God Is Love

…God is love, and who­ever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16b)

The state­ment that God is love, expresses the deep­est sense of who God is and what he is like. Not only is love a char­ac­ter­ist­ic of God, but he is love itself. Love has its ori­gin in his being.

Because God is love, he made everything. He gave us life.

When we look at nature, we see amaz­ing beauty, painstak­ing detail and order. The entire cos­mos is per­fectly integ­rated. Above all, man’s nature—his free will, his con­science, his abil­ity to love, think and create—reflects God’s being.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Gen­es­is 1:31)

You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me togeth­er with bones and sinews. You have gran­ted me life and stead­fast love, and your care has pre­served my spir­it. (Job 10:11–12)

What Is God’s Love Like?

God’s Love Is Per­son­al & Perfect

The pas­sages quoted above show that God gives us the gift of life and shares his love with us. His act­ing is love. It shows that the love of God is not simply an attrib­ute, imper­son­al energy or the source of intense feel­ings (what people often think of love as). Love by its very nature, is deeply con­nec­ted with the decision and will to always want the very best for someone. God wants the best for us and cre­ated everything so that it leads us to him—to his love.

God’s Love Must Be Shared

Because God is love, he gives of him­self. This giv­ing shows us the sense of life, that is, to know God’s love and to love him. This is why he made us. He wants us not only to exper­i­ence his love, but to have a deep rela­tion­ship with him and with others.

Jesus said:

The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:29b–30)

God enables us to love with all our heart. This is pos­sible when we know, accept and exper­i­ence God’s per­fect love. In spite of our sins, we can under­stand and long for God’s love, because he made us good.

God’s Love Is the Only Love That Can Truly Ful­fil Us

God made us to be loved per­fectly by him—to be respec­ted and treas­ured by him. People often seek this love in oth­er people, and are dis­ap­poin­ted. Even if we were per­fect we would not be able to ful­fil this long­ing in each oth­er. Our lim­ited love can nev­er be enough to give each oth­er the true iden­tity and value that only God can give. Only God is able to ful­fil our desire to be loved per­fectly. He alone is the source of such love.

Blaise Pas­cal (Physicist/Philosopher 1623–62) wrote about the danger of look­ing for per­fect love in man: “I am not the end of any, and I have not the where­with­al (means) to sat­is­fy them. Am I not about to die? And thus the object of their attach­ment will die….”^[1]

People seek love in many places. To be loved is the most cent­ral goal in life, to be val­ued, accep­ted, hon­oured. Con­sciously or uncon­sciously, they search for their iden­tity in this. God’s love is dif­fer­ent. God does­n’t make us the centre of everything, unlike people do when they dote on each oth­er. God teaches us that being ful­filled does­n’t come by being put in the centre, but by giv­ing ourselves self­lessly. We learn this from him. He does­n’t want to be praised because of selfish reas­ons, but because we can­’t live a life filled with mean­ing and sense if we are not filled by him—the source of love.

When people try to find this per­fect love in oth­er people they put man in God’s place. This is unfair to man and unfair to God. Man can­not ful­fil their expectations—he is too lim­ited, and fal­lible, and this expect­a­tion is too great a bur­den for him to bear because he him­self needs this per­fect love from God.

If a per­son rejects God, then their iden­tity and value in life must be taken from what they do or how oth­ers accept them. They feel the need to be loved, but will often be dis­ap­poin­ted when they look for this in people. It puts a great strain on rela­tion­ships and takes away the free­dom of the oth­er per­son. Such love is selfish, not selfless.

God’s Love Is Pure & Selfless

Pure, self­less rela­tion­ships between people are only pos­sible if they are based on God’s pure and self­less love.

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

God’s love enables us to love without expect­ing some­thing back, inde­pend­ently of how I feel or of what is easi­er for me, without selfish desires and look­ing for hon­our from oth­ers. In such rela­tion­ships, I don’t need to look for any accept­ance or hon­our from oth­ers because God gives me what I really need. I am then free to share this love joy­fully with others.

