Divine Love; Antecedent Grace; 1 John 3:1
1 John 3:1 NASB
“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called
children of God; and {such} we are. For this reason the world does not know us,
because it did not know Him.”
This verse begins with the
aorist active imperative from horao
[o(raw], meaning to look, to watch, to pay attention to
something. This is a command to look at something with our mind, to concentrate
on something, to take some time to meditate and reflect upon a doctrinal
principle. So we are told to look, i.e. to think about this subject. That is
followed by a pronoun called an adjectival interrogative, potapen [potaphn], and
it modifies the word “love.” It is a combination of two Greek words, poios [poioj], which
means “what,” and datedon [datedon], which has to do with soil, soil type. Initially, if
you just took the two words, it would say: What kind of soil? Obviously that is
not what the word means and is what is called an etymological fallacy. It came
to be an idiom for what or what kind of, or what quality, and it came to be
used idiomatically for the statement How great, How wonderful, or How
marvellous, or How fantastic something was. So what John is saying is: Look,
think, pay attention to this particular subject. How wonderful, how marvellous,
how fantastic the love of the Father is. Think about how incredible God’s love
is that He has given to us; take some time to reflect upon the nature of God’s
love.
The word that is translated
“bestowed” is the perfect active indicative of didomi
[didomi]. It is not simply the aorist, it is the perfect
which indicates that it is focusing on a past act. Whenever we have this word didomi it always emphasises grace. It means to give, to grant, to bestow.
Because God is involved the emphasis is always on grace and it means the giving
is not based on anything, it is unmerited, undeserved. This is called an
extensive perfect which emphasises the present completion of the action but it
takes us back to something that happened in eternity past. When did God bestow
this love upon us? He initially bestowed this love upon us in eternity past. He
always knew us in His omniscience, and that tells us about the doctrine of
antecedent grace. Antecedent grace emphasises the fact that God’s grace has
preceded all creation.
1.
Antecedent grace
is based on the interaction between the three elements of divine integrity. The
three elements are the righteousness, justice and love of God; they work
together in terms of His integrity. Integrity emphasises the complete
compatibility of the essence of God. What the righteousness of God demands the
justice of God supplies, and He is motivated by His love to express His
goodness to man in terms of grace.
2.
Antecedent grace
is motivated by divine love. Love precedes grace. Grace is the outworking of
the love of God towards undeserving creatures. In eternity past God took the
initiative to solve man’s problem.
3.
Therefore,
antecedent grace is based on divine omniscience.
4.
Because God’s
love works together with His omniscience and all of the other attributes of His
character His love instantly and eternally motivates a solution. He knew
exactly what would have to be done in order to provide an answer for every
problem and every difficulty that we would ever face. All of this took place in
eternity past. 1 John
5.
Definition: In
the English language the word “antecedent” means the action of going before,
existing before, or preceding. It precedes creation, sin, the fall; it is grace
that took place in eternity past.
6.
There are two
categories of antecedent grace: the divine initiative that took place in
eternity past and the divine initiative that takes place in time. God always
defines the problem and provides the solution. The divine initiative from
eternity past is God’s grace provision for all aspects of grace: common grace,
salvation grace, and for sanctification/spiritual life grace. Specifically for
us we can say that the divine initiative in eternity past provided a perfect
plan for the believer in the church age.
7.
To understand and
appreciate grace we must first understand divine love. If grace is the
manifestation/application of divine love, then to understand grace we must
understand divine love. So we have to understand divine love to understand
grace, we have to understand grace to be grace oriented, we have to be grace
oriented in order to manifest grace to one another, and we have to manifest
grace to one another in order to apply the basic commands of the Scripture and
to live to love one another as Christ loved the church. The only way we can
understand love in a human dimension is to spend time contemplating and
meditating on the love that God has given to us based upon His grace. Once
again that causes us to place our attention on the cross and the entire plan of
salvation. Romans 5:8 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward
us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God has given us
the model for what love is.
The doctrine of love
Love
has different dimensions which are all interrelated. Love is a mental attitude
which desires the best for its object. It is not an emotion, a feeling. Because
we are dealing with divine love God in His omniscience knows what is best for
us. There are two categories or expressions of divine love in the Scriptures:
personal love and impersonal love. Personal love is the kind of love that the
giver of love has for the object of love when there is attraction between the
two, rapport and compatibility between the two. God cannot have personal love
for fallen man because God is perfect and cannot have fellowship with that
which lacks perfection. But God does have personal love for other members of
the Trinity. In contrast to that there is impersonal love. This doesn’t mean
some distant, cold type of love; it is the opposite of personal love. Personal
love emphasises attraction between the giver of love and the object of love;
impersonal love emphasises the fact that there may not be attraction between
the giver of love and the object of love. It also emphasises the fact that we
don’t have to have a personal relationship with the person you are
demonstrating love to. It does not require affinity, compatibility, or rapport.
Sometimes we use the term unconditional love. It is a love that must always be
based on our understanding of who God is and how God manifests His love to
fallen creatures.
Luke
Notice
how Jesus summarises all of the commandments of the Mosaic Law: love. So let’s
reverse that. When God wanted to give us a picture of what love is He gave
Moses 613 commandments. If you obey the commandments you are loving; if you
don’t obey the commandments you are not loving. Jesus said: “If you love me you
will keep my commandments.” So the emphasis in Scripture is that you can say
all day long, O how I love Jesus, but if you are not obeying God’s
commandments, the commandments of Scripture, and are not putting doctrine
first, growing in the spiritual life and using the problem-solving devices then
you don’t love God at all, you are just full of emotion and impressed with your
own emotion.
But
Jesus goes further. [28] “And He said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.’ [29] But wishing to justify himself, he said to
Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” And so Jesus gives the parable of the good
Samaritan. [37] “And he said, ‘The one who showed mercy toward him.’ Then Jesus
said to him, ‘Go and do the same.’” That is the illustration of what impersonal
love is: treating someone as you would want to be treated. It is not simply an
absence of mental attitude sins but it is the presence of a positive beneficial
action in favour of the object of that impersonal love. This is part of the
manifestation of righteousness in the maturing believer.
1 John chapter three tells
us that we are to pay attention to, concentrate on, the magnificent love that
the Father has given to us; that He bestowed upon us in eternity past. Part of
this is what happened at salvation, “that we would be called children of God.”
John is drawing our attention to the fact that this is not something to be
taken lightly, i.e. our adoption into the family of God. John