Love. It is a many-splendored thing. It’s all you need. It means never having to say you’re sorry. You fall into it. You fall out of it. You make it. You give it. You get it. You withhold it. It’s enough. It’s not enough. It was made for you and me. It hurts. It keeps us together. It’s true. It’s blind. It opens your eyes. It’s physical. It’s emotional. You feel it. It makes the world go round. It conquers all. It’s a verb. You do it to chocolate. You do it to children. You do it to puppies and horses and books and summer and pasta and movies and naps and Saturday mornings.
And yet God is love. God is love.
(The subject of love) is one of those inexhaustible wells into which you may let down the bucket every morning and always pull it up full! It is a mine with a good many seams of the richest ore. You may think you have dug all its treasures out, but you only have to sink a new shaft to find that there is another seam just as rich as the former one! And when you have brought all that wealth to the surface— and that may take your whole lifetime— someone else may sink another shaft and open up a fresh vein!
Love and Knowledge of God
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” 1 John 4:8
God tells us that if we do not love, we do not know him. But in John 6:44, Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” So we can’t love unless God calls us to him and gives us the ability to love. But if we don’t have love, we don’t have him. It seems inconsistent that God would command us to do something that we can’t possibly do without him. Unless you dig deeper.
John Piper said that God’s Word “creates what it demands in God’s sheep.” We do not see any inconsistency in Jesus’s telling the lame to walk, the blind to see, or the dead to rise. In the same way, there is really no inconsistency in God’s telling the loveless to love.
Reflect
Read the following scriptures. God says we do not know him if we don’t love, knowing that there is no way we can love without him. Is God commanding us to do something that we can’t do without him?
“God is love” (1 John 4:8). These three words have become an aphorism. Posters. Bumper stickers. Church signs. But I agree with John Piper when he says that these words are the “deepest of all statements” in the book of 1 John.
God exists eternally. No beginning. No end. Simply being. The Godhead is “I Am.” The third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, literally is the love that is generated from the intimacy between the Father and the Son. The very essence of the Godhead is love. God is love.
Remarkably, God wants us to partake in that love. Matthew Henry said, “Strange that God should love impure, vain, vile, dust and ashes.”
We were created in love, created to love, and, at first, abided in that love. Sin entered the world, and love was breached. Humans became God’s enemies (Romans 5:10). We were (and are) enemies of the source and giver of love! And yet he gave (and gives) it to us anyway. Not begrudgingly. But with delight (Zephaniah 3:17)!
Read John 17. Let Jesus’s words spill over you as you picture him, eyes toward Heaven, knowing what was about to take place, in perfect, intimate union with his Father, praying for us.
How do these remarkable verses display the unity between the Father and the Son, and the desire of the Trinity to bring us into that unity?
Everyone loves. Mothers love their children. Lovers love their lovers. Humans love their pets. We are wired to love.
God’s command to love our brothers is not merely a command, but an irresistible response when we grasp the depth of the love God has for us. Matthew Henry said, “Shall we refuse to love those whom the eternal God hath loved? We should be admirers of his love, and lovers of his love, and consequently lovers of those whom he loves.”
And again,
“The peculiar love of God to the church and to the saints should be productive of a peculiar love.”
Paul understood this as he prayed in Ephesians that we “may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that (we) may be filled with the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19).
When we truly understand, know, the vastness of God’s love for us, our natural response will be an outpouring of love for others. Of course, it is impossible to love like Christ without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
God compels us and enables us. We respond, hopefully, in obedience. Therefore it is crucial that we are continually and intentionally in God’s Word. Scripture supplies everything we need for the sustaining of our faith, which makes us more apt to desire to love like Christ.
Charles Spurgeon said, “Knowledge, faith, and love are plaited together so closely that they cannot be separated.” We must know, trust, and love Christ in order to love like him.
Read 1 John 4:9-21. Pray for clarity before you read. Write what stands out to you, and what you see God saying in these verses.
Pray
Dear Father, thank you that you love us so completely and so unconditionally. And thank you for the incomprehensible truth that you wish to pull us into the intimate and complete love you share within the Trinity. Thank you for your Word, which allows us to know you and in turn love like you do. Please help us every day to love you more, and to love others like Christ does. Amen.