The God Who is Love

Twice in 1 John 4, the Apostle John writes that God is love (4:8,16).

The writings of the apostle John give three definitive statements about God. "God is Spirit" John 4:24). "God is light" (1 John 1:5). And now, twice in the present passage, "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16). The theme of everything John writes about is from the foundational truth that our God is a God of love.

When John wrote these words, the concept of God being love as to his essential nature was something new in the ancient world. Never would the people of pagan religions have declared that their god was a god of love. They would have declared that their god was a god to be feared, a god who was angry with them. It was a new thought to declare "God is love."

Study comparative religions and see what Buddhism has to say. Read what Islam has to say, all the religions of the world, and you will discover that only the Christian gospel affirms that "God is love."

Our challenge today is that modern man's concepts of love are largely defined and formed by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Basically, every mention of the word "love" is filtered through this worldly system mindset. Thus, when the typical American is told that God is love or that God loves them, they picture God as being a warm, sentimental, fuzzy-wuzzy emotional Being that tolerates everything and never punishes anyone. They assume that if God loves them then a "get‑off‑easy" "everything-is-going-to-be-all-right" type of relationship must exist between God and themselves. Because of this distorted understanding of the meaning of the word "love", we must allow God's Word and not Hollywood, or Madison Avenue or Webster's Dictionary to define its meaning.

Practically all modern languages have but one word for love. However, the Greek language used in the NT had several different words for love but used two main words for it - philos and agape.

John says that God, as to the very essence of His nature is agape. (1 John 4:8) This kind of love is a person and a principle, not a passion. It is free and sovereign, not dependent on the goodness or beauty of its object. Let me give you two of my favorite definitions of agape love:

Dudley Hall defines God’s agape love as: "…that essence of life that gives without regard to cost to meet the actual needs of another, asking nothing in return!"

John Piper defines it as: "Love is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others."

I. Love Exists Eternally in God - 1 Jn. 4:8,16

A. God's Love is not Just an Exhibited Benevolence Directed Toward His Creatures, but His Essential Nature - I Jn. 4:8, "...for God is love."  In 1 John the verb for love (agapao) is used twenty-eight times. The noun (agape) is found eighteen times; the adjective "beloved" (agapetos) appears five times. God is love. This does not mean that "love is God."

It has accurately been said that "love does not define God, but God defines love." God is love and God is light; therefore, His love is a holy love, and His holiness is expressed in love. All that God does expresses all that God is. Even His judgments are measured out in love and mercy (Lam. 3:22, 23).

B. God is Love, but Love is not God! - God is not an abstraction. The word "God" has the article, the word "love" does not, which construction in Greek means that the two words are not interchangeable. The absence of the article emphasizes nature, essence, character. The translation should read `God as to His nature is love.' That is, God is a loving God."

Carl F.H. Henry says that "love is not accidental or incidental to God; it is an essential revelation of the divine nature, a fundamental and eternal perfection."

To declare that ‘God is love’ is clearly intended to go further than the proposition ‘God loves us.' To say “God is love” implies that all His activity is loving activity. When God creates, He creates in love; He rules in love; He judges in love. All that He does is the ex­pression of His nature, which is to love.^"

II. God's Love is Eternal

Though the Bible uses the word love as a noun, its primary function is that of a verb. The Bible is more concerned about what love does than what love is. We tend to think of love more as a noun than a verb. It's something that happens to us and we just get the can't-help-its when it hits us.

Let me put major emphasis on this truth: Love isn’t just one of the many attributes of God. For example. God is wrathful toward sin, but Scripture never says God is wrath, because his wrath has reference to something outside of himself - our sin. There was a time in eternity past when God's wrath had no expression. But there has never been a time when God was not love, for the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father, and the Father and the Son for the Spirit is eternal.

Remove sin, and God would still be God without wrath and without mercy. Absent sin, God could still be God without patience. But God cannot be God without love, for God is love, and there has never been a moment, and never will be a moment, when he is not.

