God Is Love

I planned on writing about another topic today, but got to thinking about what love means -considering it’s Valentine’s Day- so that’ll have to wait.  And aside from the fact that this is Valentine’s Day, I think this message is so timely.  We need to constantly be reminded of what love is, according to God’s word (so that we can also recognize what love isn’t).  Love is characterized by patience, kindness, and endurance.  It isn’t envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, selfish, irritable (Once again, God’s talking to me.), or resentful.  It doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but in truth.  It bears, believes, and hopes all things. Love is endless (1 Co 13:4-8)!

The Bible tells us that God himself is love (1 Jn 4:8).  The word’ is’ is the singular form of the word ‘be’, which means to equal in meaning, or to have the same condition as.  What’s cool is as I looked this word up, the first definition sentence example in Merriam-Webster Online was <God is love>.  The two are, indeed, interchangeable.  God is love, and love is God.  So, consider that the next time you hear a flippant testimony about what love is.  Love is a crazy game?  I think not!  God is not to be trifled with.

Enough of the commentary though.  I can’t tell it better than God can anyway, so here’s one of God’s many love letters to us from the pen of John: 

‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.  In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command:  Whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn 4:7-21).

With that said. 

Love y’all!