Pastoral Letter - The Granduer of God's Love
Brothers & Sisters in Christ,
Grace and peace to you, from God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.
It has been some time since I have written a pastoral letter to the congregation of Covenant Grace. However, as I awoke this morning, my heart was burdened to express a few thoughts which I trust, in God’s kindness, will minister to your souls. The most important of these burdens is to remind you of the glorious love of God for his people—that is, the glorious love of God for you dear Christian. I want to remind you of the marvelous wonders and mysteries of God’s great love for his people by drawing out three of its chief characteristics:
God’s love for his Church is a fierce and unrelenting love.
God’s love for his Church is a radically self-sacrificing love.
God’s love for his Church is an eternally unbreakable love.
1.) God’s love for his Church is a fierce and unrelenting love.
We often think of love as a gentle thing, and this of course is right. For our Savior declares that he is surely “gentle and lowly” toward the precious flock of his love, (Matt. 11:29). Yet, the love of God is also a fierce and unrelenting love. Unlike the false shepherds who are merely “hired hands”, the True Shepherd, Jesus Christ, will never flee when the wolf approaches, (John 10:11-13). Instead this same Shepherd who is “gentle and lowly” will also take the cudgel of his love into his hands and defend his sheep from their enemies with mighty blows, (Ps. 23:4). The love of God is a bold and confrontational love. It is a love that will not be quieted or restrained. It is a love that will come after the lost sheep and fight every enemy in order to bring that sheep home to safety.
Yet this same fierceness of love is also displayed when the enemy from which we need rescued is ourselves. Indeed, there is a little known fact about shepherds that is a powerful demonstration of this. When a precious and beloved sheep continually wanders away from its shepherd, sometimes it becomes necessary for that shepherd to inflict a wound upon that sheep. In fact, sometimes a good and loving shepherd will break the leg of a sheep in order to prevent that sheep from being physically able to stray away from him anymore. This may sound very harsh at first, but you must understand the whole process. Immediately after the shepherd breaks the sheep’s leg, he then begins to provide the healing that sheep needs. Throughout the entire process of healing, the shepherd carries that sheep in his arms. He holds that sheep close. He teaches that sheep to know his voice and to follow his commands so that once that sheep is made well, it will have learned to stay near the shepherd and to trust him for all its needs.
This picture gives us an illustration of the fierceness and unrelenting nature of God’s great love for his people. The Scriptures tell us that it is the people of his love, that is, the “son in whom he delights”, that he disciplines for their own good.
“My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline
or be weary of his reproof,
for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.”
Proverbs 3:11-12
2.) God’s love for his Church is a radically self-sacrificing love.
This fierce love that is willing to “break us” when that breaking is necessary for our true healing, is also a radically self-sacrificing love that was willing to be broken for us, (I Peter 2:24-25). The widespread familiarity with the gospel that we have known in our lifetimes is a double-edged reality. On the one hand, having the gospel be so readily available to us is a clear blessing and privilege. But there is also a sense in which our familiarity can breed contempt. We can lose a true sense of wonder and awe at the sacrificial love of God for us, his beloved people. This is part of the reason that, as Christians, we must never downplay the reality of the wretchedness of sin. As odd as it is may sound, it is only when we have a sober view of our sin and the righteous judgment of God that our sin deserves, that we can have a truly unobstructed view of the priceless glory of Christ.
In order to help us rediscover the awe of the gospel and the glorious love of Christ, I want to take a moment to consider our sins afresh. I want to help us see that our sins against God are greater than we could ever imagine in at least two particular ways:
1. Each of our particular sins is a greater offense to God’s holiness than we have ever yet truly understood.
That is to say, we have never yet grasped how repulsive our sins actually are to God’s holiness. As the prophet Habakkuk declared of our God, “You are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look upon wrong…” (Hab. 1:13).
So repugnant is the evil of our hearts and lives that God recoils at the sight of it.
2. Yet our sin is greater in another way as well—greater in quantity.
Not only are our particular sins more sinful than we have begun to realize but the number of our sins is beyond all counting. To use the words of the prophet Jonah, “…for their evil has come up before me,” (Jonah 1:2) That phrase, “come up before me”, means that the number of our sins have grown so great that, like a mountain peak, they have piled up to the very heights of the heavens. This was not only true for the people of Nineveh, it is also true of us.
We may not like to look at such truths, but it is against this very backdrop that the words so often spoke in Scripture regain their full strength: “But God…” Despite the greatness of our offenses against him—both in degree and in number—look at the marvel of his mercy toward us!
