The Trinity and the Doctrine of Love

By Alexander Strauch

Emmaus alumnus Alex Strauch is a well-known Bible teacher and author. He serves as an elder and full-time worker at Littleton Bible Chapel in Denver, Colorado.

God Is Love

One of the most thrilling and unique aspects of the triune God of the Bible is love. The Scripture says: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). In its day, this was a radical statement. In the ancient world among the Romans and Greeks, such a statement would have been meaningless. They would never say, “Zeus is love.” “Jupiter is love.” Emil Brunner says:

The message that God is love is something wholly new in the world. We perceive this if we try to apply this statement to the divinities of the various religions of the world: Brahma, Vishnu, Allah is Love. All these combinations are obviously wholly impossible. [1]

According to the Bible, Love is an attribute of God’s nature. “God is love.” Leon Morris writes:

“This means more than that God is loving, it means that love is of the essence of his being.” [2] God did not create Love. He did not say, “Let there be love.” Love is not a created thing; it is part and parcel of the divine being himself. It is his own property, his own affection.

When we read that “God is love,” we are compelled to think of the triune nature of God. William Clarke writes in his book, The Christian Doctrine of God,

“Love is a matter of relations and does not exist outside of them, for it implies two, lover and the beloved.” [3] The God of the Bible is one God, yet tri-personal—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is one God in three persons; there is one-in-three, and there is three-in-one. Thus there has always (eternally) existed an amazing, dynamic inter-relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit characterized by love. Each member in the holy fellowship of the Godhead loves and is beloved.

Our God is not an egotistical, self-absorbed deity alone looking at and worshiping himself in a mirror from eternity past. Instead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in loving communal life with one another, speaking to one another, working together, giving and receiving, and delighting in each other for all eternity.

It is the Gospel of John that reveals the amazing, dynamic interpersonal fellowship of love between Father and Son, a relationship “of infinite, eternal tenderness.” [4] Thinking of this eternal communion of love, William Newell remarks: “There is no meditation so exalting as that upon the relationship and affections of the Persons of the Godhead, one to another.” [5] I have been meditating for the past six months on this exalted love relationship.

There are a few pivotal passages which help us catch a glimpse into heaven, into the heart of God, into the glorious fellowship of love between Father and Son. We are truly walking on holy ground.

The Love of God the Father for God the Son

Father, I desire [will] that they also, whom you have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world (John 17:24).

This passage teaches that the Son has been the eternal object of the Father’s love. Before the creation of the universe the Father loved the Son. As a token of the Father’s love for the Son, he gave him “glory” and “a people.” The Father gives to the Son because he loves him. He created the world through and for his Son. All this demonstrates the greatness of the Father’s love for the Son. Godet writes in his commentary on John that this verse “leads us farthest into the divine depths.” He further comments that solution to the questions regarding the relations within the Trinity is found here in the word love. “Love is the key of this mystery.” [6]

We can be assured that we will be with Christ throughout eternity because of the Father’s love for the Son. D. A. Carson writes, “The ultimate hope of Jesus’ followers…turns on the love of the Father for the Son.” [7] The Son is the delight of the Father’s heart. While on earth he cries twice from heaven:

• “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17).
• “This is My beloved Son” (Matt. 17:5; also 2 Peter 1:17).

The apostle Paul calls him the Father’s “beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). In the Gospel of John the Father’s love for the Son is mentioned numerous times. [8]

The Love of God the Son for God the Father

“I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me” (John 14:31b). [9]

Here is another picture of the inner life of the Trinity and the dynamic relationship of love between Son and Father—the obedient Son loves the Father and obeys his commands. Again notice the dynamic relationship. The Father commands; the Son obeys. That is not reversed. The Father sends; the Son goes and comes.

The Love of God the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is God and thus he loves as God the Father and God the Son love. It is implied that he loves the Son because he seeks to glorify the Son, to speak of him, and to unfold his glorious person and work to the disciples (John 15:26, 16:13, 14). He is God, revealing and glorifying the Son. God’s love is in us through the Holy Spirit. Scripture says:

• The fruit [the first fruit] of the Spirit is love” (Gal. 5:22).
• The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).
• Now I urge you, brethren…by the love of the Spirit [the love the Holy Spirit inspires in believers] (Rom. 15:30b).

