great Heavyweight lives a life of glory, and dies the death of a sinner, that we lightweights might make weight, or measure up, through him; He gives up his honor that we might be counted as honorable and he gives up his riches that we might be rich in him:

  • 2 Corinthians 8:9 ¶ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

This is a heavyweight gospel, from a glorious God.

A Few Resources I Recommend

It dawned on me today that, since I devote most of my posts on the blog to particular things I’m reading, I don’t actually share links and resources that often. I thought I would post links to a few resources that you may find helpful (or at least that I’ve found helpful).

AUDIO BIBLES

First, I’ve meant to share this before, but my absolute favorite audio recording of the Bible is available HERE. The translation is actually the World English Bible, which isn’t too bad and is available for free because it’s in the public domain. The only downside with this site is that you have to listen to each chapter of the Bible individually and click a link for each new chapter. But I actually like that feature until you get to Psalms. I use this audio Bible literally every day.

If you don’t care for that one, you can use my number two choice HERE. You can pick the translation and from various readers. I like to listen to Max McLean personally. The reason I prefer the David Field audio to this one is the speed. Field reads a bit faster. I generally use this version for the psalms and if I want to hear how McLean pronounces a word.t

PRAYER

Next, I want to recommend (again) a recording of some of the pastoral prayers of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. While we have many of the great sermons of the great preachers left in print, we do not have many of their prayers. Here we have the blessing of hearing the Doctor pray in his own voice. You can listen to them HERE.

You can also read a good number of Charles Spurgeon’s prayers HERE. I also have a little book of prayers by John Calvin that I read fairly regularly, and have for years. The closest thing to it I’ve found online is HERE. A great overall site for prayer, based on Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer, can be found HERE.

COMMENTARIES

As far as commentaries, I have Calvin’s commentaries in my library, but I often use the easily accessible online version found HERE. I also frequent the online version of Matthew Henry’s commentary HERE (you can choose from a number of classic commentaries on the page).

SERMONS

As far as reading sermons, for printed sermons I usually go HERE for Spurgeon and HERE for others. The second site linked here is Monergism, which I highly recommend. Another great resource is Yale’s Jonathan Edwards page HERE.

For audio sermons I frequent the MLJ Trust (Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ audio sermon archive) HERE, Redeemer’s free audio page HERE (sermons by Tim Keller), and Desiring God (John Piper) HERE. I also occasionally visit HERE to search for audio readings of the sermons of Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and others.

BOOKS

Finally, for free audio books I frequent Books Should Be Free, which can be found HERE. I’ve listened to several G.K. Chesterton books via this site, as well as some John Owen and John Calvin. In addition to that, I have listened to several fairy story books with my children.

AUDIO JOURNALS

I highly recommend Mars Hill Audio. I can’t imagine what my life would be like had I never been introduced to their audio reports and conversations. There is some free content on the site, but most of it isn’t free. Everything I have ever purchased from them has been well worth the price. Ken Myers is about as thoughtful a Christian as we have these days, and he speaks with people who have thought deeply about the various topics they discuss. There are many great resources available on C.S. Lewis, reading, philosophy, culture, and all sorts of other things. You can create an account to get a free sample of their audio journal HERE.

POETRY

I usually read poetry from a few massive volumes I have bought at library book sales. There is, however, a great online source HERE.

A WORD ON BOOK SALES

Speaking of library book sales, let me encourage avid readers to find out if their libraries have such sales. Our local library has one the first weekend of every month, and other libraries in our area have similar sales from time to time. You can usually get paperbacks for a quarter. If you live in a metropolitan area, thrift stores like Goodwill or Salvation Army are a great resource for cheap books. I have found some of the greatest books that I’ve every read at so-called junk stores.

As a matter of fact, just a couple of months ago I was at one such store and discovered that, apparently, a large chunk of a minister’s library had been donated. There were books on Hebrew and Greek and all sorts of other books on sale for a quarter each. I bought a whole collection (8 volumes) of G. Campell Morgan sermons, two Francis Schaeffer books, some C.S. Lewis, and several other books as well, for less than 5 dollars.

That’s all for now, happy reading.

