# “A threefold love of God” by Francis Turretin

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2024/09/10/a-threefold-love-of-god-by-francis-turretin/
- Published: 2024-09-10T14:00:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“A threefold love of God is commonly held; or rather there are three degrees of 
one and the same love.

**First**, there is the love of benevolence by which God willed good to the creature
from eternity; **second**, the love of beneficence by which He does good to the 
creature in time according to His good will; **third**, the love of complacency 
by which He delights Himself in the creature on account of the rays of His image
seen in them.

The two former precede every act of the creature; the latter follows (not as an 
effect its cause, but as a consequent its antecedent).

By the love of _benevolence_, He loved us before we were; by the love of _beneficence_,
He loves us as we are; and by the love of _complacency_, He loves us when we are(
viz., renewed after His image).

By the first, He _elects_ us; by the second, He _redeems_ and _sanctifies_ us; but
by the third, He gratuitously _rewards_ us as holy and just.

**John 3:16** refers to the first; **Ephesians 5:25** and **Revelation 1:5** to 
the second; **Isaiah 62:3** and **Hebrews 11:6** to the third.”

–Francis Turretin, [_Institutes of Elenctic Theology_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0875524567?tag=toletaupanre-20),
ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ:
P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 1: 242.

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