A Brief Comment on God’s Love of Benevolence and Love of Complacency

A friend of mine on Facebook recently posted a picture that included these words:

God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

I left this comment:

While this quote says something that is true, it is too simple. As far as God’s “love of benevolence” which He has for all mankind made in His image, no matter what they do or don’t do, the quote is true. However, theologians rightly distinguish this sense of love from God’s “love of complacency,” which concerns God’s love for and delight in those who are obedient. The following passages speak to this second sense of God’s love, such that we may or may not abide in this love:

NKJ John 14:21 “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

NKJ John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

NKJ John 15:9–10 9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

One can see that this sense of God’s love is conditional, and depends on what we do or don’t do. We can liken these two senses of God’s love to human parents who love all their children no matter what they do or don’t do (“love of benevolence”), but take delight in and have a growing affection (“love of complacency”) for children who are obedient. Considering these two aspects of God’s love allows us to account for the above passages which are conditional, as well as for others that differ, and are unconditional in nature. The distinction is important.

Mark Jones noted:

This view [on love of benevolence and love of complacency, and God loving obedient Christians more and more] is by far the majority position among Reformed divines from the time of the Reformation onward, but today it is hardly ever discussed or preached on in Reformed circles.

Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest? (Phillipsburg: NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), 86.

Abraham Taylor (fl.1727–1740) on Duty-Faith

Mens going into the notion, that an offer of Christ is not to be made in general, or that there must be no general tender of Christ to sinners, has run them into a farther absurdity, that unconverted sinners are not to be exhorted to believe in Christ, or to seek after that repentance which is to salvation, and that it cannot be the duty of such to believe in a Saviour. The pretence is, that a sinner has no power of his own, to believe and repent: I freely own, that I am firmly settled in my adherence to this, as an evangelical truth, that it is not in the power of fallen men, to contribute any thing towards working saving faith or repentance to life, in himself; but to say, that it is not the duty of a poor perishing soul, to cast itself on Christ, to trust in him for righteousness, or to fly to him for refuge from the wrath to come, looks to me to be an assertion little short of blasphemy, which I cannot but earnestly press you to be cautious of. God has commanded such as would not perish in their sins, to believe in Christ, and he requires men of all sorts, every where to repent; and will any venture to say, that it is not the duty of unconverted sinners to do what he commands and requires? can it, with any justice, be said, that he loses his right by the creature having render'd itself impotent to all that is good? The Spirit has made use of exhortations from the word, to trust in Christ, as the only Saviour, and to turn from sin, as means to begin a good work, in thousands, and ten thousands of holy souls; now if these exhortations had not been used, he could never have worked by them; and unless they had been to be made, he never would have honour'd them so far, as he has done, in causing them to be ordinances for good. I must freely confess to you, that as long as I find, that my great master address'd himself to a mixt multitude, saying, "repent and believe the gospel," I shall look upon the maxim, that unbelieving sinners are not to be exhorted to saving faith and evangelical repentance, to be a rude and insolent attempt to find out a better method of preaching, than that which lies in imitating the practice of the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls.

Abraham Taylor, An Address to Young Students in Divinity, By Way of Caution Against Some Paradoxes, Which Lead to Doctrinal Antinomianism (London: Printed for John Oswald, at the Rose and Crown in the Poultry, near Stocks-Market, 1739), 15–17.

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Identifying with Richard Baxter's Reaction Against Antinomianism

Packer writes:

The discovery that the views he had so zealously canvassed really subverted the gospel marked Baxter for life. He had burned his theological fingers, and he never forgot it. In 1653, he put on paper the following solemn warning:

All young Students that will deign to take advice from so mean a man as I, as ever you would preserve your graces…preserve your Judgments; and as ever you would maintain the Doctrine of Christ, take heed of the Errors of the Antinomians…That Christ’s satisfaction is ours…before the Application; and that…we are actually Pardoned, Justified, Reconciled and Adopted by it before we were born, much more before we believe…That pardon of sin is nothing but Velle non Punire: That Justification by Faith is nothing but Justification in foro conscientiae, or the sense of that in our hearts, which was really ours from eternity…That Justifying faith is the feeling or apprehension of God’s eternal love, Remission and Adoption. I say, take heed of these master-Points of Antinomianism. And as ever you would avoid these, take heed how you receive them on the reputation and plausible words of any Writer: and especially of Dr. Twiss, who is full of such passages…For you know, if you receive these, then you must receive the rest, if you discern the concatenation. For if all your sins were pardoned as soon as Christ died, then what need you pray for pardon, or Repent or Believe…for pardon? Then God loved you as well when you were his enemies, as since; and then how can you be restrained from sin?…I speak…mainly for God’s glory and Truth, and for the love of souls. I take my self the rather bound to it, because I was once drawn my self to some of these opinions by the mere high estimation of Mr. Pemble and Dr. Twisse.

Baxter had himself “discerned the concatenation,” and he wrote with feeling. He felt he had had a narrow escape.

J. I. Packer, The Redemption & Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter (Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent Publishing, 2003), 205.

This book by Packer is well-worth getting!