God’s Love is Not Sentimental

God’s love is one of the most common themes in many churches.  Nothing wrong with that.  It is clearly a major theme in Scripture.  But just because we have lined up with Scripture’s emphasis on God’s love, doesn’t mean we are lining up with Scripture’s description of God’s love.  People make God’s love into a divine version of whatever the culture is peddling; something that is sappy, sentimental, undemanding, and coddling. 

This does not match the God we find in Scripture.  There are many places we could go to see this, but I want to take you a certain Psalm that does this in a unique, and jarring, way.  I want you to look closely at Psalm 136.

Only read a couple verses and you will immediately know why we are coming to this chapter.  There are 26 verses in this chapter and every single verse has the same structure.  It makes a statement which is followed by the refrain, “For his lovingkindness is everlasting.”  If ever there was a place in Scripture that highlighted God’s love, this is it.  It is moving to read.  How strongly God wants us to comprehend this. 

It is a stirring passage, but when you look closer it should also unsettle you.  It is unsettling because God’s love is far from the cultural dribble of sentimental love.  God’s love is all-pervasive, and dominates even those areas that people typically deny any notion of love.

Let’s look at a few specific verses that upend our understanding of God’s love.

Psalm 136:10–11  -  To Him who smote the Egyptians in their firstborn, For His lovingkindness is everlasting, ¹¹ And brought Israel out from their midst, For His lovingkindness is everlasting,

God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt was dramatic and catastrophic.  Many, many people died and some of those undoubtedly were infants.  And yet we read that even this corresponded with God’s everlasting love.  The most difficult aspect is reconciling God’s love with the death of infants who don’t even have a sense of right and wrong yet.  But reconcile we must, even though a full explanation is beyond the scope of this post.  Hopefully it will suffice to say this: God is the one who gives life and takes away life.  He is not unjust to take any life.  Every human life is under the headship of Adam.  Therefore, Adam’s sin is our sin, and his death will be our death.  The timing of our death is God’s choosing.  For some it will be in the womb or in infancy, and others in old age.  How does God make these choices?  He makes them according to His everlasting love.  It is a love that looms over all of history and God can see the whole picture, and therefore knows when a death fits into his loving purposes.  We cannot see this panorama of history, but we can trust the one who does.  Why?  Because his love is everlasting.  

Psalm 136:15 But He overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Psalm 136:18–20 And slew mighty kings, For His lovingkindness is everlasting: ¹⁹ Sihon, king of the Amorites, For His lovingkindness is everlasting, ²⁰ And Og, king of Bashan, For His lovingkindness is everlasting,

Unlike the previous verse where we wrestled with God’s love that corresponds to the death of infants, in these verses we see evil.  God killed these wicked men through miracle and through the hands of his people.  Is God’s wrath on display?  Most assuredly.  But it is not the focus here.  Our chapter says love was a driving factor.  This also is jarring to many.  How does love connect with wrath?  They connect because God is not a piecemeal God.  While we may study God’s attributes one at a time, God is not made up of parts.  There are no compartments in God.  Theologians have called this the simplicity of God.  He is one God with no division or confusion.  All of his attributes intersect with one another and all of them are his essence at every moment.  This means that wrath is not incompatible with love and hell is not incompatible with heaven.  We normally speak of hell as the fullness of God’s wrath and it is.  But Hell is also a display of his love.  God would be unloving if he did not punish and destroy sin. 

Psalm 136:16 To Him who led His people through the wilderness, For His lovingkindness is everlasting;

This verse could be looked at in a couple different ways.  We may think of God’s love as the provision for 2 million people in the desert.  We may think of his protection and guidance.  This is how we typically think of God’s lovingkindness and it is true.  God did all of those things.  But the desert journey was more than God getting them from point A to point B.  That journey was filled with chastisement, and some of those chastisements were severe.  This is why unconditional love is a largely unhelpful description of God’s love.  “Unconditional” too often means that God takes you as you are.  Period.  But this is not true.  God’s love is going to root out sin.  He takes the sinner as he is, but God’s love will not leave him as he is.  It does seem that the most common impulse of the human heart is to doubt and question God’s love and goodness in the midst of difficulty and loss.  Sadly, this is a repudiation of the gospel.  Difficulty and loss are always a part of God’s love for us.  He is going to conform us to the image of His Son and he will do whatever is necessary.  As Paul said in Romans 8:35: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?   ³⁷ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”  God’s love is the foreman who forces trials to work for our good.  We are called to trust in his everlasting love that comes through chastisments.

So God’s love is more robust and powerful and comprehensive than we ever imagined when we first sang “Jesus loves me this I know.”  Perhaps what we knew of his love was only the tip of an infinite iceberg.  Let us keep turning to God’s word in order 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…” (Ephesians 3:18-19)