“…God is love.”

Popcorn.  The Lord.  Family.  Vacation.  God’s Word.  Pizza.  Teaching.  What do all these things have in common?  They are things that I love.  But it’s only a short list, certainly not comprehensive.  And definitely not in order of priority, although some might question that!  What would your short list include?

Do you see a problem with such lists?  What’s popcorn doing in the same list as the Lord and his Word?  They’re certainly not equal in value, and therein lies the difficulty.  It’s not so much in the list itself as in how we use the generic term love for specific unequal items in such lists.  What does love specifically mean anyway?

Wrapping our minds around love has always been a challenge.  Down through the ages, romantics and mystics, scholars and skeptics, theologians and Hallmark card writers all have taken turns describing and writing about love in myriads of ways.  So why not one more pass at it?  But this time, let’s see some direction implications from God’s Word directly.

Our text is from 1 John 4:8, but it is the preceding verse that gives us some insight that many, it seems, miss.  4:7 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God”.  There it is, that last statement, that is a diamond in the rough.  Notice, first, that some people — God’s people — can “love one another” and are commanded to do so because love came “from God” to them.  Second, Christians have been “born of God” with the effect of “know[ing] God”.  This gets at the essence of love:  life and knowing.

Life: God says his love is the cause of believers being “born of God”.  In other words, love is the cause of birth, what we typically call the beginning of life.  Christians are “born again” (John 3:3,7; 1 Peter 1:23) into his family.  Likewise, life is created when a married, heterosexual, couple love each other physically through procreation.

Relationship: The result of this birth is an on-going relationship between parent and child, a process where a growing, intimate, relational knowledge is the centerpiece.  We can know about some famous historical figures — their histories, travels, hobbies, etc. — without ever actually knowing them personally.  It is this knowing them that is the second result of love.  We see numerous references in the Old Testament where a man “knew” (NKJV) his wife (Genesis 4:1, for example, with Adam and Eve), and “she conceived and bore Cain…”  Here the word, know, captures both parts of love.

Third, love is always active, busy, going, doing, proving.  1 John 4:9 begins, “This is how God showed his love among us…”  See?  God’s love must be shown to be love.  Paul said the same thing: “But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  John agrees: “[God] sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (4:9b).  Love is active, doing, busy, begetting life and knowledge in relationship.

Because God in his very nature is love, this relational virtue requires him to be multi-personal.  Consider: if God is love and is a single, solitary God, what or whom did he love before he made the angels and creation?  Nothing.  But by definition, love must be busy, active, shown, etc.  Unless there are multiple personalities in the godhead, it is impossible for love to be a feature of God’s nature.  Thus we have the Trinity — Father, Son and Spirit — eternally loving each other before the world began.  And after creation, passing that life and knowledge of all Three Persons onto us.  No wonder the continual and repeated command to “love one another” all throughout John’s writings.  No wonder his insistence that, “God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (4:16b).  Indeed, did anyone ever say, “Man is love”?  Though many make man out to be good — check out most any religion for some samples — never has anyone with any proof ever said man’s nature at its core is love.  No, man is the recipient of the love.

So how’s your love life going these days with God, his people and your neighbors?