Church sign: D. A Carson: So now God comes to us and says, "I love you"? What does he mean? Does he mean something like this? "You mean everything to me. I can't live without you. Your personality, your witty conversation, our beauty, your smile - everything about you transfixes me. Heaven would be boring without you. I love you!" That, after all, is pretty close to what some therapeutic approaches to the love of God spell out. We must be pretty wonderful because God loves us. And dear old God is pretty vulnerable, finding himself in a dreadful state unless we say yes. Suddenly serious Christians unite and rightly cry, "Bring back impassibility!" When he says he loves us, does not God rather mean something like the following? "Morally speaking, you are the people of the halitosis, the bulbous nose, the greasy hair, the disjointed knees, the abominable personality. Your sins have made you disgustingly ugly. But I love you anyway, not becaus...