Does the Bible teach that God is love?

But let us mark the way in which this is unfolded in our text. "God so loved the world." Here we have the wide aspect of the love of God. It is not confined to any particular nation, tribe, caste, or family. It embraces the whole world. God is love; and, being so, it is not a question of the fitness or worthiness of the object of His love. It is what He is. He is love, and He cannot deny Himself. It is the very energy and activity of His nature. The heart may have many a question, many an exercise as to its state and condition before God, and very right it should have them. The Spirit Himself may produce such exercises and raise such questions; but, after all, the grand truth shines forth in all its lustre, "God is love." Whatever we are, whatever the world is, that is what God is; and we know that the truth as to God forms the deep and rich substratum which underlies the whole system of Christianity. The soul may pass through deep and sore conflict, under the sense of its own wretchedness; there may be many doubts say, and fears; many dark and heavy clouds; weeks, months, or years may be spent under the law, in one's inward self-consciousness, and that, moreover, long after the mere intellect has yielded its assent to the principles and doctrines of evangelical truth. But, after all, we must be brought into direct personal contact with God Himself — with what He is — with His nature and character, as He has revealed Himself in the gospel. We have to acquaint ourselves with Him, and He is love.

Observe, it does not say merely that God is loving, but that He is love. It is not only that love is an attribute of His character, but it is the very activity of His nature. We do not read that God is justice, or holiness; He is just and He is holy; but it would not express the full and blessed truth to say that God is loving; He is much more, He is love itself. Hence, when the sinner — "whosoever" he be, it matters not — is brought to see his own total and absolute ruin, his hopeless wretchedness, his guilt and misery, the utter vanity and worthlessness of all within and around him, (and there is nothing in the whole world that can satisfy his heart, and nothing in his heart that can satisfy God, or satisfy even his own conscience) when these things are opened in any measure to his view, then is he met by this grand substantial truth that "God is love," and that He so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son.

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath toward us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” There are no vague uncertainties here, but a living knowledge of the love of God. This is true Christianity: “We have known and believed.” Observe too that this is no mere dealing with love as a subjective thing, which has become a snare to too many. To know and to enjoy love rightly, it must be objective. Feelings are no basis of reasoning at all. It is not a question of feeling that I am loved; but knowing and believing it on the basis of the fact being true. It is true altogether apart from my feelings: therefore I ought to commit myself utterly to believing it. This is only reasonable and right. The proofs of that love in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus and in His matchless sacrifice for our sakes, are so strong and unquestionable that only stubborn rebellion would dare to doubt it. “God is love:” it is His very nature: therefore He loves. It is not the ardor of my response that determines whether or not He loves me. He does so because it is His nature, apart from anything in me that draws such love. Therefore I believe it, for it is true. And believing it, I dwell in love, I dwell in God, and God in me. It is a permanent abiding because a permanent love of the eternal God. One who refuses it by callous disbelief is of course refusing himself all title to it, and rejecting all its benefits. He has only himself to blame, for “God is love” still, however man may attempt to falsify the very word and nature of Him who in grace seeks the purest blessing of every creature. Thus man “draws iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart‑rope,” brazenly inviting the judgment of God rather than receiving His love (cf. Isaiah 5:18,19).

Love is God’s very nature. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). What rest of heart it is to know this, to trust One who is unaffected by selfishness, partiality, or caprice of any kind.

There is in the fourth chapter of the first Epistle of John a jewelled chain of God's love, which we do well to wear about our hearts. GOD is love. (1 John 4:8.) GOD'S love manifested in sending His Son to give us life. (1 John 4:9.) GOD'S love in sending His Son a propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10.) GOD'S love to us our motive for loving one another. (1 John 4:11) GOD'S love in giving us of His Spirit. (1 John 4:13.) GOD'S love our testimony to the world. (1 John 4:14.) GOD'S love in dwelling in His people. (1 John 4:15.) GOD'S love giving us boldness in the day of judgment. (1 John 4:17.) GOD'S love casting out our fear. (1 John 4:8.) GOD'S love to us drawing us to love God. (1 John 4:19.)