Snippets: Low Self-Esteem is Not Humility (1 Samuel 15)

Note particularly vv. 17 and 24:

17 And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 18 And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ 19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” 20 And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. 21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” 22 And Samuel said,

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king.”

24 Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. 25 Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord.” 26 And Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:17-26).

Saul had low self-esteem. Yet he was not humble. In fact, his low self-esteem inspired him to exalt himself in a heinous act of disobedience. Because he thought of himself in low terms he was a people-pleaser. He ‘feared the people and obeyed their voice’ rather than obeying God.

You make think that you are being humble by patting people on the back and giving them what they want, when, in fact, you are actually exalting yourself to the heavens.

You may think that you are making great sacrifices by giving others what they want, when you are in fact disobeying God. This is no true humility. By thinking little of yourself in terms of esteem, you are actually thinking much of yourself in terms of the desired outcome.

Christ was and is no people-pleaser. He said hard words. He made hard demands. But he was and is the humblest man who ever lived. True humility is conformity to the image of Christ – not living in fear of people, but doing what is best for them even when it is going to hurt (and you will likely be the one hurting).

If you are a king, acknowledge that you are king and live like it. That doesn’t make you proud, it makes you honest. Letting others get their way isn’t necessarily humility. It may simply be cowardice.

Meeting God in the Dirt: Toward a Biblical Theology of Jesus and Dirt

Genesis 32:24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

The Hebrew word אָבָק (abaq), translated ‘wrestled,’ literally means to ‘get dusty.’ When you wrestle you roll around in the dirt. In order for the sun to rise on Jacob (Gen. 32:31) he had to have a true, heart-changing meeting with the living God. Such meetings with God only occur if God chooses to condescend to man – God must get dirty.

Man is made of dirt:

  • Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

God became a man, and therefore took on a body made of dirt:

  • John 1:14 ¶ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

He was born in a dirty place (caves/barns are dirty):

  • Luke 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

He did the dirty work of a carpenter:

  • Mark 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

As he writes the law in the human soul, he wrote in the dirt with his finger:

  • John 8:6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

He spit on the ground and made a mud pie to heal a blind man:

  • John 9:6 Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud…

His feet needed washing:

  • John 12:3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

He washed the feet of others:

  • John 13:14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

He embraces you, as dirt, by taking your literal dirt (flesh) upon himself and by taking your spiritual dirt (sin) upon himself on the cross:

  • 2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

When he rejects your dirt, he is rejecting your form of sinful humanity:

  • Luke 10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’

He gets dirty so that you, as dirt, can be clean dirt. He loves our dirt, that is our humanity, but rejects our spiritual filth that ruins our humanity.

C.S. Lewis said that Aslan was not a tame lion. We might say that Jesus is no clean God. He is clean in the sense that he is pure, and perfect, and holy to be sure. But he’s not afraid to roll around in the dirt. He touches the dirt and he sanctifies it. Rather than it polluting him, he purifies it. That’s why you’re a Christian.

A Case for Infant Baptism from Covenantal Lordship

In this post I present several quotes that I have found helpful over the years in clarifying and expressing my views on baptism. I have wanted to record these quotes in one place for future reference for quite some time and have finally gotten around to doing it. In summary, I have outlined the quotes to present an argument for infant baptism based upon the doctrine of Christ’s covenantal lordship, and his delegation of that lordship in Christian families.

The two authors quoted below are Meredith Kline, who was a paedo-baptist, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was a credo-baptist. Kline’s book, By Oath Consigned has been instrumental for my understanding of the doctrine of baptism. I do not agree with every element of the book. I am not sold on his teaching about New Covenant covenantal curses. But, I should point out, Kline reportedly tweaked his own teaching on baptism in later years and decided to bring the book out of print. Despite this, however, Kline’s teaching on suzerain-vassal treaties and the import of the theme of lordship within covenant structures, ceremonies, and signs is extremely illuminating. It is this line of thought from the book that I use.

As for the Doctor, years ago I spent a good deal of time reading his commentaries on Ephesians. In his sermons on the family in Ephesians 6 and baptism in Ephesians 4, I found some striking statements that have served to help me express my own contentions about the role of Christ’s lordship in baptism and general family life.

