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NOVEMBER: Tests of Truth and Love

November 10

GOD IS LOVE

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
1 John 4:7-8

“God is love.” No one can answer against that; one trembles even to handle it; it cannot be analyzed. I simply want to point out that John does not say merely that God loves us or that God is loving. He goes beyond that. He says, “God is love.” God essentially is love; God’s nature is love; you cannot think of God without love.

Of course he has already told us that God is light in exactly the same way—that was the first pronouncement. “This then is the message....God is light” (1 John 1:5); and in exactly the same way “God is love” and God is spirit. This battles the imagination; it is something that is altogether beyond our comprehension, and yet we start with it.

Augustine and others deduce from this the doctrine of the Trinity. I think there may be a great deal in that; the very fact that God is love declares the Trinity—God the Father loves the Son, and the link is the person of the Holy Spirit. Ah! this high doctrine; it is beyond us. All I know is that God, in the very essence of His nature and being, is love, and you cannot think of God and must not think of Him except in terms of love. Everything that God is and does is colored by this; all God’s actions have this aspect of love in them and the aspect of light in the same way. That is how God always manifests Himself—light and love.

“Therefore, because that is the fundamental postulate, because that is so true of God,” John is saying, “that works itself out for us like this: Because God is love, we ought to love one another. For ‘love is of God.’” In other words, love is from God, love flows from God. It is as if John were turning to these people and saying, “God loves, and this love I am talking about is something that only comes from God—it is derived from Him.”

A Thought to Ponder
God, in the very essence of His nature and being, is love.

From The Love of God, p. 43.




Today’s devo is taken from Walking with God Day by Day © 2003 by Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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