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GOD IS LOVE.

By A. Saphir


“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4 v10).


This love of God is not merely revealed to us, but by the Holy Spirit it is poured out into our hearts (Romans 5 v5).  This perfect love of God now dwells in us, and has kindled love in us.  It is not our limited and weak love to God which gives us confidence and casts out fear, it is God’s love to us which lives in us.  The infinite and eternal love of the Father, through the self-sacrifice of the Son is revealed and imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.

Nobody knows the love of God, except those who know the God of love.  The Old Testament may be considered as revealing the meaning of the word “God”.  The New Testament unfolds the meaning of the word “love”.  If we say, “God is love”, do we know what is meant by God?  He is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  The word “God” includes His majesty and truth, His righteousness and justice, His mercy, compassion and humility in electing a people, and His jealousy for their exclusive loyalty.  All these features of the divine must be seen together, before we can pronounce with the Spirit that mysterious word “God”.  As is the understanding of God, so will be our understanding of love.  Can we call anything which tolerates evil love?  Can love be indifferent?  Or, can love be satisfied without a response in return?  This is the love which the world attributes to God and it is unworthy of the name love.  According to this view, God remains unknown and unloved.  Instead of holiness, power, truth and grace being blended to bring people into peace and communion with God, a worldly understanding of love overlooks sin and leaves humanity in its wretched condition, without the assurance of renewal in their hearts and divine favour.  Such is the usual undefined and unproductive feeling concerning divine love.  But take both the Old Testament revelation of God and the New Testament declaration, “God is love”, and now you are better prepared to understand Jehovah. 

God is good and the fountain of good, and of good only.  He hates iniquity which is opposed to Him and to all blessedness.  He choses men and women that they may be brought near to Him.  He therefore teaches them by the law to know His character and to know their sinfulness.  By the bitter conviction of sin and guilt He turns them from sin and destruction.  And by the sweet revelation of His grace and favour He draws them to Himself.  They now understand that He loves them, but that He hates their sin.  They are to live and sin is to be destroyed.  He seeks their true self, and therefore He is jealous.  An undivided heart and an unconditional surrender of the will is His demand, because He is loving.  Yet it is not sufficient that Jehovah, the “I, even I”, forgives and removes sin, giving them His righteousness.  He even gives the believer a new heart and puts His Holy Spirit within them.  They are now able to love Him.  He has promised to dwell in them and to walk by their side, so that He who loved them, by redeeming them, is also He who lives in them.  By His Holy Spirit He renews and sanctifies the believer with a real, intimate, and mysterious union and communion with Himself.  This is the substance of the Old Testament revelation.  Jehovah is loving in seeking, righteous in redeeming, gracious in renewing and indwelling by the Spirit.   Who indeed is a God like Him?

This God is Love, and the New Testament still further unfolds this wonderful fact.  Love seeks, and God seeks us, our real self.  Shall I say our immortal spirit?  No, God seeks us, body, soul and spirit.  His desire and purpose is to fill us.  Knowing, loving, serving and rejoicing in Him is our main purpose.  Love rescued us by the stupendous sacrifice of Christ.  It delivers us from the condemnation of sin, from the curse of the law, from the power of death and from the slavery of Satan.  It separates us by a painful and yet blessed co-crucifixion from sin, the great opposite of love.  Love then communicates itself to us by the Holy Spirit so that we see, accept and respond to the Father's salvation and the Saviour's redemption.  This first act of liberty is the birth-moment of the freed new person.  Love then takes up its residence in us. 

This most real experience is described in various ways.  When God reveals and gives us His love in Christ Jesus the new life begins.  This new life is completely unlike our past condition and is called regeneration.  The change in our will, is called conversion, a turning to God.  The attitude in which the soul now stands to the divine love, is faith.  It is the start of a new path, the receiving of the Holy Spirit as an indwelling spirit and the entrance of Christ into the heart.  It is the communication of that perfect and unchanging love.  God now dwells in us because we love Him by His Spirit.  So we are betrothed to Christ and sealed by the Spirit.  But the purpose of love is not yet fulfilled, for the marriage of the Lamb is not yet come.  We wait for the adoption, that is the redemption of the body, when we shall see Jesus as He is, and be like Him.  When we are delivered from the body of sin and death as the children of the resurrection, we will be changed into the likeness of the transfigured Saviour, and we shall know as we are known.  In the kingdom of Jesus Christ we shall know that God is love, and the words of Jesus will be fulfilled, "I in them, and You in me” (John 17 v23) and “that the love You have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17 v26).

When the sinner returns to God they find themselves surrounded by divine love.  As a new-born child they open their eyes on a world of love.  Now the believer understands the shepherd-love of Jesus who sought, saved and laid down His life to bring them to the Father.  Now they understand the motherly love of the Spirit, who by the light of the Word rescued the faithful out of helpless darkness and brought them as a precious jewel into the treasury of heaven.  Now they understand the generous and joyous love of the Father.  He who adorns them with Christ, as their robe and righteousness, and puts a ring of adoption and inheritance on their finger.  All this, instead of the chains of sin and fear.  They begin to be happy and glad, and the feast lasts throughout time and eternity.  Love surrounds them about.  The past appears then as an island, enclosed by the ocean of love, love electing, love dying and love drawing.  The future appears as the endless expression of love and the enjoyment of it.  In the present we see love above, God is for us, love around us, Jesus is with us, love within, the Spirit of Christ is given us, assuring us of the love of God and constraining us by that love. 

Jesus has the pre-eminence.  He is the way of divine love to us. Only in Him could redemption come to us, the deliverance from evil and the restoration to glory.  Only in Him can we begin to see, accept and return God’s love to us.  Yet, in order that we may come to the Father, whose Son and gift Jesus is, we must confess Christ to be the Lord, to the glory of the Father.  And as Jesus points to the Father, so He reveals and gives Himself to us by the Spirit. 

God is love, because God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  He is love from everlasting to everlasting.  Creation is the result, but not the beginning of love.   Redemption is the expression of God as love, and therefore points to a love of absolute necessity and eternity.  God is love, not God became love.  Above all creation, above every beginning and end, from everlasting to everlasting in Himself, God is love.  Father, Son and Spirit, the one living and loving Jehovah.  It is into this love that we are planted by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.  The Father loves the Son.  "I and my Father are one”.  Here is the ultimate foundation of our salvation and glory. 

But when such thoughts of the eternal covenant and the future glory are too high for us, there is a centre where we find rest, there is a magnet which draws our hearts, there is one point where the eternities meet, and all mysteries become illuminated with the sweet light of peace.  It is the little hill outside Jerusalem, it is the Cross outside the camp, it is the Lord Jesus Christ crucified for us. 


From ‘The Hidden Life’.