Success is Loving - Review of Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome

Liberating recognises that success is loving. In an extended treatment of John 21 and Peter’s reinstatement, love of God is seen as being biblically successful. Hard to argue with anything there. The Hughes point out that a large church, a growing congregation, powerful sermons etc. can all be present, but the man involved can be absent of the love of God. They also point out that the liberating feature of seeing love as success means that ministry can no longer be quantified (and therefore your success ranked against the past or others). How can you quantify love? It also informs the very nature of your ministry – those who have been loved love.

I found this chapter incredibly encouraging and challenging. Because of course the very fact that love can’t be quantified means that you (well, me at least) immediately examine yourself and find yourself wanting. Could I love God more? Of course. Can I? By his grace and ongoing work of his Spirit, I will. It is this divine intervention and work in the heart of the believer that I feel could have been stressed more here. But, all in all – a top chapter.

Overstating Love

As part of a course we’re doing here at Moore, Peter and I have been reading through a series of classic works on the atonement. This past week was the other great John (Calvin, not Owen), and his three chapters on Christ’s work in book two of the Institutes. One thing which struck me again as I read it was his comment that God ‘loved us even when he hated us’. His grace precedes his wrath. His love for us - his love for me - triumphed over all.

Some time ago we were looking at T. F. Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God, in which he says (more than once!): ‘He [God] loved us more than he loved himself.’ The problem I had at that time with what Torrance says is that he seemed to overstate it. How can the perfect God who is complete in himself and needs nothing love externally more than he loves internally? To say that is surely to go too far? Torrance overstates God’s love, doesn’t he?

But that is exactly the point. How can you overstate love that overcomes, that overrules, that overwhelms that which is loved? How can you overstate love that meant that the one who loves, who is love, gives of himself for the unlovely – indeed he becomes unlovely for the unlovely. How can you overstate love that is unoverstatable?

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.