Chapter Ten: Experiencing God’s Love
EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
ROMANS 8:38-39
In the previous chapter we saw that God’s love is sovereign; that His powerful arm is also His arm of tender care. But it seems so often we do not see or sense God’s sovereign love exercised on our behalf. Instead, we see ourselves beset with all kinds of calamities that come rolling in upon us. We see ourselves as the victims of “nature’s cruel fate,” of the injustices of other people, and of adversities that occur with no rational cause.
It is at times like this that we must take our stand by faith on the assurances of God’s love given to us in the Scriptures. We cannot evade one of the basic principles of the Christian life, “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Certainly our faith frequently wavers and, just as we may momentarily question the wisdom of God, we will momentarily question the goodness and love of God. We will be like David when he said, “In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from your sight!’” (Psalm 31:22). That is often our initial reaction when adversity strikes us. We feel cut off from God’s face, from His love and tender care.
But we must also learn to say with David, “Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help” (Psalm 31:22). God cannot forsake us because we are His children, in blessed union with His Son. We cannot be cut off from His sight. But we can be cut off from the assurance of His love when we allow doubt and unbelief to gain a foothold in our hearts.
Isaiah speaks of God’s people (called Zion) as questioning God’s love: “But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me’” (Isaiah 49:14). But God’s response to His people’s doubts is forceful:
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
ISAIAH 49:15
God uses the tightest human bonding possible, the nursing baby at his mother’s breast, to illustrate His love for us. But even the highest illustration of human love is not sufficient to demonstrate God’s love for His children. For it is tragically possible for a mother to neglect her nursing child. Mothers are sinful and sometimes their natural love can be overcome by their own selfish interests. The greatest human love may sometimes fail.
But God’s love cannot fail. Edward J. Young says about this passage, “Not merely will God not forget, He cannot forget. This is one of the strongest, if not the strongest expression of God’s love in the Old Testament.” Young then quotes Calvin, “In a word, the Prophet here describes to us the inconceivable carefulness with which God unceasingly watches over our salvation, that we may be fully convinced that he will never forsake us, though we may be afflicted with great and numerous calamities.”[1]
In Lamentations 3, the author of the book, traditionally accepted to be Jeremiah, personifies the nation of Judah after its destruction by the Babylonian army. If anyone could have felt cut off from God’s face, it was that nation, and justly so because of its vileness and idolatry. But the writer does more than just personify the nation. You get the impression that he personally feels the apparent alienation from God. You are not sure if he is merely using a literary device or allowing his own personal feelings to come out. Anyone who has ever felt cut off from the Lord’s face and forsaken by Him can ponder with great feeling the misery this author depicts in Lamentations 3:1-20. The section ends with this statement:
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
LAMENTATIONS 3:19-20
The writer has reached the bottom of the barrel emotionally and spiritually. But then the mood changes completely, as the writer says in verse 21, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” There follows one of the greatest passages in all of the Bible—a passage that has brought hope and encouragement to countless believers down through the centuries:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
LAMENTATIONS 3:22-23
What was it that caused such a dramatic mood change in the heart of the writer? He turns from the circumstances at hand to the Lord. He was not cut off from God. Even the nation in the depth of its sin was not cut off from God’s love. God disciplined the nation severely, but He did not cease to love it. We, too, if we would speak of the Lord’s great faithfulness, must turn from our circumstances to the Lord. We must see our circumstances through God’s love instead of, as we are prone to do, seeing God’s love through our circumstances.
How did the writer turn to the Lord? He reflected on the love, the compassion, and the faithfulness of God. We must do that, too. That is why we need to store up in our hearts some of these great passages on the love of God. We must have them ready to use when adversity strikes and when doubts and temptations to unbelief arise in our hearts.
GOD’S LOVE IN DISCIPLINE
The Bible’s assurance of the sovereignty and constancy of God’s love does not mean that we should not expect adversity. On the contrary, the author of Hebrews assures us that discipline, in the form of adversity, is a proof of His love:
My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.
HEBREWS 12:5-6
We mistakenly look for tokens of God’s love in happiness. We should instead look for them in His faithful and persistent work to conform us to Christ. As Philip Hughes has observed, “Discipline is the mark not of a harsh and heartless father but of a father who is deeply and lovingly concerned for the well-being of his son.”[2]
The author of Hebrews concedes that the divine discipline is painful. It is intended to be. It would not accomplish its purpose if it were not. But God in His infinite wisdom and perfect love will never over-discipline us; He will never allow any adversity in our lives that is not ultimately for our good. We may be sure that we never suffer needlessly. As Lamentations 3:33 states, “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”
God disciplines us with reluctance, though He does it faithfully. He does not delight in our adversities, but He will not spare us that which we need to grow more and more into the likeness of His Son. It is our imperfect spiritual condition that makes discipline necessary.
