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 4:10 NASB "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son {to be} the propitiation for our sins." That emphasises the fact that He first loved us and our love for Him is merely a response to His love for us which began in eternity past.
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 10:25 NASB "And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' [26] And He said to him, 'What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?' And he answered, 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'
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 1:12 NASB "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, {even} to those who believe in His name." At the instant of salvation we are adopted into the royal family of God. Cf. Romans 8:15. We have all the rights and privileges of divine royalty at the instant of salvation.