Stephen Smalley summarizes this when he writes, “For love comes from the Father (1 John 4:7), it is manifested by the Son (3:16), and it is made available by the life-giving Spirit (4:13–16).” [10] The Father is the source of love, the Son mediates that love, and the Spirit applies that love.

Our Vision of God as Love

Our whole vision of God should be radically transformed by these three simple words, “God is love.” Our God is not Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” or some impersonal force of nature, or a man-made idol of wood or gold. Nor is he one of the unpredictable, cruel, warped gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon of gods. He is not an Egyptian sphinx. He can be trusted, worshipped and served without reservation, as Isaac Watts said in the hymn “When I survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Love so amazing…demands my heart, my life, my all.” [11] What a good God we have!

Loved By God

It is thrilling to think that we have been brought into this circle of love, invited to share in his love and to display it. Here are some key verses to show God including us in his love.

The Father Loves Us Just as He Loves the Son

So that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me (John 17:23).

Here is an amazing verse. John does not say that the Father loves us greatly. Rather he uses the analogy of his love for his own Son. D. A. Carson says this, “The thought is breathtakingly extravagant.” [12] We are the objects of a similar love, the love of the Father for the Son. Carson goes on to say that the unity of the disciples convinces many in the world that “Christians themselves have been caught up into the love of the Father for the Son, secure and content and fulfilled because loved by the Almighty himself (cf. Eph. 3:17b–19), with the very same love he reserves for His Son.” [13] At the heart of salvation is the Father’s love.

The Son Loves Us Just as the Father Loves Him

Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; abide in my love (John 15:9).

Here is another breathtaking extravagant statement. God the Father loves us “even as” he loved his Son. Now we learn that God the Son loves us “just as” the Father loved him. We must note that in both cases God the Father is the source and pattern of all love. Love is from God (1 John 4:7).

This is hard to fathom, but the love relationship between the Father and Son is the pattern for the love relationship between Jesus and us. Thus Jesus used the comparison (analogy) of the Father’s love for him to describe his love for us. His love for us is of the same nature as the Father’s love for him. C.K. Barrett writes, “Believers are those who have entered into the same reciprocity of love that unites Father and Son.” [14] It is a perfect and complete love, and at the Cross it was fully expressed. Jesus gave himself in death for us. Certainly the Cross proves he loves us as the Father has loved him. We need supernatural help to grasp this overwhelming and mind boggling concept.

The songwriters express it best. We often sing at the Lord’s Supper, “Gathered in Thy name Lord Jesus.” The second verse goes:

Loved with love which knows no measure,
Save the Father’s love to Thee,
Blessed Lord, our hearts would treasure
All the Father’s tho’ts of Thee. [15]

The 3rd verse of Glory to God on High! is very familiar:

Love that no tongue can teach,
Love that no tho’t can reach:
No love like His.

God is its blessed source,
Death ne’er can stop its course,
Nothing can stay its force,
Matchless it is. [16]

The 2nd verse of We Praise Thee, Glorious Lord also expresses this truth:

Love, that no suff’ring stayed,
We’ll praise, true love divine;
Love that for us atonement made,
Love that has made us Thine. [17]

Our Lord said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). His love for us caused him to give his life for us. Paul says, “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).

The Spirit Fills Us with God’s Love

The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5).

The Holy Spirit binds us all together in this community of love. What could be more thrilling for a Christian to know than that he is loved by God. That is why Paul in Romans writes to “all who are beloved of God in Rome” (Rom. 1:7). Do you see yourself as beloved of God? Because we are beloved of God, Scripture likens the church to the bride of Christ, the “wife of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:9; cf. 19:7; 22:17). We have the most intimate relationship known to mankind with our God. We are one with him in the Spirit, united together, and no one can separate this union. There will be no divorce between Christ and his bride. The Bible assures us that nothing can “separate us from the love of Christ” (Rom. 8:35, 36).

Song of Solomon reminds us “He has brought me to his banquet hall, and his banner over me is love” (2:4). (These are the words of the Shulammite woman to the court ladies and to the brothers). Charles Wesley expressed this great thought in the title of the hymn “Jesus, Lover of my soul.”

