1 John 4:10, 16-19
God is love! What a glorious statement; to know that God does not HAVE love, and He is not IN love, but He IS love. The very definition of His character is love, and everything that comes with love comes as a by-product of who God is. Anything and everything that we know or think we know about this blessed emotion, we know because God gave it to us, and taught it to us.
There are those in the church world who seem intent on making God out to be less than loving. They teach God as full of wrath and anger; ready to spew out judgment on America and all of its ills. They say that God is love, “but He is also holy”, as if the two are mutually exclusive. In their doctrine, there is very little room for a loving God because too much of that message and people might get the wrong idea about who God is.
Why are we so scared to declare that God is love? John was not afraid to say it; so much so that his title has become, “The Apostle of Love”. He knew how loved that he was, calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” some five times in the book that bears his name, and then stating, “God is love” in 1 John 4:16. If declaring God to be full of unconditional love is a dangerous message, then John must have been the number one enemy of the early church!
All that we understand about love, we learned from God and His perfect example of love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). True love is not our perfect love toward God; for we do not have perfect love. Think about it; doesn’t your love for Him float up and down on a day-to-day basis? One moment you are passionately in love with Him, and the next moment your mind is a million miles away? Love cannot be defined by our actions and thoughts toward God, but by His actions and thoughts toward us. The perfect example of His love is then found in the cross, where He sacrificed His Son as the payment for our sins.
Paul told us that God showed His love to us, “in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The cross was God’s shining example of His love for humanity. By sacrificing Jesus on the cross, God was providing a way for all of humanity to be saved without having to be punished for their wrong-doings. He loves the human race so much that He couldn’t bear the thought of judging each one of us for sin. Instead, He put all of that punishment into His Son so that we could have life and peace. Wow, what a love!
When we accept His perfect love for us, all of the fear that we have toward God and judgment will begin to fade away. His perfect love, dwelling inside of us, casts out all fear and torment, giving the enemy no foothold in our life to torture us with doubt and confusion. The believer that knows how loved that they are lives free from fear and discouragement and they position themselves for great things in life. This knowledge will not lead us away from the Father, but ever closer toward Him, for “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Hallelujah.
God is love! What a glorious statement; to know that God does not HAVE love, and He is not IN love, but He IS love. The very definition of His character is love, and everything that comes with love comes as a by-product of who God is. Anything and everything that we know or think we know about this blessed emotion, we know because God gave it to us, and taught it to us.
There are those in the church world who seem intent on making God out to be less than loving. They teach God as full of wrath and anger; ready to spew out judgment on America and all of its ills. They say that God is love, “but He is also holy”, as if the two are mutually exclusive. In their doctrine, there is very little room for a loving God because too much of that message and people might get the wrong idea about who God is.
Why are we so scared to declare that God is love? John was not afraid to say it; so much so that his title has become, “The Apostle of Love”. He knew how loved that he was, calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” some five times in the book that bears his name, and then stating, “God is love” in 1 John 4:16. If declaring God to be full of unconditional love is a dangerous message, then John must have been the number one enemy of the early church!
All that we understand about love, we learned from God and His perfect example of love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). True love is not our perfect love toward God; for we do not have perfect love. Think about it; doesn’t your love for Him float up and down on a day-to-day basis? One moment you are passionately in love with Him, and the next moment your mind is a million miles away? Love cannot be defined by our actions and thoughts toward God, but by His actions and thoughts toward us. The perfect example of His love is then found in the cross, where He sacrificed His Son as the payment for our sins.
Paul told us that God showed His love to us, “in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The cross was God’s shining example of His love for humanity. By sacrificing Jesus on the cross, God was providing a way for all of humanity to be saved without having to be punished for their wrong-doings. He loves the human race so much that He couldn’t bear the thought of judging each one of us for sin. Instead, He put all of that punishment into His Son so that we could have life and peace. Wow, what a love!
When we accept His perfect love for us, all of the fear that we have toward God and judgment will begin to fade away. His perfect love, dwelling inside of us, casts out all fear and torment, giving the enemy no foothold in our life to torture us with doubt and confusion. The believer that knows how loved that they are lives free from fear and discouragement and they position themselves for great things in life. This knowledge will not lead us away from the Father, but ever closer toward Him, for “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Hallelujah.
