God is Love
Texts: Psalm 136, I John 4:7-18
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
January 8, 2023
This sermon series is on God. Who he is. What he is like. Nothing is more fundamental, basic, or foundational than God. And the God of the Bible is a personal God who can be known and wants to be known.
In this sermon series, we are focusing on some of the major attributes of God so that we can know better who God is. Knowing who God is makes our relationship with him stronger. It makes our worship of him richer. We can know how better to live for him.
Last Sunday we heard how God is big. But though he is the God who holds the universes and galaxies in his hands, and is far above us all, he is also love. That is our focus this morning: that God is love. That God is love in some ways seems like the most obvious and easiest thing in the world to affirm.
In the letter we know as 1 John, the disciple John tells us that “God is love”. Not just that love is one of the things God does. Not just that God shows his love, but God is love. It is his very nature. It’s his makeup.
When we speak of love we often think of love as an emotion. We often think of romantic love. We think of love as a feeling.
In the language in which the New Testament was written there are different words for love. In English we just have the word “love” and we have to explain what type of love we mean when we say, “I love you.” When we say we love a friend we mean one type of love. When we say, “I love you” to our spouse that is another type of love. When we say we love a certain kind of food that is another type of love.
The word John uses when he says “God is love” is the Greek word “agape.” Agape love is the strongest word for love there is. It is a love that is unconditional. It is the word used in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.
To say that God loves us with agape love is to say that God always loves us no matter what. God doesn’t love us only if we are good. God doesn’t just love us as long as we don’t mess up. God doesn’t love us if we do this and don’t do that. God’s love is constant, sure, and not based on what we do or don’t do.
Our love is often a reaction to something. We love someone because they are attractive or they are good. We love someone because of what they can do for us. We often love and anticipate love in return. But God’s love is not like that. It is absolutely unconditional love.
One person said God’s unconditional love is closet to the love of a mother. She loves her child whether her child is beautiful, good, moral, smart or not. She will love her child even when the child is none of those things.[1]
God is love. And quite frankly, God loves us whether we want it or not. Jesus laid down his life not just for those who were believers in him. He laid down his life for his enemies, even asking forgiveness for those who were crucifying him.
Psalm 136 says that God’s love endures forever. Psalm 136 was said by congregations in ancient Israel in their worship times to affirm the never-ending love of God. Again and again it says, “His love endures forever.” Twenty-six times people would say that God’s love endures forever as they shared in this psalm. The point was to get it, own it, believe it.
Psalm 136 acknowledges that God’s love is seen in what he has done. His love is shown in the world he created, through saving Israel from bondage in Egypt, defeating their enemies, and lifting them in their low estate.
God told Israel through the prophet Jeremiah that he loved them with an everlasting love. Everlasting. A love that does not wear out or end. It just keeps going and going. God loved Israel when they honored him. God still loved them when they turned away from him. And if you know the story of Israel there was a lot more of the latter than the former.
The power of the Christian message is that God has demonstrated his love. Because it is one thing to say God is love. It is another thing to demonstrate it.
In Romans Paul writes that God demonstrates his own love for us in this way: while we were still sinners – rebellious, apathetic, self-centered, harsh – Christ died for us. We see God’s love demonstrated at the cross.
Perhaps the classic passage in all the Bible of God as love is in I John 4. Once again, John says that God’s love is not an abstract idea but that God’s love is seen.
“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.”[2]
God’s love for us is not a prize for our efforts. He doesn’t love us because we have done such great works or are so virtuous. He doesn’t come to us again and again because we have served him so faithfully. It is not our beauty that attracts him.[3] He loves us because this is who he is. God is love. He can’t help but to love you and me.
Love is not just a quality. It is an activity. God showed his love to this world. God’s love is active. We see it in how God has made us and continues to treat us.
Here are five ways we see that God is love.
First that God is love is seen in creation. We may wonder why God created this world. The world seems so cruel. People have not responded to God. Why create something that would bring nothing but heartbreak? But here we are. Love must have someone to love. Love needs an object. God also has love within himself because he is three in one. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have existed in love to one another and for one another from before the beginning. That is part of why God is love and why love comes from God. And then, God created this world and us in love, and so that he can pour out his love upon us. We are created to be in union with God, to love God and to be loved by him.
Second, that God is love is seen in the fact that we have free-will. Love can never be coerced. You can’t make someone love you. It has to be a free response. Love has to be a choice. If God made us to merely be puppets under his control, and he controlled us to love, forcing us to love him and others, that would not be love. So God created us with free-will to choose whether we will love him and others, or not.
Third, that God is love speaks to his providence. By God’s providence, we mean his constant care for us and this world. God did not create his world, wind it up and just let it run leaving us alone. That is what Thomas Jefferson thought. Jefferson thought God existed but he didn’t have anything to do with this world or us. But God is love, and we receive his constant care. Whether life is good or hard, God is caring for us, providing for us, watching over us.
Fourth, that God is love explains redemption. If God was only just, he would have left us to face the consequence of our sin. Justice gives what is deserved. God’s moral law has been violated and justice needs to hand out the proper punishment. If God was just a rule-maker and enforcer, we would be in trouble. But God is love, which is why he came to seek and to save the lost. He came in Jesus Christ to end what alienates us from him, and to reconcile us to himself. He brought us redemption out of his love.
Fifth, that God is love explains life beyond and eternal life. If God was merely the Creator, we might live our span of life and then die and that’s it. But God is love – we might say a Creator of love - and there is an eternal quality to God’s love. Death does not end it. God provides life beyond our death. It is a gift of love. If he has created us for himself out of love then death cannot bring that relationship to an end. We are created for eternity and eternity with God.[4]
God’s love is strong, fierce and vast. And I’ll tell you something else: we can’t handle it. You say, “Oh yes I can. God died for me. God forgives me. God cares for me. I am his child. I can totally handle that God is love.