A Prayer to Grasp the Love of God in Christ

This love is so great that the Scripture urges us to pray that we may grasp it and be transformed by it. In one of the greatest prayers in Scripture, Ephesians 3:14–20, Paul prays that God the Father by the Spirit may enable the saints to grasp this love as mediated in Christ.

That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:17–19).

A Prayer to Grasp the Immensity of Christ’s Love, v.18.

Paul prays to the Father that we “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” (Eph. 3:18). He prays that they would be strengthened to comprehend the vastness and the dimensions of Christ’s love. He lists four dimensions, but gives no object to them. Here is a metaphor of linear measurement. We will say, as many commentators do, that the object is the love of Christ. John Stott comments:

The love of Christ is ‘broad’ enough to encompass all mankind (especially Jew and Gentiles, the theme of these chapters), ‘long’ enough to last for eternity, ‘deep’ enough to reach the most degraded sinner, and ‘high’ enough to exalt him to heaven. [18]

Christ’s love for us is so vast that we need divine help in order to understand and experience this divine love. It is not easy to grasp. So we need spiritual strengthening through the Holy Spirit.

How does this happen? We are to think about the matchless love of Christ, reflect deeply on the incarnation and substitutionary death of Christ, pray about it, sing about it, and search it out in Scripture; or in the words of the song writer, we are to meditate on the cross— “When I survey the wondrous Cross on which the Lord of glory died.” [19] Such immense love compels to us think deeply and pray earnestly for a proper appreciation for it. Kent Hughes adds:

This happens when we sit under the preaching of His Word. It happens when we study it together and discuss it. It happens when we share our knowledge of God’s love with each other. It happens when we observe it in our brothers and sisters. It happens as our hearts go upward in the worship of him. [20]

Do you ever think about the vastness and dimensions of Christ’s love? The songwriters do: Trevor Francis wrote:

O the deep, deep love of Jesus
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me.

Another stanza adds:

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Love of ev’ry love the best;
‘Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
‘Tis a haven sweet of rest. [21]

A Prayer to Grasp the Incomprehensibility of Christ’s Love, v. 19a

Paul prays that we will be spiritually empowered to know experientially the love of Christ. He prays that we “may be able…to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19a). This is an oxymoron, to know something that surpasses knowledge. This verse is parallel to verse 18 and an advance on verse 18. The word know means a direct, personal, experiential knowledge, not just intellectual apprehension. Christ’s love is something we are to personally, intimately experience in its depth and fullness, although his love “is so profound that its depths will never be sounded and so vast that its extent will never be encompassed by the human mind.” [22] So there will always be more to know and experience of Christ’s love for us.

This infinite, incomprehensible love is to be life transforming knowledge, moving us to enter into an adequate appreciation of Christ’s love, a deeper relationship with him, a richer worship, a greater trust, more passionate love, and deeper devotion and service. “Despite its ultimate incomprehensibility and mystery,…one can know personally and in a way that controls their lives.”

The Help of the Holy Spirit

This fuller, personal knowledge of the all-encompassing, inexhaustible love of Christ is incomprehensible outside of the Spirit’s help (Rom. 5:5). This is the reason for Paul’s prayer, and our need to pray this prayer often. Indeed, we cannot reach true spiritual maturity (“filled up to all the fullness of God”) until we personally grasp the love of Christ for us (Eph. 3:19b). Maturity in the Christian life is not possible without some understanding of this love, and being grasped by it. Martin Lloyd Jones writes, “One of the highest attainments in the Christian life is to know the love of Christ.” [23]

If you want to know in greater depth this wondrous love of God in Christ, pray. Ephesians 3:14–21 is an apostolic prayer which you may pray yourself. Pray this prayer for those under your care and training as well. It is a scriptural prayer. You could not do anything better for the people you are praying for and leading than to pray this prayer for them. So “may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thess. 3:5a).

Results of Understanding the Love of God in Christ

Assurance and Comfort

My friends, there is no greater assurance and comfort for believers facing disappointment, failures, doubts, and criticisms than to know we are unconditionally loved by God. This is why Paul writes, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. 8:35). Persecution? Cancer? Failure in ministry? Divorce? NO! None of these will separate us from the love of Christ. That is why Paul concludes this mighty chapter by saying that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).

