The Revelation of God as Suffering Love
The First Epistle of John
(continued)
“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” (1John 4:10).
The apostle John writes this epistle to address the gnostic error that endangered the Church in his time. “John’s vision concentrated on the one supreme fact. Herein was the love of God manifested towards us—that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. . . [The gnostic theory] of the absolute divine transcendence denied to God what, to the Christian mind, is the utmost ineffabilis [inexpressable] crown of his glory—self-sacrificing love.” (Robert Law, The Tests of Life [T&T Clark, 1909], italics mine)
Pastor John continues with Robert Law’s discussion of the apostle John’s First Epistle and the practical consequences that depend on the doctrine of the Incarnation. Excerpts from Robert Law’s The Tests of Life: A Study of the First Epistle of St. John, Being the Kerr Lectures for 1909 (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1909). Robert Law was a contemporary of James Denney and closest in agreement with him on the meaning of the atonement as the ultimate demonstration of what sin means to God and the cost of his love as demonstrated in the cross of Christ.