We must distinguish between the two kinds of love that the Father had for the Son. The first is that immutable, “infinite love that flows out from the Father to the Son because of the intrinsic relationship that they sustain to one another” (75). The second is “the love of complacency that flowed out with increasing intensity to the Son because of His fulfillment of the Father’s commission” (75). 

I was recently reading John Murray’s profoundly enriching sermon, “The Father’s Love“–in the newly released volume of his sermon, O Death, Where is Thy Sting?–and was struck afresh with the wonder of the mystery of the commingling of the Father’s love and wrath in His dealings with the Son on the cross. This greatest of all subjects received quite a good deal of attention last year, after Tim Keller tweeted out the following sentiment: “If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of the Father out of His infinite love for you, it will melt your hardness.” While I certainly share the concern of those who reacted swiftly to the idea that the Son lost the Father’s love when He hung on the cross, I was disheartened to see how many of the responses lacked a strong focus on the simultaneity of the manifestation of the Father’s eternal love and divine wrath directed to the Son when He hung on the cross. In his sermon on Romans 8:32, however, Murray held these two seemingly incompatible truths inseparably together.

When he first gave consideration of the words of the text, “spared not His own Son,” Murray explained:

“The Father loved the Son with infinite and immutable love because he did not cease to be the only begotten Son, and the infinite love necessarily flowed out from the very relationship that he essentially and immutably sustained to God the Father” (76).

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