What are the most important things to understand about the nature of God?

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Scripture reveals God's nature through two great declarations in John's first epistle: "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and "God is light" (1 John 1:5). These are not in tension — love is what God is in His essential being; light describes His holy character in relation to all that is contrary to Him. Every other attribute flows from and serves these two. God is Love — His Essential Nature Edward Dennett draws a vital distinction — love is not merely something God does, but what He is: All the rest clusters around the statement — the blessed statement — that GOD is LOVE. This is the setting forth of what God is in His own nature; He is also light, it is true, but this is said relatively to darkness — "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." We also say that God is righteous, that is righteous in His actings and ways, but when the word of God speaks of what He is absolutely in His nature, one word describes it, and that word is LOVE. Edward Dennett And it was at the cross that this love reached its full display: It was there in the death of His beloved Son that He told out all that He is, His righteousness against sin, His love in providing the sacrifice; yea, every divine attribute was displayed in the cross, and in all the perfection of their entire harmony because there every question of good and evil was for ever solved. James Boyd presses the same point — God's love is not occasional or circumstantial but eternal and absolute: All the thoughts of God toward His people are thoughts of love. He has not, never had, nor ever will have, a thought toward any of His own than that of love. He may chasten them, scourge them, bring them through deep waters of tribulation and affliction, take them away out of this world by the death of the body, but every one of these ways of His with His own springs from the fountain of love, which, welling out of His own blessed heart, has stopped at no sacrifice for the recovery of its objects from distance, darkness, death, and the power of the devil. It was love that thought of us before the world was, that planned redemption, that gave us our place in Christ, that determined to have us as sons before His face for ever, and that guards us throughout our whole pilgrim pathway, until we land at home in His glorious rest. James Boyd J. N. Darby adds that the comfort of knowing God's love lies not in examining ourselves but in seeing what God has done: The blessed manifestation of God's love is, that I find what is in God's heart about me; that He has done what was needed for my state, and revealed it too. It is what is in God's heart that is my comfort, not hunting anything out in my own. J. N. Darby God is Light — His Holiness and Righteousness But love without holiness would not be God. A. J. Pollock warns against holding one truth at the expense of the other: One would have thought it impossible to over-emphasize these wonderful words, "God is love." This is certainly true, if this grand truth is held in due proportion to other Scripture truths. But when emphasis on the truth "God is love" (1 John 4:8) is made to such an extent, as to obscure the truth that "God is light" (1 John 1:5), there is something very fundamentally wrong. A. J. Pollock He shows that these two truths find their perfect union at Calvary: Never does the love of God shine in greater splendour, never does the light and righteousness of God shine more clearly, than when God's only begotten Son hung upon the cross of Calvary. He endured the judgment of God to the full in respect of sin, so that God now offers salvation to whosoever will, guaranteed by light as well as by love. W. H. Westcott traces God's holiness through the Old Testament types: God, in dealing with man fallen, used tangible and visible means to bring out His intrinsic holiness and His abhorrence of evil, with His judgment upon it. At the same time He indicated ways and means whereby men might be delivered and reconciled, and right relations be established or restored; and whereby God might righteously bless them, rule over them, and dwell among them, according to His own heart. W. H. Westcott God Revealed in Christ A crucial truth: God's nature is not discovered by human effort but revealed through the Son. H. J. Vine is emphatic on this point: From the world's foundation the eternal power and divinity of God were to be perceived in the things that are made, but not the true God Himself. It needed One who was in Himself God to be adequate to perfectly declare God. This assertion is self-evident and needs no argument. The Son is the Way, not simply a way! The Son is the Truth, not simply a portion of it! The Son is the Life, not simply a partial manifestation of it. Yea, "He is the true God and eternal life." H. J. Vine James Boyd brings this home powerfully — the cross is God's definitive self-revelation: The great, glorious, and overwhelming reply to this horrible and deadly falsehood [of Satan's misrepresentation] is given by God in the cross of His beloved Son. There He who knew no sin is made sin for us. The fruit of a tree in which lay the seed of death was withheld from a pair of innocents, but for a guilty world God in His unspeakable love gave His only begotten Son. And at the cross God is declared in His true character, and "God is Love." James Boyd God For Us — Love Backed by Infinite Power J. Wilson Smith captures the weight of what it means that this God — not some lesser being — is the One who loves: Remember it is God! You may remind me that God is love, and a happy reminder it is, but it is God who is so! Love is the nature of Him who is infinite in power and holiness. God is light as well as love. And yet, blessed be His name, this very God, is for us. J. Wilson Smith Synthesis The nature of God rests on four interlocking truths. He is love in His very being — not as a sentiment but as the eternal fountain from which every blessing flows. He is light — utterly holy, with an intrinsic abhorrence of evil that demands judgment. These two meet in perfect harmony at the cross of Christ, where God's love provided the very sacrifice His holiness required. And He is revealed — not through human reasoning or philosophical effort, but through the Person of His Son, who alone could declare the invisible God. The result is that this God of infinite power, holiness, and love is unreservedly for us — and if God be for us, who can be against us?

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