The primary Scriptures referenced for this argument are the ‘Great Commission’ of Matthew 28:18-20:

  • Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And the following statements of the Apostle Paul from his Epistle to the Ephesians:

  • Ephesians 4:5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism
  • Ephesians 6:1 ¶ Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
  • Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

In addition to these texts, Kline points us to the texts and context of the institution and import of circumcision in Genesis. And we also might point to various texts dealing with baptism such as 1 Peter3:21, which, Kline notes, may be translated that baptism is ‘a pledge of good will to God’ (that is, a pledge of allegiance) (By Oath Consigned, p. 67) or 1 Corinthians 10:2, which we discuss below. The ‘household’ baptisms of Acts and 1 Corinthians 1:16, as well as Paul’s statement concerning the ‘consecration’ of children in 7:13, come into play, but I will not discuss those texts in this post. I will only say in passing that the doctrine of covenantal lordship set forth below sheds tremendous light on each of those texts. Read this post, then read those texts, and see if they do not begin to make sense.

Each quote referenced by Kline comes from the book By Oath Consigned. And with those preliminaries covered, I give you my outline:

1. In the Old Testament, God is Lord of his covenants

Now since in certain notable instances, particularly but not exclusively in the Mosaic covenants, it pleased the Lord of Israel to describe his covenant relationship to his people according to the pattern of these vassal treaties, no other conclusion is warranted than that ‘covenant’ in these instances denoted at the formal level the same kind of relationship as did the vassal covenants on which they were modeled. That is, covenant in these divine-human transactions denoted a law covenant and hence was expressive of a lordship that could satisfy the terms of the covenant by stretching forth its sceptre in either blessing or curse (Kline, pp. 21-22).

2. He ordains signs in order to display his lordship over his people

The oath whose curse sanction circumcision symbolized was an oath of allegiance. It was an avowal of Yahweh as covenant Lord, a commitment in loyalty to him. As the symbolized curse which sealed this pledge of allegiance, circumcision partook of the import of an oath. It was, therefore, a sign of consecration. Hence Israel is commanded: ‘Circumcise yourselves to the Lord’ (Jer. 4:4) (Kline, p. 43).

3. Those who receive those signs are dedicated to his lordship by oath

Hence, by circumcision, the sign of the consecratory oath of the Abrahamic Covenant, a man confessed himself to be under the juridical authority of Yahweh and consigned himself to the ordeal of his Lord’s judgment for the final verdict of his life (Kline, p. 48)

4. In the New Covenant, Jesus Christ is declared to be the Lord of the Covenant, and Baptism is Declared to be the Sign of Entrance into the Covenant

Now if the covenant is first and last a declaration of God’s lordship, then the baptismal sign of entrance into it will before all other things be a sign of coming under the jurisdiction of the covenant and particularly under the covenantal dominion of the Lord. Christian baptism is thus the New Covenant sign of consecration or discipleship (Kline, p. 79).

5. Therefore the sign of baptism is an oath-sign dedicating the one baptized to the lordship of Christ

Now if the covenant is first and last a declaration of God’s lordship, then the baptismal sign of entrance into it will before all other things be a sign of coming under the jurisdiction of the covenant and particularly under the covenantal dominion of the Lord. Christian baptism is thus the New Covenant sign of consecration or discipleship.

It is immediately evident in the great commission that consignment under the authority of Christ is the chief thing in Christian baptism. For there baptizing the nations takes its place alongside the teaching them to obey Christ’s commandments in specification of the charge to disciple them to him who has been given all authority in heaven and earth. Of similar significance are a concatenation like Paul’s ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5) and the common confession of Jesus as Lord or Christ in baptismal formulae (Acts 2:28; 8:16, 19:5; I Cor. 1:13ff; cf 1 Pet. 3:21; Rom. 10:9). The related baptismal phraseology of ‘in (or into) the name of Jesus Christ’ (or ‘of the Lord’ or of the Trinity) also expresses the nature of baptism as confirmation of an authority or ownership relationship, judging from analogous usage in the Old Testament…Further evidence is the representation of baptism as a seal, in the sense of a token of authority or mark of ownership…

The incorporation of disciples into the jurisdiction of the new Covenant by baptismal confession of Christ as Lord is in clear continuity with the tradition of the initiatory oath of allegiance found in Old Testament covenant engagements….
As an oath-sign of allegiance to Christ the Lord, baptism is a sacrament in the original sense of sacramentum in its etymological relation to the idea of consecration, and more particularly in its employment for the military oath of allegiance…(pp. 79-81).

