The love of God the Father for the Son

In Sunday School last week God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac came up. Of course, God graciously provided the lamb and Abraham didn’t have to go through with it–but when it was God’s own Son, there was no other way.

What I see in myself is that while I react in horror to the thought of Abraham having to sacrifice his son, I have almost none of that reaction to God having to sacrifice His Son. And I think the reason is that I somehow think God the Father’s love for His Son was small–that it was not costly to the Father to sacrifice His Son. How far from the truth I know that is! I need to understand the Father’s love for the Son. Where would you brothers go to get understanding of this? Helpful books? Helpful verses?

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Hebrews 12:6 (NASB95)
FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”

Hebrews 5:8 (NASB95)
Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

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Romans 8:32 - “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Calvin:

As it greatly concerns us to be so thoroughly persuaded of the paternal love of God, as to be able to retain our rejoicing on its account, Paul brings forward the price of our redemption in order to prove that God favors us: and doubtless it is a remarkable and clear evidence of inappreciable love, that the Father refused not to bestow his Son for our salvation. And so Paul draws an argument from the greater to the less, that as he had nothing dearer, or more precious, or more excellent than his Son, he will neglect nothing of what he foresees will be profitable to us.

I recently taught on a Wednesday night at our church on the topic if parental affection, wherein we spent time considering the affection that God, our perfect Father, has for the Son.

We spent a bit of time considering Matthew 3:16-17 - “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’"

Jesus is the agapetos, the beloved of God. The object of the Father’s delight and affection, in whom is all his delight.

It’s unspeakably incredible to consider that the church would take on the same title: the beloved. So great is the Father’s love for the Son, and yet it is the very same love which is extended to us in Him. The pleasure that the Father takes in the Son, He takes in us through Him.

John 17:22-23 - “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

1 John 3:1 - “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”

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Did God “have to” send His Son? We might want to be careful to acknowledge it was from His love that He sent His Son, and any necessity of this sending of the Son by the Father is grounded in, and flowing from, that love. Love,

PS: Should add that I disapprove of that frequent statement Christians make today, that God is “wanting” this or that from us. We have to be careful to sense and try to correct the unbiblical empowerment of man so prevalent today—which I fear is the basis of such statements. I find it easy to accept Scripture saying such anthropomorphic things as God “repented,” but there are few men today who, making such a statement, I would feel were speaking anthropomorphically. I think this is what I’m trying to get at in the first paragraph, above.

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