To the new converted Thessalonian believers, Paul prayed that “our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word” (2 Thess. 2:16–17). The love of God the Son and God the Father is connected with the comfort, hope, and strength that are given to us. There is immense solace and consolation in God’s love. Note Philippians 2:1, “If there is any consolation of love,” where Paul assumes that love does encourage and comfort.

Motivation for Service

This love is so great that Paul said, “The love of Christ controls us,” (2 Cor. 5:14). The love of Christ motivated, energized, and drove Paul to serve. Of course, Paul was speaking of Christ’s love for him, not his love for Christ. What controlled and energized Paul’s life was the knowledge that Christ loved him and died for him. “He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf” (2 Cor. 2:15). Paul did not live for himself, but for Christ who died for him and redeemed him from sin and death. He could never get over Christ’s death for sinners of which he was chief. There is no other motivating power like it.

What is it that motivates you? Is it money, praise of men, power, success, or knowing Christ loves you and offered himself up in death for your sins? Through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit may we all be able, like the apostle John, to “come to know and believe the love which God has for us” (1 John 4:16a).

The Standard for Christian Community

And I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:26).

In John 17 Jesus prays that God’s own love may be in the disciples and among the disciples, the very love the Father has for the Son, the love which the Son has enjoyed throughout eternity, divine love.

Paul Jewett writes this, “We are being admonished in our Christian communal life to imitate the communal life of God Himself.” [24] D. A. Carson comments on John 17:24–26:

The purpose of this continuing manifestation of God himself is, first, that the love the Father has for the Son (cf. v. 24) may by in them—which may mean ‘amongst them’ (and displayed in their love for one another) or ‘within them’ (so that as individuals they become loving people). It is impossible to think of one without the other. The crucial point is that this text does not simply make these followers the objects of God’s love (as in v. 23), but promises that they will be so transformed, as God is continually made known to them, that God’s own love for his Son will become their love. The love with which they learn to love is nothing less than the love amongst the persons of the Godhead.” [25]

Ephesians 5:1–2 states, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you.” The Christian community is to be marked by divine love. It is to be fleshed out among us. It is a key to evangelism and building up the church. That is why Paul can say, love is the greatest.

In conclusion: Jonathon Edwards in his great book on Charity and Its Fruits, reminds us in the last chapter, “Heaven is a home of love.”

Notes

1. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1950), 183.
2. Leon Morris, Testaments of Love: A Study of Love in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 136.
3. William Newton Clark, The Christian Doctrine of God (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 86.
4. William R. Newell, Revelation: Chapter-By-Chapter (1935, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994), 298.
5. William R. Newell, Revelation: Chapter-By-Chapter, 298.
6. Fredrick Louis Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, translated with a preface, introductory suggestions, and additional notes by Timothy Dwight, 2 vols., reprint ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969 [1893]), 2:343.
7. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 570.
8. See John 10:17; 15:9; 16:27; 17:23, 24, 26.
9. Although this is the only explicit statement of the Son’s love for the Father, the Son’s love for his Father is implied in all his actions (John 4:34), and particularly in his willing obedience unto death (John 10:17, 18). The Father’s love is emphasized because he initiates love.
10. Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (Waco: Word, 1984), 325.
11. Hymns of Worship and Remembrance, (Kansas City: Gospel Perpetuating Publishers, 1960), Hymn #188.
12. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 569.
13. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 569.
14. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 465.
15. Hymns of Worship and Remembrance, Hymn #58.
16. Hymns of Worship and Remembrance, Hymn #59.
17. Hymns of Worship and Remembrance, Hymn #135.
18. John R. W. Stott, The Message of Ephesians, BST (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity, 1979), 137.
19. Hymns of Worship and Remembrance, Hymn #188.
20. R. Kent Hughes, Ephesians: The Mystery of the Body of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 117.
21. Hymns of Truth and Praise (Fort Dodge, IA: Gospel Perpetuating Publishers, 1971), Hymn #33.
22. Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), 213.
23. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3:1–21 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 206.
24. Paul K. Jewett, God, Creation, and Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 299.
25. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 570.