Skip to main content

God's love and human romantic love

Seeing as it's Valentine's day, I got to thinking - is there any connection between God’s love and human romantic love?

Some Old Testament passages describe The LORD’s attitude to his people in emotional terms. He delights in his people and considers Israel, even in exile, precious and honoured, the very apple of his eye (Deut. 30:9; 32:10; Is. 43:4; 62:5; Zech. 2:8). Yahweh ‘desired’ [hashaph] Israel (Deut. 7:7; 10:15), akin to how Shechem desired [hashaph] Dinah (Gen. 34:8), or an Israelite may desire [hashaph] a war-captive woman (Deut. 21:11).

The New Testament also portrays God as desiring his people, and this desire motivating him to redemptive action. Christ felt compassion [splagzomai] for needy people, and this compassion motivated him to acts which eradicated the effects of sin – healing the sick (Matt. 14:14; Mk. 1:41), feeding the hungry (Matt. 15:32 = Mark 6:34; Mark 8:2), giving sight to the blind (Matt. 20:34), raising the dead (Lk. 7:13). The virtuous characters in his parables demonstrated similar compassion attitudes and merciful actions: the ruler in the parable of the unmerciful servant forgave the servant’s debt (Matt. 18:27); the Samaritan cared for the Jewish man (Luke 10:33); the father of the prodigal son did not hold his sins against him but rejoiced at his return (Luke 15:20). Saul discovered that to persecute Christians was to persecute Christ (Acts 9:4-5). This all demonstrates that God, in Christ, ‘desires’ his people: he sets his affections upon them, identifies with them, and therefore acts to redeem them.

The analogy must be handled cautiously. First of all, the the doctrine of God’s asceity indicates that, in his eternal, Triune self-giving and mutual constitution, God is replete – he is fully satisfied with himself.

[I]n their interpersonal reciprocal relations the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the Communion of Love which the One God eternally is in himself… It is as this ever living and acting Communion of loving and being loved that God is who he is… (T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, London: T. & T. Clark, 1996: 5-6.)

Shechem and the Israelite men were attracted to the women for their beauty; Yahweh did not redeem Israel for any attractive feature they possessed, but because his consistent character moved him to fulfil his promises to their fathers (Deut. 7:7-8). God’s affection for Israel is unilateral and often unrequited; Song of Songs and 1 Cor. 7 show us that healthy marriages are characterised by mutual affection. Jealousy drives humans to excessive anger (Prov. 6:34, 27:4; Eccl. 4:4; Acts 5:17, 13:45, 17:5; etc), while Yahweh is slow to anger (Ex. 34:6; Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2; Nah. 1:3).

Nevertheless, the analogy is there. The God of the Old Testament acted to redeem his people because he ‘desired’ them – he ‘wanted’ to dwell with them. So he acted powerfully to rescue them from oppression and take them to himself in the promised land. To say ‘God loves’ is to say he, of his own gracious will, binds his well-being with the well-being of his people, and this alignment motivates him to redemptive action, supremely in the cross of Christ.

God's redemptive love is unique. We cannot "save" anyone by our love. Only God can do that through Christ. Missionary dating is a disaster. Do not marry an unbeliever (1 Cor. 7:39; 2 Cor. 6:14). The first point of contact for this analogy is that we who trust Christ should feel absolutely comfortable in his love, expressed and enacted in Christ.

But, I think we can say that God's love in Christ reflexively validates human romantic love, in the sense of the goodness of a desire to be with someone, and share life in mutual blessing. This isn't "redemptive" in the proper sense - doesn't save us from sin - but it does fulfil our genuine created relational needs. We were not made to be alone, we were made to be in relationship with each other, especially the relationship of marriage. Human romance is, at its best, an expression of this appropriate need. And this need is connected to the gospel of the God who does not need us, but voluntarily chooses to be with us.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A better understanding of nonbelief

The Nones Project is an ongoing study into the belief systems of people who call themselves non-religious. A few weeks ago one of the project leaders,  Ryan Burge  of Washington University,  posted some really interesting preliminary results  on his Substack.  1. We've probably heard of people who are spiritual but not religious (SBNRs). SBNRs were "the largest group of nones" in the sample. They believe in the supernatural realm but not necessarily in "a God." They are "deeply skeptical of religion but highly interested in spirituality," therefore individualistic and anti-institutional.  2. But this study differentiated SBNRs from people they called Nones In Name Only, NiNos. They different to SBNRs by being religious about their spiritual. They believe not just in the supernatural but in "God." And they tend to engage in traditional communal religious practices while SBNRs practice individualised eclectic bespoke spiritual practices. The s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The different distractions of secularity and spirituality

There has been a lot of discussion about the recent 'vibe shift' away from radical atheism back towards an openness to the supernatural. I don't think this new spirituality is necessarily an openness to the unique claims of Christ. It will more probably replace one set of commonly-accepted misunderstandings about Jesus with another.  Under radical atheism, people dismissed the Biblical claims about Jesus' resurrection because they 'knew' that it was impossible. Jesus hadn't really died. He just passed out (after being beaten and whipped and crucified) and then woke up in the tomb (and rolled away the stone himself and overcame several guards). Or the disciples hallucinated that they saw him (even though Jewish beliefs of the time didn't expect one person to rise possessing eternal life himself; they expected a general resurrection at the end of time - see John 11:24 ). Or something else.  The so-called 'explanations' of Jesus' non-resurrectio...
Post a Comment
Read more
TGC Australia recently published an analysis by Dr Sarah Quicke of whether we are experiencing a 'quiet revival' of interest in and/or conversion to Christianity  here in Australia. It does it a good job of describing the difficulties involved in both gathering and interpreting data about religious beliefs and behaviours, e.g. the difference between the 44% who (still) call themselves Christian and the 8% of people aged 18-35 who actually "believed and lived out the gospel."  Quicke refers to the very insightful McCrindle report An Undercurrent Of Faith , released in March 2025, which uses an analytical method called cohort analysis to try and work out how a particular group of people tend to behave over time. The purpose of this post is to draw attention to one element of that report which agrees with Quicke's analysis but also adds some detail to it.  Here is what the cohort analysis showed about different age groups' identification with Christianity:  As y...
Post a Comment
Read more