Though Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was not a paedo-baptist, he expressed the idea of baptism as a sign of the Lordship of Christ quite well in his commentary on Ephesians 4:5 (‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’):

Baptism does represent the washing away of sins, but having done so, it goes on into something infinitely more important. We note that the term used is ‘baptized into’ or ‘baptized unto’. This gives us the key to a true understanding of this ‘one baptism’. It means ‘in reference to Christ’, or ‘into the realm of Christ’, or ‘into the sphere of influence which is exercised by Christ’ (Christian Unity: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:1-16, p. 124).

He notes 1 Cor. 10:1-2, which says,

  • 1 Corinthians 10:1 ¶ I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea

He comments,

That statement can have but one meaning. They were baptized into the leadership, the sphere of influence, of Moses. They had become identified with Moses and all he stood for, and the cause that was represented by Moses. In other words, they were separated from the Egyptians, amongst whom they had been living…There was now a division between them and all who belonged to the realm of Pharaoh…Baptism therefore represents and signifies our being put into the realm and into the sphere and into the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ (Ibid, p. 125).

The Doctor also helpfully points out that the record of the Book of Acts that baptism was performed ‘in the name of Jesus’ makes perfect sense in light of this teaching. If baptism is primarily a symbol of the lordship of Jesus, then Luke (the author of Acts) is making a statement of doctrinal significance by describing the baptisms of the early church in this way (Ibid).

6. The Christ-Given, Christ-Representing Authority of Parents as the Basis for Infant Baptism

Returning to Lloyd-Jones, though again, he was not a paedo-baptist, he makes a statement which helps us understand the covenantal authority of parents in this regard:

The parents should be living in such a way that the children should always have a feeling that they themselves are under Christ, that Christ is their Head (Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home and Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, p. 299, emphasis mine).

In the covenantal workings of the family, under the New Covenant, the task of Christian parents is to represent the lordship of Christ in the household. They are to essentially live out the relationship of Christ and the church. That is, they are to emulate Christ, by the help of the Spirit, in all family relationships:

A. Husbands/Fathers

  • Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
  • Ephesians 5:28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.
  • Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

B. Wives

  • Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

C. Children

  • Ephesians 6:1 ¶ Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Ephesians 6:1 and 4 are absolutely vital to the discussion of the covenantal headship of parents, and particularly of fathers in 6:1. Notice in 6:1 that children are commanded to obey their parents in the Lord. In light of the teaching of the New Testament in regards to headship, it would seem clear that the idea behind the phrase ‘in the Lord’ is that covenant-children are to obey their Christian parents because their parents are exercising the authority of Christ over them. To paraphrase Lloyd-Jones (quoted above), in honoring the authority of their Christian parents, children are honoring the authority of the Christ who is over their parents.

6:4 describes such parenting: the parent is carrying out the ‘discipline and instruction’ or ‘nurture and admonition of the Lord.’ When parents are truly parenting under the authority of Christ in this way, children are obligated to obey based upon the authority of Christ as declared in the great commission:

  • Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

In summary, then, the children of Christian parents are disciples of their parent or parents who are disciples of Christ. Indeed, the covenantal authority of Christ is delegated to the parent for the proper discipling (i.e. ‘making disciples of”) children. In light of this, and the other points of the argument, it  only seems logical that the children of believers should receive baptism as a sign of their position under the disciple-making authority of the covenant-Lord Jesus Christ.

We therefore conclude with Kline:

…Though the confession of faith has this primacy in the administration of baptism it is not the exclusive principle regulative of this rite. For the one who confesses Christ is required to fulfill his responsibility with respect to those whom God has placed under his parental (if not household) authority; exercising that authority to consecrate his charges with himself to the service of Christ. The basis for the baptism of the children of believers is thus simply their parents covenantal authority over them (Kline, p. 102).