God’s Love Gives Freedom

Lov­ing self­lessly means giv­ing free­dom. Even though God always knows what is best, he nev­er forces us to do any­thing against our will. This is also import­ant for under­stand­ing why God allows tragedy in this world.

God’s Love Says the Truth

The Old Test­a­ment quotes an ancient pray­er, in which we find sen­ti­ments which all of us have exper­i­enced at some stage from oth­ers, or per­haps noticed in ourselves….

They only plan to thrust him down from his high pos­i­tion. They take pleas­ure in false­hood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. (Psalm 62:4)

True love is pure because it is based on truthfulness—even if say­ing the truth is not always easy or accom­pan­ied by good feelings.

[Love] does not rejoice at wrong­do­ing, but rejoices with the truth. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 13:6)

A doc­tor may pre­scribe medi­cine which tastes bit­ter, but he does it because he knows it will make the patient well. It would not be love not to give it to the patient just because he wants to please the patient or make them feel good for the moment. Like­wise true love gives a per­son what they need most, and not neces­sar­ily what they would prefer.

God’s Love in Jesus

God Became Man Because He Loves Us

While cre­ation and the being of man are great testi­mon­ies of God’s love, the greatest testi­mony of all is that he sent his son Jesus to us. He came so close to us to show through his life and death how much he loves us and wants to save us. He demon­strated his great mercy for us by giv­ing us the pos­sib­il­ity to be for­giv­en and set free from sin.

In this the love of God was made mani­fest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that who­ever believes in him should not per­ish but have etern­al life. (John 3:16)

Through Jesus We Are Recon­ciled to God

To accept God’s love means to accept Jesus, and to accept how sin­ful we have been and how much we need his forgiveness.

God gives us everything we need, and gave us many things and abil­it­ies for us to love and do good. When we sin we abuse these good gifts from God, using them for evil, without respect­ing what they were entrus­ted to us for. A son who squanders all the inher­it­ance his lov­ing, caring fath­er gave him on evil pleas­ures dis­hon­ours and rejects his fath­er. Like­wise we dis­hon­our and reject God when we don’t ask God how he wants us to live.

When we get to know Jesus, he shows us through his life and death how much we rejec­ted God through our sin. He leads us to repent­ance and for­give­ness if we accept him.

This accept­ance is expressed not only in words and beliefs, but in our whole atti­tude, and by let­ting him change our lives.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our tres­passes, made us alive togeth­er with Christ—by grace you have been saved…. (Eph­esians 2:4–5)

To Accept Jesus Means to Accept What He Commanded

If you love me, you will keep my com­mand­ments. (John 14:15)

Who­ever has my com­mand­ments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Fath­er, and I will love him and mani­fest myself to him. (John 14:21)

God loves us so much that he did not only send his son to save us, but he gave us com­mand­ments through Jesus, that we might live accord­ing to them and live as Jesus lived.

Jesus Com­manded Us to Love Everyone

Often people lim­it their love to people from their par­tic­u­lar group of friends or family—according to their own cri­ter­ia of who they find “lov­able”.

To love every­one means to want the best for every­one without favouritism—not pre­fer­ring some people more than oth­ers. Only this kind of love is selfless.

This was not a com­pletely new com­mand­ment. The books of Moses write:

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be par­tial to the poor or defer to the great, but in right­eous­ness shall you judge your neigh­bour. You shall not go around as a slan­der­er among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neigh­bour: I am the Lord. You shall not hate your broth­er in your heart, but you shall reas­on frankly with your neigh­bour, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take ven­geance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neigh­bour as your­self: I am the Lord. (Levit­i­c­us 19:15–18)

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neigh­bour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who per­se­cute you, so that you may be sons of your Fath­er who is in heav­en. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax col­lect­ors do the same? And if you greet only your broth­ers, what more are you doing than oth­ers? Do not even the Gen­tiles do the same? You there­fore must be per­fect, as your heav­enly Fath­er is per­fect. (Mat­thew 5:43–48)