This is not to say that every adversity that occurs in our lives is related to some specific sin we have committed. The issue God is dealing with in our lives is not so much what we do, but what we are. All of us tend to underestimate the remaining sinfulness in our hearts. We fail to see the extent of pride, fleshly self-confidence, selfish ambitions, stubbornness, self-justification, lack of love, and distrust of God that He does see. But adversity brings these sinful dispositions to the surface just as the refiner’s fire brings impurities to the surface of the molten gold.
We cannot always discern what specific spiritual good is being brought about in our lives through a particular adversity. Of course, often, we do see God dealing with some obvious character need, but we may not see all that God is doing in us. But God is at work through our adversities, working in us what is pleasing to Him (see Hebrews 13:21).
I alluded briefly to Romans 8:28 in a previous chapter and pointed out that the “good” Paul speaks of there is defined in verse 29 as being conformed to the likeness of God’s Son. But now let’s look more closely at verse 28. The text says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Many of the “things” Paul has in mind are evil in themselves. There is nothing inherently good about birth defects, natural calamities, and the host of other adversities we may encounter. And when evil is perpetrated against us by someone else, there certainly is no inherent good in it. But in God’s infinite wisdom and love, He takes all the events of our lives—both good and bad—and blends them together so that they work together ultimately for our good, the good that He intends.
While growing up in Texas, I enjoyed my mother’s buttermilk biscuits made from “scratch” every morning for breakfast. But there was not a single ingredient in those biscuits that I would have enjoyed by itself. And even after they were mixed together, I would not have cared for the raw biscuit dough. Only after they were mixed together in the right proportions by my mother’s skillful hands and then subjected to the fire of the oven were they ready to be enjoyed for breakfast.
The “things” of Romans 8:28 are like the ingredients of the biscuit dough. By themselves they are not tasteful to us. We shun them. And we certainly shun the heat of the oven. But when God in His infinite skill has blended them all together and cooked them properly in the oven of adversity, we shall one day say it is good.
As we consider God’s discipline through adversity, we must also be careful that we do not equate a certain amount of adversity with a certain level of sinfulness in either our own or someone else’s life. Some of the most Christlike people I have known seem to experience the most adversity. And we have only to look at Job to see this truth in the Bible. God Himself said of Job, “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Yet I know of no one, except the Lord Jesus Christ, who has ever experienced the total calamity that Job experienced.
One of my friends has described the theme of the book of Job as “God making a good man better.” So if you feel that you experience more than your “fair share” of adversity, do not let a supposed link between adversity and sin discourage you. God may have other things in mind than corrective discipline. There seems to be little doubt, for example, that Joseph’s brothers needed corrective discipline far more than he did, yet none of them suffered as he suffered.
GOD’S UNFAILING LOVE
A very frequent expression in the Psalms is God’s unfailing love. For example, Psalm 32:10 says, “The LORD’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him.” Think of what that means. God’s love cannot fail. It is steadfast, constant and fixed. In all the adversities we go through, God’s love is unfailing. As He says to us in Isaiah 54:10,
“Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
And because His love cannot fail, He will allow into our lives only the pain and heartache that is for our ultimate good.
Even the grief that He Himself brings into our lives is tempered with His compassion. “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love” (Lamentations 3:32). The assurance here is that God will show compassion. It is not enough to say that He is compassionate, but He will show compassion. That is, even the fires of affliction will be tempered by His compassion, which arises out of His unfailing love. Our afflictions are always accompanied with the compassion and consolation of God.
Paul experienced God’s compassion in the midst of his grief. To prevent pride in his life, God gave him a thorn in his flesh. What the thorn was we do not know, but we know it was a severe affliction for Paul. On three occasions he pleaded with the Lord to take it away, but God said no. Instead, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God brought grief into Paul’s life for his good, but he also showed compassion. He gave grace, in this case divine strength, to bear the grief. He did not leave Paul to bear the thorn in his flesh alone. In His compassion, He provided the divine resources to meet the trials. So eventually Paul came to rejoice in his affliction, because through it he experienced God’s overcoming power.