God Is Love, But Love Is Not God

  • 1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Years ago (maybe around 2002 or so), shortly after I had become a Christian, there was a cryptic little quote that popped up frequently on advertisements for a TBN show that featured a woman musing upon 1 John 4:8. I have tried for a couple of years to locate this video online but have not found it as of yet. If memory serves me correctly the woman in question was making the point that she had come to realize that if God is love, then love is God. Then she went on to repeat herself, multiple times: ‘Love is God, love is God…’

Even as a young Christian, something struck me as odd, and flat out wrong, about this statement. Years later I decided to study 1 John 4:8 in depth and found that no less a heavyweight than Augustine of Hippo made a similar statement:

And this passage declares sufficiently and plainly, that this same brotherly love itself (for that is brotherly love by which we love each other) is set forth by so great authority, not only to be from God, but also to be God (De Trinitate, Book VIII).

In context, if I am not mistaken, Augustine makes his case for such a statement based on his view that the Holy Spirit is indeed Love itself – the Love that is the bond between the Father and the Son. Yet I do not see how that equates to the idea that love is ‘not only from God’ but also God itself.

I take the position that it is idolatrous to claim that ‘love’ is God, and that the realization of this fact is absolutely vital. The classic example of this is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Several years ago when I preached on this text I cited the the ‘star-crossed lovers’ as the classic fictional example of love-idolatry. I had not actually read the work at that point. But years later, reading it, I came across this line (and it is quite famous). Juliet is speaking to Romeo in Scene II:

Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee.

Shakespeare understood quite well what I am about to write.

Romeo was effectively Juliet’s ‘god.’ She lived for him, she died for him. She bucked the rules for him. She broke the commandments for him (not only the first commandment, but the sixth as well). She sacrificed herself upon the altar of love. Romeo was a love that Juliet declared to be a god.

Love becomes God when love becomes the supreme Judge and Justification of all things. I have often used this idea in counseling young people. It is easier to illustrate this than to explain it, so here goes:

Take, for example, a young Christian woman who is living with (and having sex with) her boyfriend. ‘Don’t you realize that sex outside of marriage is wrong?’ she is asked. ‘I know, but I plan to spend the rest of my life with him. I love him. I would never sleep with someone I didn’t love. God knows that I love him,’ is her answer.

That’s the classic pomo (postmodern) Christian answer. But the question therefore becomes, ‘Who then is your God?’

In point of fact, love has become this young lady’s functional god. Love justifies breaking God’s law concerning adultery. Love, then, has become the supreme law-giver. If love says ‘go for it,’ then by all means go for it, regardless of what God says.

The standard idea of ‘how can God judge me if I’m only following my heart’ is actually idolatrous. God will judge us for making our hearts,  love, that is, a ‘god before him.’

Now this post has primarily to do with sexual/romantic love. Adultery of any form (that is, any sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman) is not simply adultery, but idolatry as well (because the approval of the lover, or the pleasure of the self, has become more important than the approval and pleasure of God). But this can be the case with many other forms of love. Love for cars, houses, and material things in general can lead a man to deny himself and follow after riches rather than Christ. Christ is the true ‘pearl of great price’ for which we should be willing, for joy, to give up all. But we often treat many other things as greater pearls because of our love for them.

‘God is love’ suggests that God is love personified. It suggests that we cannot properly understand love, or possess it, or love God and others, unless we understand it in terms of God – who He is, and what He has done. God’s love is manifested supremely in the giving of Christ as a sacrifice for sinners (Rom. 5:8, 1John 4:10). All true love will be consistent, in some way, with the love of God in Christ. It will be sacrificial, it will hurt, it will forgive sins, it will desire the best for the beloved, and it will care about the standard of holiness – God’s Law. But if we elevate love itself to the position of God, we have not only misunderstood love – we have misunderstood God as well. Adultery is idolatry, and idolatry is adultery.

This is not to diminish the importance of love, but to put it in its proper perspective. C.S. Lewis summarizes the point perfectly well in chapter three of The Four Loves:

If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.