Sunday, April 1, 2007

God's Love Requires an Open Future

Eph 3
18 you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Many People who never heard of Open Theism question this verse. They ask, "If the love of God is beyond comprehension, why did God make creation with the steering wheel pointed right at death and destruction? He knew when he made the "car" that more than %50 of it would get totaled before it even happened. Where is the love here? Why would God "lovingly" create a world like this?"

They ask this question because If God knew the future, no other answer exists but "God isn't loving." We humans can understand love. Didn't Jesus show us what love is? Didn't Paul explain it to us? It always hopes... how can God have hope? If he already knows, hope isn't hope at all...

God does love us, so he would never intentionally create us like this. Love is evidence that the future is not entirely known to God. Love requires the future to be open.

If God is love, and love requires hope, and hope requires an open future, God must also have an open future.

Romans 8:24
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

1 Corinthians 13:7
It[love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

How can God love the sinner and hope he will change if he already knows if he will change or not? There is no way God can have hope and this would make his love incomplete. But as we have read, his love is complete. It is beyond comprehension.

God had hope for humanity when he created us. He was sorry things turned out they way we did (Gen 6:6). So the true answer to the question is he intended for us to live in a perfect world... but we messed it up, and all along God hoped we wouldn't do that.

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