Jesus’ Love Means Say­ing the Truth

Jesus demon­strated what it means to love every­one through his whole life and death. He knew that what people need most is to be recon­ciled with God, and that what hinders people and makes them blind is sin. His love included, there­fore, that he clearly rejec­ted hypo­crisy and led people to assess their lives before God. Jesus lived without sin, and there­fore his life was a mir­ror which showed people who they really were. For those who accep­ted him, they could be led to repent­ance and for­give­ness, but many rejec­ted him because they did not want to be con­fron­ted with his right­eous­ness and his hon­est love. He told every­one the truth plainly, and showed them what they have to change. For this reas­on many hated him, and finally they killed him. Today, many reject him and the truth he pro­claimed as well.

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Fath­er, you would love me…. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” (John 8:42a, 45)

…and that is why he was rejected.

We can see through Jesus’ life that true and hon­est love is not neces­sar­ily attract­ive or fas­cin­at­ing (to those who seek their own pleas­ure) or con­nec­ted with intense emo­tions. Unfor­tu­nately God’s love is not liked by every­one and you can­not help or win every­one with this love.

Jesus’ Love Can Only Fully Unfold in the Church

And look­ing about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! For who­ever does the will of God, he is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Mark 3:34–35)

If people reject love, they are sep­ar­ated from God and from each oth­er. People who do not accept God’s love can­not love in a truly self­less way.

Only those who want to love the source of love and be nour­ished by him, will want or be able to give each oth­er his love.

In true, bib­lic­al Church, every­one has decided to live by the love of God – to serve with their whole life and let them­selves be served. It is love which binds them togeth­er, not a man-made hier­archy or an organ­isa­tion. If their love grows cold, then the Church dis­in­teg­rates. If they love each oth­er, then the Church grows and matures.

This is my com­mand­ment, that you love one anoth­er as I have loved you. Great­er love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I com­mand you. (John 15:12–14)

Those who love Jesus will share their lives. This is the core teach­ing and prac­tice of the entire New Testament.

A new com­mand­ment I give to you, that you love one anoth­er: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one anoth­er. By this all people will know that you are my dis­ciples, if you have love for one anoth­er. (John 13:34–35)

Unfor­tu­nately it is very hard to find people who want to live this out today. Indi­vidu­al­ism, egot­ism and con­sumer­ism are rife in our reli­gious world. When people do not share their lives in this kind of love, they show that they are not his disciples.

If any­one says, “I love God”, and hates his broth­er, he is a liar; for he who does not love his broth­er whom he has seen can­not love God whom he has not seen. And this com­mand­ment we have from him: who­ever loves God must also love his broth­er. (1 John 4:20–21)

Love is a com­mand­ment. It encour­ages us and gives us hope that it is pos­sible to fol­low Jesus and to live in love, even today. He would­n’t have com­manded this love if it were not pos­sible. On our own, we would not be able to do it, but with his help, we can—we can ful­fil the only real aim of life and find the only love which can ful­fil us. This is what we were cre­ated for. Without it, life is empty and senseless.

Now the full num­ber of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in com­mon. (Acts 4:32)

We have the example of the first Chris­ti­ans in the book of Acts. They loved each oth­er so much that it was very nat­ur­al for them to share their whole lives, includ­ing their pos­ses­sions. They learned this love from Jesus and the apostles. They met every day in their homes, and fought for one another­’s spir­itu­al lives.

This is the kind of love that Chris­ti­ans must have for each oth­er. Only in this way can they really be a light for the world, show­ing that Jesus set us free from sin, and that he works in us with a power that the world (includ­ing the reli­gious world and so-called churches) does not know and can­not imitate.

Little chil­dren, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.By this we shall know that we are of the truth….(1 John 3:18–19a)

Are you search­ing for the only real aim of life? Do you prac­tise this love?

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