In church yesterday, the pastor tackled “God is love” (1 John 4:16). It’s part of a series about the nature of God.
Afterwards, I thought about how I would approach that divine attribute. We use adjectives to describe God. God is powerful. Gracious. Just. Merciful. All-knowing. Unchanging. Eternal.
But we don’t use the word love as an adjective. It’s a feeling. I “love” something or someone. Or it’s accompanied by an action. Christ loved us and gave him for us. Or it’s a noun. God abounds in steadfast love.
So this is very different. At first I thought, “I don’t know how I would come at this.”
But then I thought, “What if I turned it around?” What if I start with “Love is God”? Like Paul’s description of love. “Love is patient. Love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:5-8). No one truly loves like that. No one but God.
So we learn what love is by observing God. And then we know God because we have seen his unconditional, sacrificial, and unending love.
Love is not just an attribute of God. It surrounds and permeates every other attribute. When God justly judges sin, it’s because of his love for us. He doesn’t want it to destroy us. God reveals his power because of his great love for us. We need a God who can do more than we ask or imagine. An unchanging God reveals his unchanging love for us. No matter what we do or don’t do, he doesn’t change and his love doesn’t change. God’s knowledge is complete. He knows everything about me. And yet he still loves me.
So once you grasp what love really is, you get a glimpse of God. And then you realize he is the essence of love. He is love.
Waite for it... 