God Is Love

By Rev. Heidi L. Barham |  April 28, 2024

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Read 1 John 4:7 – 21 (NIV)
 
When a Pharisee asked Jesus the question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  The answer came down to love – “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37 – 39).
 
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, in what is often referred to as the “love chapter,” we find a very detailed description of love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.   Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4 – 8a). 

And at the conclusion of that chapter, Paul wrote “…now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” 
 
And without anyone even posing a question as to which of the three is the greatest…  Paul declares that love is the greatest of these.  Perhaps that is because he knew what John knew… something that we read in our New Testament lesson this morning, which is… GOD IS LOVE.
 
And that is born out by virtue of something known as the transitive property… if GOD IS LOVE and we know that God is the greatest… that means love must be the greatest as well. 
 
Now, if we were to take things one step further and ask ourselves what is the greatest virtue we can possess, we would find the answer in Paul’s letter to the   Colossians 3 (12 – 14):

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Paul says that love binds everything together in perfect unity.  In other words, love is the glue that keeps everything connected… in the way that God intended.  What it all boils down to is simply this… GOD IS LOVE… and God is what holds us all together.
 
Now thinking about what that all means… that GOD IS LOVE… I want to invite our attention back to the text for the morning where the word love or loved occurs 27 times.  Certainly, this idea of love seems to have been important to John.
 
And to be clear, John does not simply use the word love in some random or haphazard fashion.  He explains the one truth that everything else hangs on – GOD IS LOVE.  And when we understand that GOD IS LOVE and that we were made in the image of God… that means we were created to love as well. 
 
In all honesty, I could probably sum the whole thing up in one sentence and take my seat – GOD IS LOVE so we must love one another [period]. 
 
In fact, perhaps some of you might not be too disappointed if I did just that…
 
But… you’re not getting off the hook quite that easily.
 
The fact of the matter is that GOD IS LOVE and God loves us so much that He sent His only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins… so, that we might have eternal life through Him.
 
And not only did God give us His only Son… God loves us so much that He has given us His own Spirit… so that we can abide in Him as He abides in us.
 
And if God loves us so much and was willing to go to such great lengths for us… what other response can, or should, there be from us except for us to love one another.
 
So, why is it so difficult for us to love one another when we have been the beneficiaries of such amazing love from God?
 
Shouldn’t it be easy for us to just throw open our arms and embrace one another in love at all times?  In theory, absolutely.  In practice… not so much.
 
God loves us in spite of our flaws, our faults, and our failures… and yet, those are the very things that quickly become the impediment to us loving one another. 
 
It is so much easier for us to love a perfect God than it is to love imperfect people.  But that is exactly who God loves and who God calls us to love… imperfect people.
 
Now, I will be the first one to admit that it is not always easy to love others… and if I can be completely honest, I am not always the most loveable...  But the good news is that God loves me, and God loves you, anyhow… even in our most unlovable state… and God encourages us to do the same… to love those who seem to be unlovable.
 
If we were to take a serious look around us… perhaps we would come to the conclusion that we are living in a world that needs to know about God’s love now, more than ever before. 
 
We are living in a time and place when our first reaction should be to spread the fruit of the Spirit… “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22 – 23) …with special emphasis on the love part.
 
But unfortunately, we are living in a day and age when love for others feels more like the exception instead of the rule.
 
War and unrest in Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine… violence in our streets and even on our college campuses… it is all right there in the headlines…
 
But we have not been called to use violence or the threat of violence to get our point across.  We have been called to love one another. 
 
And learning to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is more than just a platitude from the scriptures… it is a critical component to us being able to live together as brothers and sisters. 
 
Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves is at the very core of what it means for us to value the sanctity of life and have respect for the lives of others regardless of their age, race, gender, economic status, or sexual orientation.
 
Love is the answer to the question of what will it take for us to stop the madness on every side – because in any situation where lives are being lost and people are being made to feel that they are “less than” – there really are no winners. 
 
As we watch events unfolding in real time on television, in the newspaper and on the Internet – society as a whole continues to come out on the losing end.
 
It is only by accepting that GOD IS LOVE that we will have any hope of things getting turned around. 
 
Looking back through the scriptures we find time and time again God’s command that we love one another.  In this morning’s text, we are admonished that we cannot say we love God while saying that we hate our brother (and might I suggest that statement includes our sisters as well).
 
The fact of the matter is that loving God is inclusive, not exclusive, of loving all of God’s people. 
 
We simply cannot love God but then NOT love God’s people… no matter how much we try to justify it or rationalize it.  God’s people are made in the very image of God and we cannot love one without loving the other.
 
If we go back to the very beginning, God made us in His image. 
 
The Latin term is “Imago Dei” which literally means the image of God and refers back to Genesis 1:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”   So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:26 – 27).

Then in Genesis 9 (6b), we read, “in the image of God has God made mankind” which Paul reiterates this in 1 Corinthians 11:7b, where he wrote, “since [man] is the image and glory of God...” 
 
We cannot separate God from His people because God lives IN us and we are made in God’s image. 
 
Turning back to our text for the morning, we read:

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us (vv. 13 – 16).

Now, some people might look at this passage and think it provides a loophole to not love those who have not accepted the free gift of God’s love and salvation and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior…
 
But this text is not meant to suggest that we have the ability to be discriminating and only show love to the good people, the nice people, the people who we already like.
 
Verse 19 of our text says that, “We love because [God] FIRST loved us.”  He didn’t just start loving us once we turned our lives around, got ourselves together and said, “Here I am Lord, I’m ready for you to love me now.” 
 
In fact, in Romans 5:8 we find out that the exact opposite is true, for it is there we read, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
 
God always has and always will love us… even to the end of the age.  Nothing will ever separate us from His love.  In fact, Paul said it like this:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38 – 39).

That means neither the good, the bad nor the downright ugly that is inside of us can separate us from God’s love. 
 
GOD IS LOVE and love covers a whole multitude of sins (see 1 Peter 4:8).
 
GOD IS LOVE and love is the reason why Christ was willing to be obedient even to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life (see Philippians 2:8).
 
GOD IS LOVE and it is love that Jesus says will distinguish us as His disciples… if we have love for one another.
 
GOD IS LOVE and it is God’s love that makes us one in the Spirit and in the Lord… and so today, let us stand firm in that love as we pray for the day when unity will be restored and as we join in singing our Hymn of Discipleship: They'll Know We Are Christians #494.

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