God is Love
God. Not some “small g” deity of man’s invention, but the only One for Whom the Name is proper. God Who inhabits infinite eternity beyond the small sphere of time and space. The uncreated Creator of all things, who alone is complete within Himself, needing nothing beyond His own perfection. The King and rightful ruler of the universe, the only true and ultimate measure of good and evil.
Is. His existence has been questioned by foolish men who fail to understand that He is the source of their own existence; that in denying Him they are denying themselves. He is: not was, not will be, but always is, always present tense. The I AM. There is no “becoming” in Him, for “becoming” implies a lack in the original. There is no change in Him: “I am the Lord, I change not”; “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.”
Love. Not soppy sentimentality, but strident, passionate, boisterous love. Not just loving – not an activity but an essential attribute. Not just love in His relationship to man, but in His essential nature. For all eternity, outside of the creation, where no-one and nothing exists but God Himself, He is love. But love is meaningless in a mathematical unity. By its very nature, love must have a subject and an object: a lover and a beloved. Thus Father, Son and Spirit are eternally entwined in an ever-shifting, ever-constant kaleidescope of Lover – Love – Beloved to each other. Each sees and appreciates all the qualities of the others. Each seeks to put the others forward. Each rejoices in the others.
In relation to man, that love sees the best in each individual – the potential that He created, not the distortions of sin and its consequences – and seeks to draw forth that best. Sometimes that will involve gently cradling, uplifting, encouraging the individual. At other times, it will mean an uncomfortable discipline, a stretching that forces us beyond our self-imposed limitations, and even sharp rebuke and punishment when our choices take us away from that best.
God is Love. It is one of the most quoted, yet least understood, statements in the Word of God.
