Common Questions Regarding Gospel-Centeredness (#1)
Periodically I will try to answer common questions that people ask regarding gospel-centeredness. Over the last several years of my journey toward gospel-centeredness my own mind has raised many questions (and it continues to do so) to which I have needed answers. Therefore, what I want to do with this category of posts is help others in their journey regardless of where they are on it. So here is the first question that was posed to me on another blog. If you have questions regarding the issue of gospel-centeredness, please ask them in the comment section. You may find them used in a future post.
How does your emphasis on the centrality of the gospel square with Scriptures’ emphasis on the centrality of love in texts like Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-39, and 1 Corinthians 13:13 among many others?
Deuteronomy 6:5 – You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Matthew 22:37-39 – And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
1 Corinthians 13:13 – So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
I believe the Scriptures teach that the gospel is the very power of God unto loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Romans 1:16). The centrality of the gospel and the centrality of love are not at odds with one another. To be gospel-centered is to be love-centered because the gospel is God’s power unto the life of love to God and man. Without the gospel we will either live a life of overt enmity against God (i.e. the prodigal son who set his love on everything but the father – Luke 15) or a life of seeking to earn God’s favor (i.e. the elder brother who set his love on what he could get out of his father). In both cases love for God is absent. Only the gospel can free us from the inordinate love of lesser goods to love God, the Ultimate Good, without seeking to earn anything from Him. It is by the power of the gospel that we are put in right relationship with God and enabled to love Him for His own sake, for who He is in Himself. The gospel says that “God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). One reason God set His love upon us in this way was so that we might eternally participate in the Communion of Love which the Holy Trinity is (2 Corinthians 8:9; 2 Corinthians 13:14). God’s breathtaking, all-satisfying love for us is the cause and impetus of our love for Him (1 John 4:19); and it is in the gospel that we savingly and sanctifyingly see the love of God most clearly and experience it most fully. The gospel frees us to love God not for what we can get out of Him but because of what He has already given us, namely, Himself.The same basic thoughts apply to loving others. Only in the gospel are we freed to love others not for what we can get out of them but because of what we already have—the full acceptance of God Himself. The gospel is the only thing that frees us to love people without any strings attached. Without the gospel our love for others becomes either moralistic (we love primarily because it is what we MUST do in order to be blessed by God) or consumeristic (we love in order to get something out of the person we are “loving”). At the core the moralistic (i.e. elder brother mindset) and consumeristic (i.e. prodigal mindset) motives for loving are essentially the same. Both ways of loving are motivated by what can be received from the person(s) loved. Only the gospel frees us to love not for what can be received, but because of what has already been received, namely, acceptance with God and participation in the Trinity’s all-satisfying, God-glorifying Communion of Love.
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Thanks, Dan! That's helpful, and I'm looking forward to other gospel FAQ's.
I also think a love-centeredness MUST coincide with a gospel-centeredness because the gospel events DEFINE for us what love is. If we try to "focus on God's love" without discerning what the gospel is teaching us about God's love, we're sure to miss the point altogether. To be "love-centered" without being "gospel-centered" is disastrous, because we're left trying to define love apart from the activities of God that most reveal what love is. Without the gospel defining the parameters of love, love is reduced to a sentimental, sappy tolerance for anything and everything. Without the gospel, love is a feeling rather than a choice. Without the gospel, love is limited to lovely people/things.
But in the gospel, we discover passages like 1 John 4:9-10 -- "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." How was love made known to us? According to this passage, we know what love is because Christ became man to bring us to life. We see that love is incarnational (God sent His only Son into the world), it is sacrificial (propitiation means Jesus faced and fully satisfied God's judgment against us), and it is exercised for the spiritual life and growth of the one who is the object of that love. Furthermore, love is elective (defined not by how we love God half-heartedly while loving a bunch of other gods that vie for our affections, but defined by God's love that chooses us by grace to be the objects of His affections).
We also discover the gospel connection to love in Ephesians 5:25-28 -- "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives..." Again, we see love defined by what Christ did for us -- in terms of the gospel. Love is sacrificial and sanctifying. Love is a covenant not just to accept a person "as is," but to sacrifice and labor for what the person will become in Christ. Living in light of God's love for us, we have the motivation and the power of the Spirit to "endure all things" and be patient in our love for others.
Amen!
Thanks so much for that, Mr. Cruver.
The amazing truth is that this kind of loving is commanded to us, but it is only made possible because of the gospel.
Looking on down a few verses in I John 4:19, truly, we can only "love Him because He first loved us." Apart from Christ, our every work, even our pathetic attempt at loving, is marred. The only way to obey the greatest commandment is for the gospel to change our fallen heart. Therefore, yes! A love-centered man is a gospel-centered man. It doesn't work any other way.
The only way to create a love-centered soul is to break through with the light glorious gospel. Then and only then can the greatest command be obeyed.
Gospel-centered is love-centered...and that can be applied over and over in many different areas for the Christian...evangelism and missions and community service and helping the homeless and discipleship and...