In preparation to the church camp, Downpour, and to clearly grasp the character of God's love in some manageable ways and understand it, I have offered to you three propositions. We have talked about the first in the last post, we will talk about the second in this post. These are three key propositions that will help us to understand the love of God.
First of all, God's love is unlimited in extent. Secondly, God's love is limited in degree. And thirdly, God's love is ultimately directed at His own glory.
God’s love in limited in degree. What does this mean? In John 13:1, the apostle of love writes, "Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father...that's His death...having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end."
This verse must be studied! God not only has a universal love for all mankind, He has a very special love for those who are His own. And how is that love defined? By this phrase, "He loved them to the end." He loves the world but to a completely different degree, He loves His own who are in the world. And it is described as loving them to the end.
Now that little phrase "to the end" is the key to unlocking this understanding. In the Greek it is eis telos. There are three meanings to it in the Greek:
(1) It can mean completely; unto completion.
He loves His own as much as He can love. He loves His own to the complete extent of His capacity to love. He loves us as fully and completely as a redeemed human could ever be loved by a God whose love knows no limits.
(2) It can mean to the last...to the end.
In that significance it would be saying that He loves us all the way to the end of life. It never changes. That love will never turn to hate. There never will be a time when some limit to it is imposed. He will continue to love us right on to the end.
The context of this verse was the night before the betrayal. He's gathered in the upper room with His disciples and He's very much aware of their failures and their weaknesses and their disappointing actions....very much aware that they are a cowardly disloyal frightened group who very soon will demonstrate that by scattering all over the place when He is taken prisoner. Their leader will deny Him vociferously. Even after the resurrection they will be pining away in unbelief and He'll have to appear to them to let them know He's alive. Even after they're able to see Him in His post-resurrection appearance, even after they've touched Him and heard Him and seen Him, they will still lapse into significant disobedience and He will have to confront them in
And as if all that was to come to pass was not enough, at the very supper where He is with them now they are arguing about which of them is going to be the greatest in the Kingdom...blatant pride and self-promotion and boastfulness as opposed to the humility which He had exemplified before them. And He has to exemplify again immediately after this by washing their dirty feet and showing them how to humble themselves.
To put it simply, there wasn't a lot to love. But He loved them to the end. In other words, this was a love that would never ever die, it would never ever wane. It didn't matter what they did because it wasn't conditioned on that. If it had ever been conditioned on that it never would have existed in the first place.
(3) It can mean eternally...forever.
It means not only will He love them to the end of their life, not only will He love them to the end of His earthly life, but He will love them forever. In fact, He will tell them a few moments after this, "I'm going to heaven to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also," which is to say I love you to the degree that I will take you to be with Me forever. This all is contained in the phrase eis telos, all of it.
That is the limit of His love for His own – for those who belong to Him. It is limited to His own only and it is a love that is complete; that is to end and that is forever.
Such is the love of God for you and me!
