Love Comes from God for God is Love

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God… because God is love (1 John 4:7, 8 NET)

There are few verses in scripture that lays bare the innate nature of God quite like these verses. The mystical nature of God is something to behold for in the human realm we say someone is a loving person based on how they act; what they do. Love, therefore, is external to the person. However, with respect to God, love (agape) is innately His; it radiates from Him. Thus John writes that those that do not love cannot understand who God is for this is the exact expression of “what God is” (1 Jn. 4:8).

We’ve been fed a false idea of love. The world’s concept of love is based on external features. It loves people that love it or things that are pleasing in its eyes. The world’s love is reactionary; it certainly is not blind. It shifts depending on circumstances and changes with the weather. But God’s love is the opposite. It is proactive; it does not react to external circumstances and He loves in spite of the undesirable nature of the object. God’s first act is always because of love.

This is who God is, come look at what God’s love has done; come understand who He is. It’s not that we were desirable to him. It’s not that we approached him first. Rather, He sent his only Son into this world so that we, those that hated him and were ugly and distorted by sin, can live because He became the propitiation for our sins (4:9, 10). Paul also wrote if you can hardly find a righteous man to give his life in exchange for another good man how on earth do you expect to find a righteous man to give his life in exchange for someone who hates him? Simple you can’t; not on earth anyway! But God demonstrated his love to us that while we were still his enemies he died for us (Romans 5:7-9).

And now because of this we, who have experienced the fullness of this love being shed abroad in our hearts, are to become conduits of His love. Not only because we owe it to each other (4:11) but because we have been commanded to do so (3:23; 4:21). To love people in a world filled with hate and cheap imitations of love is the ultimate way to reveal to the world who we are and who God is (John 13:35).