Morgan The Love of God

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3907-7
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Reihe: Theology in Community

Our understanding of the love of God has been tragically distorted. The comfortable, sentimentalized version we commonly encounter today is far from the biblical depiction of God's love. Featuring contributions from well-known evangelical scholars, this multi-disciplinary study presents the biblical view of the love of God from the perspectives of systematic theology, biblical theology, apologetics, pastoral theology, and ethics. The contributors-including D. A. Carson, Andreas J. Köstenberger, Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Robert L. Plummer, and many others-address a variety of issues related to how God's love is expressed in the Old and New Testaments, the Trinity, apologetics, Christian living, social justice, and more. This addition to the Theology in Community series will promote clear, sound thinking about what Scripture means when it declares that 'God is love.' Part of the Theology in Community series.

Christopher W. Morgan (PhD, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary) is a professor of theology and the dean of the School of Christian Ministries at California Baptist University. He is the author or editor of over twenty books, including several volumes in the Theology in Community series.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Morgan, Christopher W.

Leseproben

2

Is the God of the Old Testament a God of Love?

Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

This study is prompted, in part, by a popular misconception of the Old Testament, which might seem to be validated by the New Testament. Think, for example, of the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5:21–48, which has been construed by some to correct the Old Testament with a more gracious ethic. But the passage is better understood as the Lord’s removing the overlay of oral tradition wrongly laid upon the Old Testament: “You have heard that it was said . . .” Still, the notion that the Old Testament underemphasizes the love of God requires an answer. My thesis is that the Old Testament presents the love of God with glorious clarity, fully worthy to be the voice preparing the way for the love of Jesus in the New Testament. By “love of God” I mean the benevolence of God in a large sense, the various manifestations of his care for his people.

I will make my case in three steps. First, I will highlight the vocabulary of divine love in the Old Testament. Second, I will exegete briefly several passages in the Old Testament conspicuous for their representations of divine love. Third, I will survey the plotline of the Old Testament as a story of divine love. These evidences argue for the love of God as an unmistakably clear teaching of the Old Testament, consistent with the New Testament.

Vocabulary

It would be a loss not to consider the vocabulary for the love of God in the Old Testament as a suggestive starting point. It is not obvious where to delimit the Old Testament’s vocabulary for divine love. Some words are central. Other words are contiguous. The central words cluster around the roots ’hb, hsd, and rhm. The contiguous words have to do with choosing, forgiving, delighting in, and so forth, which are functions of love. Our interest here is the essential vocabulary of love—as opposed to hatred, wrath, vengeance, and so forth.

’hb

The Old Testament presents human analogies for divine love in the special favor Abraham felt for his heir Isaac (Gen. 22:2), in the romantic longings of Jacob for Rachel, which so swept him away that his years of service for her sped by like days (29:20), and in the sense of personal identification and loyalty Jonathan felt toward David, so profound that they committed themselves to a covenant as friends and allies together (1 Sam. 18:3). However much human love falls short of the divine, the Old Testament nevertheless uses such language to describe the love of God as well. Here is a representative sample:

Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. (Deut. 10:14–15)14

In all their affliction he was afflicted,

and the angel of his presence saved them;

in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;15

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isa. 63:9)

I have loved you with an everlasting love;16

therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jer. 31:3)

The Lord loves justice;

he will not forsake his saints.17

They are preserved forever,

but the children of the wicked shall be cut off. (Ps. 37:28)

On the holy mount stands the city he founded;

the Lord loves the gates of Zion

more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. (Ps. 87:1–2)18

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline

or be weary of his reproof,

for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,

as a father the son in whom he delights. (Prov. 3:11–12)19

The Lord loves him;

he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,

and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans. (Isa. 48:14)20

Those uses of the verb ’hb establish the sense clearly enough. But it is worth noting as well that the etymology of the Hebrew word has been traced to the Arabic hbb, “to breathe, to pant (with eager desire).”?21

hsd

The word hsd is rendered variously but compatibly in the English versions.22 The definition “loyalty,” with an emphasis on rights and obligations in the relationship, seemed for some decades to establish a consensus among scholars.23 But the inadequacy of this proposal became apparent. The sense “lovingkindness” has been convincingly reasserted,24 validating the tradition of the English versions. For example:

“In overflowing anger for a moment

I hid my face from you,

but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”?25

says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isa. 54:8)

I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord,

the praises of the Lord,

according to all that the Lord has granted us,

and the great goodness to the house of Israel

that he has granted them according to his compassion,

according to the abundance of his steadfast love. (Isa. 63:7)26

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

and passing over transgression

for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

because he delights in steadfast love.27

He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins

into the depths of the sea. (Mic. 7:18–19)

Those citations have special clarifying value because they dovetail the noun hsd with the concepts of compassion, goodness, and forgiveness. This kind of hsd goes beyond loyalty to covenant obligations, a beautiful concept vulnerable to the hairsplitting technicalities of the legalistic mind. In contrast to such temptations, these uses of hsd suggest overflowing kindness as the personally heartfelt flavor of God’s steadfast love.

rhm

The lexicon of Koehler and Baumgartner introduces the noun rehem by proposing “probably a primary noun, of which the verb rhm is denominative,” noting the Arabic cognate rahuma, “to be soft.”?28 This Hebrew noun means “womb,” as in:

Did not He who made me in my mother’s belly make him?

Did not One form us both in the womb? (Job 31:15 JPS Tanakh)

The word group seems to connote a mentality of maternal gentleness and caring tenderness:

Foreigners shall build up your walls,

and their kings shall minister to you;

for in my wrath I struck you,

but in my favor I have had mercy on you. (Isa. 60:10)29

Is Ephraim my dear son?

Is he my darling child?

For as often as I speak against him,

I do remember him still.

Therefore my heart yearns for him;

I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord. (Jer. 31:20)30

Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name. (Ezek. 39:25)31

To sum up: the Old Testament deploys vocabulary that clearly and even vividly bears witness to the love of God, such that the strong assertions of divine love in the New Testament are no shock to the attentive reader.

Passages

Exodus 34:5–7

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:5–7)

After the nation’s shocking apostasy to the golden calf, Moses prays, “Please show me your glory” (33:18). The Lord answers, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’?” (v. 19). The display of God’s glory, then, in Exodus 34:5–7 can be summarized...