Pastor Michael Lawrence points out how “for some of us, it is easy to think that God and his love must revolve around me and my problems, and we evaluate his love based on how we feel he's doing at loving us. But God’s love was perfect before we ever arrived on the scene, and it will remain perfect long after we leave. The eternal and therefore prior love of the Father and the Son for each other reminds us that at the end of the day, life and love is not about me.

It’s easy to look around and wonder if John had it right. How could he say, "God is love," in the face of this world's tragedies? The answer to the question isn't found by looking around for evidence in the world. The answer is found by looking at God, and the revelation of his love for his Son, Jesus Christ. If we find love firmly established in the nature of God, then there is hope, despite what we encounter here. After all, the ultimate reality of the universe is God, and God is love.

Because the word love is used basically as a verb, then God loved before there was anything else to love! How and whom did he love? He loved Himself in the image of His Son, by the Power of Holy Spirit! There has always been a Lover, the Beloved, and Love - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Out of the overflow of this infinite, passionate love relationship flowed the design to create and then to redeem you and me. We were loved before time. Listen to Jer.31:3, "The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you." Ephs.1:4, "...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love..." God loved us before we were a historical person on earth. After we were born, He loved us when there was nothing good to be seen in us and nothing good to be said for us.

A. God's love is not attracted by the sinner's plight nor activated by the sinner's potential ‑ Deuteronomy 7:7‑8, "The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt."

God did not love us because he saw our great potential being wasted and thus by redeeming us insured that His kingdom would be filled with the best in talent and ability. God did not love us because He was lonely and needed creatures like us to return His love. Neither did He love us because we were, to put it mildly, in a fix that we couldn’t fix.  Then why did he love us? Because He chose to.

Listen to the most mind-boggling truth in the universe: Before my mother knew I was in her womb; I was on our Heavenly Father's heart! Before she ever held me close and gave me a name, I was loved of God and my name was written in the Lamb's book of Life. Before I was baby in my Mother's womb, I was a son in my Heavenly Father's heart! Before I was a probability to my parents, I was a reality to God; before I had physical life, I had eternal love!"

II. God’s Love is Exhibited Historically in Christ - 4:9-10

A. The Actual, Historical and Geographical Depiction of God's Love Reached its Apex at Calvary.

Because love is more a verb than a noun, Sidlow Baxter writes, "The love of God is the highest mountain of Biblical revelation. Everything else is climbing up to it. Our Lord Jesus is the peak expression of it. The cross is the intense focal point of it. The redemption of man is the extraordinary demonstration of it. The gospel is the generous out-flowing of it." 1 John 4:9, "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him." 

When God would show His power, He makes a world. When God would show His wisdom, He puts the world in a frame and form with a backdrop of vastness that staggers mortal minds. When God would manifest the grandeur and glory of His name, He makes a heaven and puts angels and archangels in it. When God would manifest His love, He becomes a man. He then permits men, whom He had created, to chop down a tree that he had also created, and nail Him to it.

On the cross, God suffered as man, for man, with man!  

"O amazing gift to ponder, He whom angels host attend. Lord of Heaven God's Son what wonder, He became the sinner's friend. O glorious gift of Christ my Lord divine that made Him stoop to save a soul like mind. My song will silence never, I'll worship Him forever and praise Him for His glorious love and praise Him for His glorious love."

1. The Love of God Satisfies the Wrath of God - 1 Jn. 4:10 - The word "propitiation" means that the wrath of God must be satisfied in order for the sinner to be justified and forgiven. In the OT we read often that God is “slow to anger” and then the passage goes on to refer to his unfailing love. “Slow to anger” does not mean “never angry”; it means that God is not irascible, that his wrath is not easily aroused. But God’s wrath is real, and it is taken seriously throughout the Scriptures. But His love is also real, and it receives the emphasis. The wrath is but the other side of the love.

By nature, we are more wicked than we ever realized, but by grace we are more loved than we ever dreamed!

