What does the Bible say about love?

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" (1 John 1:5). 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.

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.

We get "God so loved the world" in John 3; and in Romans 5 and 1 John 4 we get it restricted to "us"; that is, to believers; but wherever we get it, the measure of that love is the death of His only begotten Son. Nothing short of this would have met our deep need, neither would anything else have met the claims of the holiness and righteousness of God.

First, that the teaching of the Bible is NOT that God is ill-disposed toward us, a frowning Deity to be continually pacified by propitiatory sacrifices which change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt heathen conception. The Bible presentation of the truth runs thus, "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a propitiatory sacrifice, His heart which is toward man is the very source of all our blessing.

We are persuaded of course with Paul that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:39). His love has a firm hold on us, and He will never let us go. But we are also to have a firm hold upon it in the quiet recesses of our hearts. We are to be bathed in it, just like a bucket or other vessel which has been flung into the ocean. Then it is in the ocean, and the ocean is in it.

This is a spontaneous, essential reaction. No human effort is involved in this at all, no pressing of myself, no stirring up of my emotions by artificial means. Love must be a spontaneous thing, or it is not love at all… Love cannot be produced from our own hearts by a process of stirring them up: this will fail, for our hearts are no fountain of love at all: we must look elsewhere.

Christ loved with a love which, while never indifferent to evil, yet triumphed over all the power of evil. If we love one another after the pattern of Christ's great love, we shall not suffer evil in one another, but we shall find a way of dealing with the evil without ceasing to love one another. Nothing but the bond of love, after the divine pattern, will hold together a company of people each having a distinct personality, with different shades of character, and diverse temperaments.

I was struck some time back with this, that when the apostle describes what love is, it is all subjective. In 1 Corinthians 13 you do not get one atom of activity in it; it bears, endures, hopes, and so on, and that is all… Disappointing! You go and live it out, and see if other people will be disappointed.

One glad day, and that soon, faith will cease and give place to sight, hope, the buoyer up of our "sure and steadfast" expectations, will give place to happy realization; but love, Divine love, drawn from the eternal fount of God's own nature, will endure for ever in undimmed splendour.