God is love.

The mist is dense outside, like a thick grey blanket. Cold? or Warm and covering you like a blanket?

At the end of my journal entry for yesterday I wrote, following Paul Tripp’s poem on God’s pleasure: “One day my deepest pleasures are nowhere to be found in creation and only to be found in the Creator and He finds pleasure in His glory.

So today I spend time meditating on the fact that I must love the Creator for Who He is and not for what He has done and will do for me.

So who is my God? mmmm 1 John says twice that “God is love” 1 John 4:8,16. What does that mean? Can we define what that means without the context of what John says in this letter? Because John’s definition is all about what God has done through Jesus for us and in us – urging the reader to take this to heart, by demonstrating the same sacrificial care for one another that God has shown for us, which is original. That is He demostrated His love for us unprovoked by us or any merit in us. We are to love like that.

So I quietly ask God “what does the statement “God is love” mean intrinsically to His character? The thought comes to me that His whole being is wrapped up in the benevolent attitude which He has demonstrated and is demonstrating towards His creation. His anger is only demonstrated towards those who reject Him. Further to that I think of the only picture in the bible where we get a glimpse of God is in Revelation 4, where it is all about His holiness and His glory.

So I consult “The New Bible Dictionary”. Their discussion starts with the revelation of God’s love for Jesus which has existed since before creation. John 17:24 “Where Jesus prays “Father I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see My glory, the glory You have given Me, because you loved Me before the creation of the world”. Notice the link between glory and love.

Jesus is also the only one of whom it is written that He is God’s beloved Son. eg Mark 9:7 “This is my Son whom I love.”

Furthermore they say that God’s love can only be known to men as it is revealed in Jesus Christ and our redemption by Him (Romans 5:8). It is the very nature of the God-Head – Jesus Christ, who is love incarnate and personified (1Jo 3:16) and is God’s Self revelation.

Heh and that is not all. There is an emotional aspect to God’s love – revealed especially through the book of Hoseah where God gets Hoseah to marry a prostitute so that He can experience the pain God feels when his bride is unfaithful to him.

There is more, but lets leave that for the moment. Just something more to chew on. In Malachi 1:2ff He speaks about some whom He hates. Read that and ponder and we will speak again about it and if you have the courage post your thoughts on the idea that God is love on the blog.

May you consciously experience that unimaginable love in a special way as you read this and consider it.