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…”
Ephesians 2:4-5
So great is God’s love for us—“even when we were dead in our trespasses”—that he sent his only Son to be the sacrifice for our sins, (I John 2:2). Jesus poured out his blood upon the cross for you, dear one. He gave up his life for your deliverance. He willingly took upon himself the curse and punishment which you and I have earned by our lawless lives, so that we could be counted righteous, forgiven, and redeemed. As Jesus once told his disciples shortly before he gave up his life for them: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13). This greatest act of love is the very thing which our holy God has done for us! Though we were his enemies, he has made us his beloved children through the blood of his cross.
So far we have seen that God’s love for us is fierce and unrelenting as well as selfless and sacrificial. Yet there is still one more aspect of God’s love that demands our attention.
3.) God’s love for his Church is an eternally unbreakable love.
To say that a thing is unbreakable is quite a strong claim. It means that nothing has the power to dismantle it, to undo it, to stop it, to reverse its effects, etc. All this is exactly what the Scriptures teach us about the love of God for his chosen people. If you are a child of God, rescued from your wickedness by his grace to you in Jesus, then these words spoken by the prophets of old are true for you:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love,
Therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
Jeremiah 31:3“For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.”
Isaiah 54:10
Once God takes you into his flock as one of his very own precious sheep, you may forevermore say with the Lord Jesus Christ himself:
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”
John 10:27-30
Let those words sink deeply into your soul, beloved Christian. No one can snatch you from the hands of your loving Shepherd Jesus Christ—not even your own rebellious heart! No one is greater than your God who holds you as his own forever. Both Christ the Son and God the Father are eternally united as one in this resolute promise to the Church. This is why the love of God for his beloved people is unbreakable, because the strength and commitment of the eternal, almighty, and unchangeable God stands behind it forevermore.
Pastors Are Especially Called To Reflect the Love of the Good Shepherd
As I consider the grandeur of God’s glorious love for his people and contemplate the many brilliant facets of that majestic love, I feel the great weight of the pastoral calling bearing down upon my lowly and sinful heart. As an under-shepherd of the true and great Shepherd Himself, it is my privilege, duty, obligation, and calling to love you—his beloved church—with a love that resembles the love of God himself. It is my responsibility to rightly represent the Lord and his Word to you. And this means that my own ministry—and the ministry of all true pastors—should have appropriate notes of each of the three categories which I have highlighted above. It should be a ministry that is fierce against the evils of sin, self-sacrificing toward the varied needs of the saints, and unbreakable in its devotion to the best interests of the flock of God.
I confess to you that I am very far from fulfilling this charge as it should be done. Yet, with all my heart, it is my earnest desire to love you with the true love of God in all its varied facets. I long to be found faithful in the care of my Master’s precious sheep. This is surely a task too great for me; it is far beyond my wisdom, ability, and strength. Yet I know that God delights to reveal his power through our weakness so that in the victories he grants, all the glory is rightly given to him. And because I know that his “power is made perfect in weakness,” I have hope that the labors of my life—feeble and foolish as they may be—might be used of God to reveal his own surpassing worth, glory, and grace to you his dear and precious people, (II Cor. 12:9). As the Apostle Paul once declared:
“For we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
II Corinthians 4:7
Beloved, We Are Part of Something Great
I hope that this brief reflection on the love of God has given fresh strength to your soul. That is my prayer, and the burden which stood behind the writing of this pastoral letter. However, let me close by adding this: I truly believe we are part of something great at Covenant Grace. It is a rare thing to have a loving church body who are devoted to God, to his Word, to his Worship, to his commandments, and to fulfilling his great commission. It is a precious gift to have a group of people who are humbled before their God and united in their desire to pour out their lives as an offering of praise to him. Yet, this is the very thing our God is doing in our midst, little by little, day by day. He is raising up for himself “a people for his own possession who will declare the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light,” (I Peter 2:9). The sight of these realities brings a joy to my heart that I can hardly put to words.
The greatest days of gospel-advance are not behind us, but ahead of us. I believe with all my heart that the words which God spoke to Paul so long ago remain true for us and for our own city of Greensboro and the surrounding areas today:
“And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”
Acts 18:9-10
Therefore, in view of God’s great love for us, and being encouraged by his present working in our midst, let us not grow weary in doing good, but continue to press forward together until we hear the final trumpet call sounding us home, (I Cor. 15:58).