God Is: A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God by Mark Jones

Author:Mark Jones [Jones, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012020/REL067110/REL067000
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2017-06-30T07:00:00+00:00

16

God Is Love

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:8

Doctrine

God is love. The Bible plainly declares that to us—not just in the explicit words of 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”) but also in literally thousands of ways throughout God’s Word. As J. I. Packer says, “To know God’s love is indeed heaven on earth.”1

If there were no world and no universe, the persons of the Trinity would still have an infinite, blessed, unchangeable, eternal, powerful love between them—an inward love. This love satisfies them because it is a perfect love; it cannot be increased or decreased in any way. Yet according to the free decision of God to extend his love outward, others may be objects of it as well.

God loves Jesus, all creatures, human beings, the elect, and the goodness in the elect. His love is best described as an affection, a love that arises inwardly and extends outward. His love is not a passion, as if something causes God to love. His love to others is caused by himself. If someone is pleasing to God, it is because God has made that person pleasing to himself according to his love and grace.

God exists as an inexhaustible fountain of love. His goal for his creatures is that they love God and one another, for we are never more like him than when we love. Heaven itself will forever be a place of love (1 Cor. 13:13).

There are different ways of understanding God’s love. While his intra-Trinitarian love is eternal and therefore natural and necessary, God loves his creatures voluntarily, not necessarily. According to this outward, voluntary impulse, we can identify a threefold distinction in God’s love:

1. God’s universal love toward all things: “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Ps. 145:9). Even the creatures of the earth are beneficiaries of God’s love.

2. God’s love toward all human beings, both elect and reprobate: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:44–45). God still loves a person who hates and rejects him, even granting him the ability to manifest such hate in thoughts, words, and actions.

3. God’s special love toward his people: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). This theme dominates the pages of Scripture, compared with the other types of love that God shows toward his creation and unbelievers.

Thus in the Old Testament, God declares through the prophet Isaiah,

“For the mountains may depart

and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”

says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

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