God's Love

In the book’s account, God’s Love is most fully revealed in the atonement of Jesus Christ: God gives his Son for sinners who are naturally his enemies, and provides in Christ a ground on which they may be loved without denying the justice of their guilt. The argument turns on a striking reversal: those who are unworthy in themselves become worthy of divine love through their union with the substitute whose righteousness is theirs.

Love Revealed in the Atonement

The author treats the atonement as the clearest display of God’s Love, not merely one example of it. Human love reaches its height, he observes, in a person’s willingness to die for a friend, an act he describes as scarcely found. God’s love goes further: Jesus Christ dies for people while they are still sinners. The recipients of this love are not presented as naturally devoted to God; the author insists that every person among the redeemed is by nature God’s enemy, and that no one loves the God of Scripture until perceiving his love in the atonement.

The scale of the gift is central to the claim. God gives his Son, and the author argues that even the gift of ten thousand worlds would be nothing beside this. Because God has nothing greater to give, the atonement is the fullest possible expression of divine love. Its astonishing character also serves as evidence, in the author’s reasoning, that the doctrine is from God: people do not readily invent or believe a love so costly and so generously directed toward its enemies.

How Sinners Become Objects of Love

The author sets out a problem that reason alone cannot resolve. Love may fittingly rest on what is lovely, while what is unamiable displeases; by this reasoning, sinners appear deserving of hatred rather than divine affection. Scripture, he argues, does not evade that moral judgment or simply declare that God loves what ought to be hated. Instead, it discloses a way in which sinners become worthy of love: in the death of Jesus Christ, the sins of his people are cancelled, and Christ serves as their substitute.

The decisive relation is union with Jesus Christ. Those united to him receive his righteousness as their own and are regarded as innocent, not because their own conduct has become sinless, but because their substitute bears the ground of their acceptance. The author presses the claim further: since this righteousness is God’s righteousness and belongs to a divine person, those united to Jesus Christ become, in the argument’s theological terms, infinitely worthy of infinite love. He even says that they are more worthy of divine love than the angels who never fell, or than they could have been in their original condition. This is not a claim that sinners possess such worth independently; it depends entirely on their union with Jesus Christ.

Love, Justice, and Christian Confidence

God’s Love does not cancel God’s Justice. The author presents the gospel as a plan that allows the believer to approach divine judgment with confidence precisely because the believer has no confidence in personal merit. A person may see himself as wholly unworthy and yet rely on a divine righteousness to meet divine justice. The greater the clarity about the ground of salvation in the work of Jesus Christ, the deeper, not the weaker, humility becomes. Confidence and humility, which many regard as incompatible, are joined in the gospel: assurance rests on Christ rather than on an inflated estimate of oneself.

This conjunction also defines the limits of the claim. The author maintains that God still hates sinners considered in themselves; those not viewed in Jesus Christ remain under that judgment. God’s Love therefore does not mean that evil is harmless, that guilt is overlooked, or that virtue can cover an offence. Mercy is made possible through the substitute, not by declaring sin acceptable. The result, as the author presents it, is a salvation in which justice is answered and the saved can stand before God without a claim to self-earned goodness.

Mercy Toward Enemies and the Problem of Human Invention

The breadth of this mercy is made vivid by its address even to those who blaspheme God and oppose the gospel. The author argues that the gospel proclaims mercy even to such enemies: if their minds are changed to acknowledge the truth, they may stand before God without spot and reign with Jesus Christ. That possibility is not offered as approval of their opposition. Rather, the contrast between their hostility and the mercy announced to them is evidence of the extraordinary character of divine love.

The author doubts that this account could plausibly have originated in human religious imagination. Human beings, he argues, cannot easily credit a love that extends to people they regard as especially undeserving; some who are called Christians might even begrudge mercy to a blasphemer. The gospel’s willingness to offer mercy to enemies therefore runs against ordinary human preference and pride. For the author, this resistance to human expectation supports the conclusion that the revelation comes from heaven, rather than being an invention designed to flatter its hearers.

Providence Does Not Make Sin Innocent

The book’s account of God’s Love belongs to a wider argument about divine sovereignty and human responsibility. In its reading of the story of Esther, God brings about the deliverance of the Jews through circumstances shaped by human choices, including choices the author judges sinful. Esther’s elevation and marriage to Ahasuerus serve a providential purpose, but that purpose does not make the conduct involved obedient to God’s law. Likewise, Mordecai and Esther’s ignorance and policy may be turned toward the good of their people without becoming innocent on that account.

This distinction matters for the treatment of mercy. God’s ability to bring good out of human wrongdoing does not constitute approval of the wrongdoing; the good effects of Jesus Christ’s death, the author argues, do not justify Judas Iscariot. Providence and redemption display divine purpose without transferring the guilt of human acts to God or erasing the responsibility of their agents. God may forgive the ignorant, sinful, and needy, but the author rejects the idea that a beneficial outcome proves their conduct right. In this framework, divine love is neither permissiveness nor reward for merit: it is mercy grounded in Jesus Christ, consistent with justice, and powerful enough to serve God’s purposes without calling evil good.