“God is love.” This is an eternal truth. The centre of all blessing, the spring of all joy. Before the world was or the angels were called into being, from everlasting to everlasting, God is love. Had man never been created, the fact of God being love had been the same. The human mind could never have conceived the thought; human nature could not have originated the truth, that God is love. Had God not made known the wonderful reality to us, to this hour man must have been in utter ignorance of the blessed fact. The wisdom of the world possesses not in its treasury these heaven-sent words “God is love.” In its wealth they are not to be found.

"God is light;" and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But it is nowhere said in scripture, that "God is power," or that "God is wisdom," etc. We know that God is holy, righteous, and just, and that He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the manifest results of what God is in Himself, i.e., "Light," and "Love."

Then mark another truth (v. 8), "He that loveth not knoweth not God." There is no knowledge of God but in the possession of the nature of God - there is no power to apprehend Him. You may see His works, and say there must be a God; but is that knowing Him? I must have God's nature to know Him, because none can know love but by loving, and he who thus knows Him will apprehend Him. Take a philosopher who talks about God, and set him in the presence of God - you would find it is the last place he would like to be in; and why so? Because he has never been there before.

He begins with the fact that love is of God. It is His nature: He is its source. Therefore he who loves is born of God, is a partaker of His nature. Also he knows God, for he knows what love is, and God is its fulness. This is the doctrine which makes everything depend on our participation in the divine nature.

Now this might be transformed on the one hand into mysticism, by leading us to fix our attention on our love for God, and love in us, that being God's nature, as if it was said, love is God, not God is love, and by seeking to fathom the divine nature in ourselves; or to doubt on the other, because we do not find the effects of the divine nature in us as we would. In effect, he who does not love (for the thing, as ever in John, is expressed in an abstract way) does not know God, for God is love. The possession of the nature is necessary to the understanding of what that nature is, and for the knowledge of Him who is its perfection.

First of all, let us not fail to notice that we here read that "God is love." This is not merely that God loves, most preciously true as it is, but that His nature is love. It is equally true that "He is light." His essential nature is light, therefore cannot possibly fail to make every hidden thing manifest; but it is also blessedly true that the activities of His nature are loving; for He is love. We know, too, that God is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works; and, as the cross of Christ most thoroughly sets forth, that He does not sacrifice His holiness to love, or His love to holiness, but His nature is love. "God is love." This faith receives and enjoys, because it is God's revelation of Himself. But here the fact is turned to practical account; for if God's nature is love, and we are born of God, it is clear that the moral qualities of a child must be according to those of the Father. The apostle therefore says, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." The exhortation that we should "love one another" is founded, then, on the fact that we are born of God, and therefore have a nature that loves; for God is love. The fact is also stated that the person who loves according to God must be born of God. It is impossible therefore that one who is born of God can be one who loves not. He may be in a bad state of soul, and the divine work in him much obscured by carnal ways and associations, but it is as natural for the new nature which we have, as a new creation in Christ, to love, as for the old Adam-nature to be selfish and to hate. Hence you find the apostle Paul, in writing to the Thessalonian saints, declaring that they are taught of God to love one another. And how many souls, before they were established in Christ, have found comfort from this text, which assured them they were God's children — "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren!" They know this to be true of them. They know well that the poorest man by the roadside, who shows plainly that he is the Lord's, engages His affections and interests more than all the princes of this world who are enemies of the Lord of glory. Every one therefore that is born of God loves, and loves the brethren they are objects of his tenderest regard, because they are God's; and he knows also that the matters of one of His feeblest children are of more importance to God than the political movements of the whole of Europe. Oh the blessedness of having passed from death unto life, of being born of God, and of knowing God; for God is love!

It is not true that "the one absolute definition of the Almighty, self-existent, supreme Being is, that he is Love." The apostle John, who beyond all treats of this, is careful in 1 John 1. to report to us that He is Light. It is only in chap. 4. of the same Epistle that he tells us He is Love. Light is the essential purity of His nature, which makes every thing and one manifest; Love is rather the energy of His nature, which goes out in active goodness. To leave out Light is to conceive a false god who can let off sin and sinners easily, not the True Self-existent One, Who is Love also. Christ is His image in both respects, as He was and is very God, no less than the Father and the Holy Spirit.

(8) His Love. "God so loved the world" (John 3:16); the whole parable of the Prodigal Son and multitudes of other instances bring out this precious attribute of God, declaring He is love.