Is God Love?

December 4 (I John 4:8)
One of the most heinous mistakes we make as teachers of God’s word, at least in my humble opinion, is our horrendous use of the English language. Second only, of course, to our propensity to take a statement entirely out of context or without including its context. See what I mean. That sounds like I said the exact same thing using different words. Allow me to explain. To take something out of its contextual setting for the purpose of misleading others as to its true meaning is a disgusting act of folly. Failing to include the context often leads to an unintentional misunderstanding, but isn’t done for that purpose. If we were to conclude “love is God” for example, we would be idolaters. And to conclude from the context surrounding the phrase in I John 4:8 without consulting the thousands of other verses about the nature of God is an irresponsible example of really bad expositional teaching. It is taking the verse out of context in the worst sense.


God is an extremely complex being with more characteristics to His overall nature than I could begin to expose here. Certainly scripture makes it clear He is love, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control from just two verses (Gal. 5:212, 23). But we also discover, if we’re willing to do a little searching the scriptures, He is a God of great wrath, perfectly just, capable of immeasurable anger, all powerful, condemning, sarcastic, humorous, all knowing, intolerant, jealous, and unbendable when it comes to the solution to man’s state of sin. Most today who claim to be Jesus’ disciples think He demonstraes His love in everything He does. In a sense, that is actually true. However, what those same people often forget is that He demonstrated that love for Israel by destroying Egypt and Pharaoh and his entire army. In other words, even in His wrath He is demonstrating His perfect love. Of course, if you are on the wrong side of that love, you won’t be a happy camper.

So, while it is true that God is love, it is not true that God loves everyone. Just as God’s omnipresence means He is everywhere, it does not mean He is a rock. Sorry, bad analogy, since Jesus is figuratively referred to in scripture as “The Rock.” I’m relatively sure you still get the point. It is critical for our understanding of God that we realize He, unlike man, is a perfect harmony of all of His characteristics at one time. He never becomes angry unjustly. He is always righteously indignant when He becomes angry; unlike man, who often becomes violently angry about anything that is of the slightest irritation to him. God is perfectly just, which means every single being (man, woman, or child) on the planet will be condemned to eternity in hell who fails to submit himself to God’s only plan for man’s sin. I won’t attempt today to deal with the theological quagmire that suggests every child under the age of consent (I’m not sure where anyone got that term) will go to heaven if he dies before he reaches that age. Far better theological scholars than me preach that idea. I just don’t believe it has much support in scripture.

I heard a preacher once suggest most would want to have nothing to do with the God of creation if they really knew Him intimately. That’s kind of a weird statement, but there is biblical support for the idea. Jesus said to the crowds that were following Him to think about their reason for following Him in John 6:26, 27. At one point when the crowd was told the cost of following Him, many returned from doing so. I know I keep beating this dead horse to death, but it is of gigantic concern to me the number of people who call themselves followers of Christ, some claiming to have been such for decades, who think He has only one or two characteristic to which they cling for dear life. He is the God of love; He is patient and kind and gentle and good. But he is the Master Who demands his children be separate from the world around them. He demands His children give up everything to follow Him. He demands His children spend time each day talking with Him and getting their daily walking orders. I’m always puzzled how so many get up each morning just in time to get dressed, grab a bite, and run out the door for the car which they frantically drive to work. I don’t know how they think their day will be anything special when they haven’t even bothered to speak with their Father yet. I don’t understand how they think they’ll have their priorities straight when the only thing they have considered before they get to work is whether or not they are going to be on time.

I’m relatively sure God finds such lack of discipline in our lives both humorous and sad. I know without question He wants us to begin each and every day with a significant amount of time speaking with Him and listening to Him as He speaks to us. I know He is pleased, though I don’t think the timing for studying His word is as critical as a quiet time of prayer, if we start every day reading scripture until He tells us something new from it. For some a significant amount of time reading and study will be ½ hour. For others it might be two hours. For some, it will be four or five hours. The point is that everyone should ask themselves how believable a confession of love would be if their spouse got up, got dressed as fast as he/she could, ran to the dining room for a quick breakfast, and was out the door before he/she made any attempt to communicate anything significant to us or hear anything significant from us.

Tomorrow I’m going to spend some time writing about what it means to be diligent to show ourselves approved unto God. For today, I’ll close with this thought. Jesus, as our example, often went off to a quiet place to pray. Jesus, the King of kings, the Master of the universe, the one and only Son of God, the Lord of lords, found it essential to go off somewhere quiet on a regular basis to pray. I’d like to humbly suggest, if more of us did that, a whole lot more people would see those greater works than His we are supposed to be doing. And, of course, the greatest work of all is to reap the harvest of a lost soul. And that’s God’s word for us today.