Spurgeons Around the wicket gate discussion

Gods love is active not emotional. This is why He describe divine love in Corinthians. In Corinthians 13 we see that divine love has rules. Love is patient, kind, never envious, etc. So the question is can God love us in a world were the rules are violated? If love with rules should define relationships then is Gods love simply some good feelings He gives us to keep us going?

If God has limited His love to a definition from our understanding it may be support for our denying self. In other words the reason that we deny self is because we do not have an understanding of love with rules as God does. And if we all conclude that connecting with other people who have a small understanding of Gods love according to His perfect character is mysterious to us and expressed in self denial then how do we know if God loves us according to His mysterious standard? Isnt connecting through self denial a lack of faith in believing that God can love us according to His standard? It would make it easy for us to accept the small standard by which we are loved in this world but it would not encourage us to seek God according to His standard of love with rules.

This is why Ive been saying that in order for God to love us according to His covenant He must love us individually. But how can we love God if there are other loves that are equal? How can we put all our trust in God if there are two lines? One represents our love for God and the other represents our love for man. Isnt that saying that since there are two realms than we are to love man enough to trust that he is a stand in for God? If God is to be loved alone but we are to trust that man can love in a practical way arent we saying that there are two loves?

But we are taught that God loves us alone because it is impossible to be loved by lesser beings other than God. Gods love alone is to be trusted because we are commanded to have no other gods before Him. We must understand that the bible only presents one true love because there is only one living God. All other gods are dead. The point is that if we put our trust in other loves we will end up just like a dead idol.

This brings me to my next point. That God loves us as if all other loves are hate. What I mean by that is that true love is based upon perfect law keeping. This is why God in distinguishing divine love from human love says that "if you love me you will obey Me." We are to see the impossibility to love God until He loves us.

But we all are made different from each other. If God loves us He must love us according to how He has made us. God must love us with perfect justice. He must act perfectly towards us. So God loves us according to His standard and He must be able to know us outside of our understanding of our needs and wants because His love is beyond our ability to understand. God has given us the spoken word so that we can fellowship with Him according to His perfect love that answers all our needs and wants.

In this sense God loves us enough to answer every persons needs as if that person had available all that God possesses while meeting the needs of the next guy as if that person was the only one who had access to all that God possesses. I am saying that our problem is not a lack of love for one another as it is that we do not understand ourselves enough to fellowship with God according to our understand of our true needs. When we do not fellowship with God according to His understanding of our needs then we live with an emotional and pragmatic love.If we do not understand Gods love according to the truth then everything we understand about justice, faithfulness, and kindness is reduced to the standard of human love and acceptance. We are stuck in a world were love is never returned with action. The only time we can truly be loved by action is through the perfect law keeper. We will never be loved in truth on a horizontal level. If we were, then God would need to lower the pure standard of law keeping.