God’s Love

Playing With Dolls

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A question that I was recently considering was whether or not God could truly love us if we did not have free will. Clearly He could care about us like I care about my grandfather’s jacket or my car, but could one really say that He loved us? I think the answer is both yes and no.

For context let us consider the kind of love that we are dealing with. In the Bible, it uses the analogy of marriage to define God’s love for His elect people. However, it uses the analogy of a parent and child to define His relationship with creation. When we are talking about free will, we are naturally talking about how God designed us. Therefore the parent/child relationship is at the forefront and so it is this kind of love that I am going to be addressing.

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God and the Miners

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As reported by CNN International, all 33 of the Chilean miners were rescued from their desperate plight. Most of the survivors were released from the hospital yesterday afternoon, 14 October 2010. This event reminded me…

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For God so Loved the World

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Merry Christmas all. This post was first published by Dr. Olson on the 8th of Decemeber, hence it being an “Advent Meditation”. However, we felt that it was such a wonderful expression of God’s love through Christ that it would be perfect for Christmas day:

by Roger E. Olson

For God so loved the world . . . that He couldn’t stay away. Yes, to academics and scholars it sounds simplistic and even smacks of folk religion. But if you strip from it any connotation of God being “lonely” or absent it’s an apt statement of the gospel itself. And it nicely expresses the essence of Arminian theology: that God’s love for the whole world demonstrated in the incarnation and cross stands at the center of theology as its critical principle.

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For God So Loved the World?

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I was asked the following question by a Calvinistic Christian and want to answer his question in the following post. My initial argument was that for Calvinism, at least with regard to the doctrine of Unconditional Election, an explanation must be given how God is displaying His love towards those whom He has not unconditionally elected unto salvation. I insist that Calvinism dishonors God’s character in this regard, and was asked “why” or “how so” by this individual. I was also asked to demonstrate my answer from Scripture.

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Gerald Owens, The Incarnation as Divine Self-Defintion

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Fundamentally, salvation is very simple. In 1 John 4:14-15 we read:

14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.[NIV]

This central claim of Christianity is the most controversial: that a man who looked like everyone else and had a body just like everyone else’s that died like everyone else’s, was God. To deny that claim it is to depart from Orthodoxy Christianity as seen by both Calvinists and Arminians. However, its implications call into question some of the core assumptions of Calvinism, for what definition of God permits Jesus to be God?

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I John 4:19; A Devotional

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I’m sorry that I am late this week. I’m afraid that I had some computer issues.

1 John 4:19; We love, because He first loved us.

This is an important relational aspect between us and the Father. Love does not find its origin in our souls, but in the Divine Being. He is love, and He is the subject and the object of it. I shapes it; designs it; defines it. There is no love without Him.

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