What God Loves More Than People

Christian contemporary artists Point of Grace have a song called "God Loves People More Than Anything."  It's a lovely tune that my wife has played in the house a number of times.  Maybe I wasn't listening before, but today when it was on, I found myself bunching up my face at the words.  God doesn't love people more than anything; God loves Himself more than anything. 

 

As John Piper, author of Desiring God and Pleasures of God, might put it, for humans it is the epitome of vanity, but for God it is the epitome of righteousness.  It's bad for humans to love themselves more than anything because they are less than perfect.  Vanity isn't just socially inappropriate; it's a poor moral and value choice.  For God to love Himself more than anything, whether or not you think that's arrogant, it's right in the sense that for Him to love anything more than He loves Himself would be less than right.

 

That God loves Himself more than anything is the proper context and foundation for His love for us, for that love for us is predicated not on our worth in His eyes but His own worth in His eyes.  If we thought God loved us because we were something or because He lacked something, we would have no assurance to stand on.  Instead, we have His own iron-clad love for Himself to secure us.

 

The Point of Grace song goes on to say, "He'd rather die than let them go."  Incorrect again -- He did in fact die in order to never let us go.  And again, that death was not out of insecurity or because He was constrained by some authority or plan higher than Him.  With pleasure, the prophet Isaiah records in the Old Testament, the Father bruised His own Son.  And for the joy set before Him, writes the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews, the Son sacrificed His life to the Father's purpose.

 

In this day and age, the gospel message is too easily ignored, watered down, and just plain sugar coated.  Would that we who believe in and who have been transformed by it dust it off in our lives and present it afresh to a world that desperately needs it.