The perfect love of God has within its nature what appears, at least to us, to be a paradox, if not a complete contradiction. The confusing reality is that we are told God loves absolutely everyone and everything, the whole world, as all is right now (John 3:16). We would be less confused if Jesus had said to Nicodemus, “God will love the world once he has saved and cleansed it of all corruption and darkness.” That would be more what we expect.
But surprisingly, Jesus’ statement is that the perfect love of God is inexplicably poured out right now on the imperfect. In fact, “imperfect” might be too generous. Perhaps we should say “God perfectly loves the outright rebellious, arrogant, and willfully wicked world”, ruined in ways to which we all have contributed.
We are confused only because we do not understand divine perfection. Instead of having a true understanding of God, we imagine his “perfection” to be a giant-sized version of our own imperfection.
What I am getting at is this, that true perfection is infinitely patient with what is imperfect. We do not expect this to be the case. In our imperfection, we are endlessly annoyed and impatient with the imperfection of others and anything imperfect in the world. Therefore, we assume that God, because he is perfect, must be infinitely more annoyed and disgusted than we are!
However, we have simply imagined God as a bigger version of ourselves. We have made what we call his “perfection” into an extreme version of our own imperfection! In disastrous ways, some have made the essential gospel story to be about how God deals with his infinite loathing of us, rather than about an infinite love from all eternity.
I will not carry out My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath. Hosea 11:9
Like all the prophets, Hosea is deconstructing Israel’s notion about who God is and what God does. Against all expectation, God will not destroy, and that is precisely because God is not a bigger version of us with anger infinitely more severe than ours. God is not like us, and therefore does not act as we anticipate. Instead, he forgives and saves when we think he will annihilate.
This is the point I am making about how the love of God surprises us. God, who is perfect love, perfect holiness, and perfect goodness, is actually able to naturally have patience and mercy on all who live and do what is antithetical to himself! If his love were imperfect, God could not bear with our imperfection, just like we cannot. Only the imperfect has little patience with imperfection.
What we are promised is that the perfect love of God is able to make all perfect precisely because he is able to come to us patiently as this radical love, which he himself is, while we are yet imperfect.
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Hebrews 10:14
Leave a Reply