Oh, now we can’t.
One reason is because God is love we can’t get away from him. He is always messing with our lives. We’re OK with that when good things happen. But sometimes in his love he disciplines us. He disciplines us because he wants his best for us. Just like a loving parent is not just going to stand by when a child is going in the wrong direction or needs to learn something, God is not just going to leave us to ourselves. And it may run against the comfort of our lives.
And so God gets involved and we start to push him away. We resist him. We even resent that he cares so much. “Lord, would you just leave me alone?” He can’t. Because he is love. And he wants us for himself.
Here is another reason we can’t handle God being love: he loves the very person we can’t stand. God loves the person who hurt us. God loves the person who absolutely appalls us. He loves the person who just irritates us.
He loves your ex and your current spouse.
God loves the obnoxious neighbor and the responsible neighbor.
He loves the bigot and the fair-minded person.
He loves the immoral and the moral.
He loves the atheist and the believer.
He loves those who are hurting others and those who are helping others.
God’s love is bigger than we are comfortable with.[5] Because deep in our hearts, we ask God, “how could you?”
Now, that doesn’t mean God approves of how that person lives. Our society has confused love with approval. We may love our children with all we are, but we may not always approve of the choices they make or how they live. God does not approve acts that are against his love. God does not love the acts of a terrorist, or child abuser, nor does he love our acts of small selfishness which we commit all the time. That’s because those things aren’t done out of love, whether love for others, love of self, or love for God. But God’s love for people is no less.
We can’t handle how God is love any more than the religious leaders of Jesus’ day could handle how Jesus loved. It wasn’t Jesus’ concern for the sick, the lame, the lepers, the possessed that bothered them. They weren’t bothered that Jesus befriended the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that Jesus got involved with people who had failed morally. He rubbed elbows with obviously irreligious and immoral people; people morally and politically suspect. He got close to many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types who were on the fringe of society. This was the real scandal with Jesus’ love. Did he really have to go so far? What kind of dangerous and naïve love is this, which does not know its limits, which doesn’t know the lines between moral and immoral, good and bad people?[6]
It’s true. God rains on the just and the unjust.
And then, we can’t handle that God is love because we often feel so unworthy. We can easily view ourselves as worthless and unlovable. We beat ourselves up. We have all these insecurities. We are wounded. Much of that can come from not receiving the love we need from people in our lives. We know our failures, our sins, our blemishes, and feel our disappointments very strongly. We feel unlovable. How could a loving and holy God love us? We struggle with that.
But God loves us for who we are.
We need to trust God’s love and believe his love enough to approach him honestly with our uneven lives. And also believe that we are created in God’s image, we are created for relationship with him, and that this is what he wants for us.
Yes, God is love and that is hard for us to handle.
God’s love burns hotter than we can get near. Like a fire in the fire place. We love the warmth, but we don’t want to get too close. It can get too hot. To get too close would consume us.
Just as the sun is fire, so God is love. And his love is always streaming toward us. Always. Sometimes we don’t feel the sun, and we get cold. But that doesn’t mean the sun is not there. It is always sending warmth to our earth. Sometimes we don’t feel God’s love, but the rays of his love are always coming toward us.
Where God’s love is unlike the sun is that we aren’t just to soak in the rays like sun bathers on a California beach. We are to show and share the love God lavishes upon us.
John writes because God is love, therefore we ought to love one another. Our love for others is a sign of our relationship to God. It shows we know God. If we love others, God lives in us. His love can even be made complete in us.
Doesn’t it make sense that if God is love, those who belong to him and live in him love as well?
Let’s end with this: John writes, “…we know and rely on the love God has for us.”[7]
We can rely on the love has God for us. We take our stand on it.
Life shakes us in so many different directions. We get blown this way and that. Thank God his love isn’t dependent on how we feel. Thank God himself that his love doesn’t turn on and off based on whether we are aware of it or not. Thank God that in all the highs and lows of life we can rest in the confidence of his love.
One day the preacher C. H. Spurgeon was walking through the English countryside with a friend. As they strolled along, the evangelist noticed a barn with a weather vane on its roof. At the top of the vane were these words: GOD IS LOVE. Spurgeon remarked to his companion that he thought this was a rather inappropriate place for such a message. “Weather vanes are changeable,” he said, “but God’s love is constant.”
“I don’t agree with you about those words, Charles,” replied his friend. “You misunderstood the meaning. That sign is indicating a truth: Regardless of which way the wind blows, God is love.”
Whatever the circumstances in your life,
…whatever your emotional temperature is right now,
…whatever happens to the economy, the barometric pressure or the state of the Union,
…there is one thing we can rely on,
…that God is love.
Prayer: Thank you that you are a God who is love.
Thank you that we have seen and known your love in Jesus Christ, that you have demonstrated it.
We take strength in this, O Lord.
Amen.
[1] Tomas Halik, I Want You To Be, p.158-59
[2] 4:9-10
[3] I am influenced by Carlo Carretto’s words in “The God Who Comes”, p. xvii
[4] William Barclay, Daily Bible Study Series Commentary, The Letters of John and Jude, pp. 98-100
[5] See Anne Lamott’s great story in Grace (Eventually): Thoughts On Faith, which ends with this thought on p.125
[6] Hans Kung quoted by Brennan Manning in Abba’s Child, p.65
[7] V.16