Paul received grace when he needed it. God does not give us all the divine strength we need for the Christian life the day we trust Christ. Rather, David speaks of God’s goodness, which is stored up for those who fear Him (see Psalm 31:19). Just as we are to store up (the meaning of “hidden” in Psalm 119:11) God’s Word in our hearts against a time of temptation, so God stores up goodness or grace for our times of adversity. We do not receive it before we need it, but we never receive it too late.
I think of a physician whose son was born with an incurable birth defect, leaving him crippled for life. I asked the father how he felt when he, who had dedicated his life to treating the illnesses of other people, was confronted with an incurable condition in his own son. He told me his biggest problem was the tendency to capsule the next twenty years of his son’s life into that initial moment when he learned of his son’s condition. Viewed that way, the adversity was overwhelming. God does not give twenty years of grace today. Rather, He gives it day by day. As the song says, “Day by day, and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here; trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.”[3]
God’s love is unfailing, His grace is always sufficient. But there is even more good news. He is with us in our troubles. He does not merely send grace from heaven to meet our trials. He Himself comes to help us. He says to us, “Do not be afraid . . . for I myself will help you” (Isaiah 41:14).
In Isaiah 43:2, God says,
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
God promises specifically to be with us in our sorrows and afflictions. He will not spare us from the waters of sorrow and the fires of adversity, but He will go through them with us.
Even when the waters and the fires are those that God Himself brings into our lives, He still goes through them with us. Most of the gracious promises of God to be with us were given first to the nation of Judah during times of national spiritual declension. God, through His prophets, continually warned the people of coming judgment; yet in the midst of those warnings, we find these incredible promises of His being with them. God judged His people, but He did not forsake them. Even in their judgments, He was with them. As Isaiah said, “In all their distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9).
So regardless of the nature or the cause of our adversities, God goes through them with us. He says, “I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). It is often in the very midst of our adversities that we experience the most delightful manifestations of His love. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:5, “For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
Christ identifies with us in our distresses. When He confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, He said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And in answer to Saul’s question, “Who are you, Lord?” He replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4-5). Because His people were in union with Him, to persecute them was to persecute Him. This truth is no different today. You are in union with Christ, just as surely as the disciples were in the time of the book of Acts. And because you are in union with Christ, He shares your adversities.
In whatever way we view our adversities, we find God’s grace is sufficient, His love adequate. Nothing can separate us from His love. In the words of Paul, “Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).
God’s unfailing love for us is an objective fact affirmed over and over in the Scriptures. It is true whether we believe it or not. Our doubts do not destroy God’s love, nor does our faith create it. It originates in the very nature of God, who is love, and it flows to us through our union with His beloved Son.
But the experience of that love and the comfort it is intended to bring is dependent upon our believing the truth about God’s love as it is revealed to us in the Scriptures. Doubts about God’s love, allowed to harbor in our hearts, will surely deprive us of the comfort of His love. Nineteenth-century Scottish commentator John Brown has a helpful comment on this truth. He said,
The only way in which the “sufferings of the present time” may seem to come between the Christian and the love of God and Christ, is when he falls before them as a temptation, or in unbelief sinks under them. Then a cloud comes between him and the light of his Father’s countenance. But the cloud is not the affliction, but the sin; and it is a merciful arrangement that it is so. The want of comfort tells him that something is wrong.[4]
It is true that we are just as dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us to trust in God’s love as we are dependent upon Him to enable us to obey His commands. But just as we are responsible to obey in confidence that He is at work in us, so we are responsible to trust Him in that same attitude of dependence and confidence. Many times in our distress we may have to do as one man did before Jesus when he “cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24, KJV).
We will almost always struggle with doubts about God’s love during our times of adversity. If we never had to struggle, our faith would not grow. But we must engage in the struggle with our doubts; we must not let them overwhelm us. During seemingly intolerable times, we may feel like David, who said at a time of great distress:
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
PSALM 13:1
David had his doubts; he struggled with them. In fact, in the next verse he continues his struggle as he asks, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?” He felt God had, at least for a time, forgotten him. But David, by the enabling power of God, won his struggle. He overcame his doubts. He could then say,
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
for he has been good to me.
PSALM 13:5-6
You and I, like David, must wrestle with our thoughts. With God’s help we, too, can come to the place, even in the midst of our adversities, where we will be able to say, “I trust in Your unfailing love.”