Praising God for His Love

“God is love.” We know it says that in 1 John 4:8. It also says that in 1 John 4:16. That whole passage talks about God’s love. But God’s love for us did not start in the New Testament. It did not start with Jesus’ actions. God has been love all along. Even when God was punishing the Old Testament followers for their lack of faith, His very nature included love.

J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God said that the saying God is love, “is not an abstract definition which stands alone, but a summing up, from the believer's standpoint, of what the whole revelation set forth in Scripture tells us about its Author. This statement presupposes all the rest of the biblical witness to God. The God of whom John is speaking is the God who made the world, who judged it by the Flood, who called Abraham and made of him a nation, who chastened His Old Testament people by conquest, captivity, and exile, who sent His Son to save the world, who cast off unbelieving Israel and shortly before John wrote had destroyed Jerusalem, and who would one day judge the world in righteousness. It is this God, says John, who is love."

Basically, this tells us that God has always loved us and everything He’s ever done has been done out of this love. What that means to me now is that God is still working from a place of love. Everything He does for me and around me stems from His love for me. I may not feel it. I may not see it. I may not believe it. Yet, God cannot act any other way than out of His character of love. It’s out of a very strong liking for us that God acts. He cannot help but like us. We are His creation and He likes what He’s made. He always has and He always will like us.

Don’t get me wrong. There are things He is displeased about in our behavior and attitudes. He has a strong affection for us but that doesn’t mean He approves of everything we do. Just like He had to chastise His followers of the Old Testament, there may be times when we need disciplining, too. But even that discipline comes out of His love for us. He loves us too much to let us go astray. Because He loves us, because He is love, we can trust that anything that happens to us somehow fits into His plan of love.

When we say, “God is love,” it means far more than some flippant expression. It is talking about a characteristic of God that makes Him unique in the universe. He is the only One who is the total embodiment of love. We might think we love, but none of us are love. None of us acts out of love all the time. Only God does.