Attuned to Love When Light Seems Hidden

In this series, “Grieve to the Gospel”—we invite you to share with us together in the truths of the good news of Christ. We can tune our grief to the tones, notes, and chords we hear in it. We will still certainly grieve, but welcoming the gospel into our minds, hearts, and experience will help us to understand what the Bible means when it communicates that there is a uniquely Christian way to grieve (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

In the days after my daughter went to heaven, one of my prayers was, “Lord, I know and believe that You are good, but I cannot seem to love Your goodness right now.” My feelings were somehow insulated from what I knew and believed to be true. The connection point within—where what I trust influences what I feel—seemed to have been separated. In a sense this is no surprise, because I felt my whole heart had flown away to be with my daughter in heaven.

When Light Is Hidden

In grief, while God and His Word stayed the same, I had changed.

“When you are shocked and dismayed at the death of someone you dearly love, it can be tempting to doubt God’s goodness, mercy, faithfulness, and love. You don’t feel loved. You don’t feel like you are the object of God’s goodness…Wander down into a dark, windowless basement. The door accidentally locks behind you. You can’t see any light or feel the sun’s warmth. Did the light stop shining? No.”
Paul David Tripp

Today, I want to write to you about God’s love displayed in the gospel. But you might be in the basement where no light seems to be shining. Or you might feel like the connection point between what you believe and what you feel has become separated.

I understand. As mourners, we can allow time for God to restore the places in us that are entirely disjointed after devastation. Alongside giving ourselves that freedom, we can focus our cries on the truths of Scripture. Tuning our grief to the notes and tones of the gospel, we examine the gospel and what it’s composed of and then use those notes to help form our prayers, cries, and sobs before the Lord. Over time as we grieve, the truth will influence our feelings as we lay this process before God.

When bringing ourselves to Scripture to ask of it—Is God compassionate? Does He love?—we find that Scripture speaks the most resounding “yes” possible. As you read of God’s gospel love, I invite you to ask that God would provide ways for your heart’s cries to tune in to these themes—even as you feel these truths are very distant or when there are pieces of God’s character you cannot seem to love today.

Is God Compassionate? Does He Love?

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
1 John 3:1a NIV

There is an intrinsic connection between God’s love and being called children in this verse. It is a link that points to action on the part of God: “with God to call is to make really to be.”[1] He came to make a way for us who were children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) to be called—made into—His. Without Christ, we are children of wrath because, as S. Lewis Johnson writes in Discovering Romans, “The God of the Bible is a God whose holy being is revolted by that which is a contradiction of His holiness”—that is, our sin.

Our standing in wrath and condemnation before God without Christ is part of how we understand the gospel and come to see our need for it; New Testament scholar D.A. Carson writes in For the Love of God, “The Gospel, by definition, is good news to people who are not worthy of it.” By ourselves, our sin is something we are responsible for and the burden of sin lays upon our consciences.

God has foreseen spiritual danger (as we saw in our last post)—that mankind would enter into sin, leading to spiritual death, eventual physical death, and then eternal damnation. And He has made to really be that we can escape eternal damnation and be revived to life with Him forever.

Matthew Henry explains of God: “He who calls things that are not makes them to be what they were not.”[2]

We were not His children.

Contrastingly, Christ had no sin.

But God gives us who believe in Christ a new name to take upon ourselves.

For Christ took our sin upon Himself.

“For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21

“but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8

“It is wonderful condescending love of the eternal Father, that such as we should be made and called His sons—we who by nature are heirs of sin, and guilt, and the curse of God—we who by practice are children of corruption, disobedience, and ingratitude! Strange, that the holy God is not ashamed to be called our Father, and to call us His sons!”
Matthew Henry

For those of us who are in Christ, He calls us daughters—His very own.

Spiritual Rebirth

Being reborn in God, called regeneration, is how we are actually made into God’s children: “believers are ‘called children of God’ because they are the born-ones” of God.[3]

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior”
Titus 3:4-6

God has made us who believe new people; He poured out mercy and now attributes to all of His children the righteousness of Christ.

J. H. Jewett taught that God’s gospel grace is “holy love on the move.”[4] What an image! Christ took action for us. He came, died, and rose that the burden and guilt of sin would be ours as believers no more, and in place of hell, we would have a living eternity with God ahead. His love means that we can become holy “born ones” of God—not because of our works but by grace in Christ.

Rebirth sets us dead to sin, makes us alive to God in Christ, and gives us a status as holy, righteous children of God, a status that cannot be revoked any more than we could remove the cross from history.

Evidence of God’s Love

After loss, our minds might tend to think along the lines of the actions we have been incapable of—we could not know the future to foresee danger to our children, and we could not revive them to life after body and soul were separated. But most significantly, we could never give spiritual salvation to our children. Yet God saw their need too, being sinners by nature from conception (Psalms 51:5). And we can see reasons from Scripture to believe that He mercifully made a unique way through the cross for them to be in heaven with Him too.[5]

While we never had the time to fully know our babies here on earth and we never had opportunity to see them live out many years of this life—God calls them born of Him as living sons and daughters! They never had to experience making the choice to sin and they now have no possibility for sin in their souls; they are freed to fully enjoy the endless love of God. And we believe that they, with us, have the unspeakable privilege of being evidences of God’s great compassion, grace, mercy, and love forever and ever. See what great love the Father has lavished on our children, that they should be called His!

To be called children of God, we had to be made children of God.

That is what Jesus came to do for our children, who never chose to sin, and for those of us who confess our sin and guilt before God, confess our faith in Christ, and find His grace through His lavishly loving sacrifice.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39

Tuning Your Grief to Jesus’ Love

Grieve to the notes and tones of the gospel:

the compassion of a God who saw you, believer, in your sin, death, and condemnation—and took it upon Himself to provide a way for you to become the Father’s daughter through bearing your sin, guilt, and death Himself instead
the name you as a believer have, “God’s child,” which is yours forever and stands through every circumstance of your life
the love of God that does for your child or children you have lost what you could never do—give eternal life in Christ with the Father who loves them
the promise that your salvation does not rest upon your own goodness or your worthiness of it, but upon the righteousness of Christ—which can never possibly change
the privilege you have to know and belong to this God of love forever, because He can never be taken from you, believer, in life or death
the hope that every single pain you feel right now will certainly come to an end on the day sin and death are removed from our experience and, with our babies, we will be freed to the holy love of God forever

From this, form the cries of your heart as your grieve:

Father, right now it feels like my name is “mourner,” so remind my spirit of my eternal name through Christ, “God’s daughter.”
Father, all I can think about is my child who is no longer near and how much I love this dear one; I thank You that You love my child and did more for my child than I could do.
Father, I give the timetable of my grief to You; help me to know that what sustains me is Your love shown through the grace of Christ given to me freely while I was not worthy of it.
Father, it feels like I am entirely empty, so please comfort my soul by knowing Your gospel love—which I can never be emptied of.
Father, I feel that I cannot love Your goodness or compassion right now, so I give my heart to You; do in me what only You can do.

[1] Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997.

[2] Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994.

[3] Walvoord, John F., and Roy B. Zuck, Dallas Theological Seminary. The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985.

[4] Via S. Lewis Johnson in Discovering Romans.

[5] What happens to babies when they die? Dr. Thomas Schreiner in Honest Answers. https://youtu.be/KaiGy-EJKsE

- Lianna

Hope Mom to Noelle

Lianna belongs to her Lord. She is wed to Tyler and mother of two girls, one who lives in heaven and one who lives on earth. You’ll find her serving with Hope Mommies as Content Director and contributing to Of Larks and Unlocking the Bible.

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