2. The Love of God is for us and to us in order that it may be in us and then flow through us to others! - When you want Him to take over and invite Him to move in not as guest but as Governor of your house, an actual entrance occurs. John 14:23, "Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him." Jesus Christ literally and actually, in the person of the Holy Spirit, comes in to the individual’s life. From that moment, he has Somebody Else living in him. Paul said, “Christ lives in me” (Gals 2:20). “Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates’?” (2 Cors 13:5 - KJV)

A covenant is established and feasting, and fellowship ensues. “I will eat with him and He with me” (Rev. 3:20). He invites us to a feast, not to a fast or a funeral!

Just as when someone new moves in the house next door, it should be plain to any observer that the house of your being has a new Resident Boss and is under new management. How? by the way I relate to others - 1 John 4:12, "No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us."

The Message: John 15:7, "But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon." John 15:9, "I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love.”

These verses are descriptions of, and blessings in, the Love House that is found “in Christ.” It is an exquisitely delightful residence. Double-fronted - love to God, love to others. Long lease - even for eternity. Sunny aspect - constantly lit by the Sun of Righteousness. Every modern convenience - for “love never fails”. Safe from disturbance - for “perfect love casts out fear”. The phrase employed in 4:12 by the KJV is instead of “abides in” is “dwells in love”, not “lodges”, as if for a while - there is all the difference between visiting the seaside for a holiday and living there permanently. It is this latter condition that is envisaged here. The house itself is a permanency - “now abides ... love”, 1 Cors 13:13 - and we are never to move elsewhere.

III. Believing the Depth of God's Love for You is the Key to Growing into a Loving Person -- 1 Jn 4:16a

John 17:23, "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."

1. Love is Enjoyed Most Gloriously When it is Trusted Most Completely -- 1 Jn.4:16a, "believed the love that God has for us."; Faith believes that all that God promised to be for me in Jesus, He will be!
2. Love is Exercised Most Freely When it is Assured Most Confidently - Puritan John Owens wrote, "The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him, is not to believe that he loves you."
3. Believing What God Says about our Home in Him and His in Us Provides Eternal Security - Jn. 15:9 - The Message, "I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love.”

The key to believing the love that God has for us is seeing it revealed in the word of Scripture. John 17:20, "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;"

What pleases God more than anything else? The prophetic word spoken to widow Marjory Kempe in 1667 remains ancient but ever new and true: "More pleasing to me than all your prayers, works and penances is that you would BELIEVE THAT I LOVE YOU!"

4. Believing What God Says about our Home in Him and His in Us Provides True Identity, Internal Beauty, and Progressive Maturity!

The basis of our identity is of utmost importance. Most people try to answer the question of their identity by what they do for a living, where they go to school, how lovely their family is, what they own, etc.

The truth is if you think you're a nobody, you'll be forever trying to prove that you are a somebody. If you think you are nothing, you'll be forever trying to prove that you are something. But if you come to understand that as a child of God, you have been chosen as a nothing, and nobody, who has become everything to the most important Somebody in this Universe – Jesus ‑ then you can get down and do the little and lowly task of a slave without feeling that you're being treated as trash. My identity is not found in my job assignment or in the assessment of other persons, but in the forever acceptance and approval that I have with the Father, as He sees me in Christ as Christ, and loves me in Christ as Christ.

These words were found scribbled on the walls of an insane asylum: 

Could we with ink the oceans fill and were the skies of parchment made and were every stalk a quill and every man on earth a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky!

The proper appreciation of the height of God's love must be measured from the depths to which sin has taken us and the depths to which Jesus must condescend to redeem us. God's love has lifted us from the dust heap of our sinful past, from the ash heap of our impoverished positions as bankrupt prodigal sons and has washed us from our sins in His own precious blood and made us kings and priest unto our God. He took us from the door of an orphanage to the House of the King; from the courthouse, where we awaited execution for our treason against the Lord, to the Father’s house where we were given Sonship status forever.

God so loved the world – so loved me – that he has lifted me out of the kingdom of darkness and translated me into the kingdom of His dear Son where I have been made a fellow‑member of the household of faith, heir of the Father and joint‑heir with the Son.

There are depths of love that I cannot know till I cross the narrow sea. There are heights of joy that I may not reach till I rest in peace with Thee!" – But this one thing I know for sure - “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so!”