What does it mean that God is love?
The words "God is love" are among the most quoted in the Bible and among the most misused, because everyone brings their own idea of love to them. The question John's letter forces is whether love is something God does, or something God is — and how that truth stands alongside everything else Scripture says about Him.
Nature, Not One Attribute Among Many
Commentators press the wording carefully: John does not say God has love or shows love, but that love is what He is at source.
J. N. DarbyHe 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 love did not begin when there were creatures to receive it. It was already flowing between the Persons of the Godhead before anything was made.
James BoydThe revelation we have of God conveys to us the great truth that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three Persons, yet one God, and God is love. This is what He is in His nature, what He is in His very being. There is nothing but love between those Divine and Eternal Persons. "You loved Me," says Jesus to the Father, "before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).
Love That Cannot Stay Still
If love is His nature and not a mood, then it acts of necessity, the way fire burns.
A J PollockBelievers are said to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and that nature is love, "God is love." We may say it reverently: God cannot help loving. Fire cannot help burning. Light cannot help shining. The divine nature cannot help loving.
Measured at the Cross, Not by Our Feelings
The statement is not a guess drawn from pleasant circumstances. John anchors it in an event: God sent His Son as the propitiation — the sacrifice that fully answers what our sins deserved. That order matters, because it rules out the idea of a God who has to be talked round.
F. B. HoleThe Bible's teaching is NOT that God is ill-disposed toward us, a frowning Deity who must be constantly pacified by sacrifices that change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt heathen idea. The Bible puts the truth like this: "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" (1 John 4:10). Far from us having to change His heart toward us by a sacrifice, His heart toward man is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.
Held Together With "God Is Light"
The same letter says God is light. Writers insist the two statements must be carried together, or the first one collapses.
H Forbes Witherby"God is light" is a truth equal with it, and the Lord teaches it too. The law did not reveal God's righteousness, though it witnessed to it — the cross of Jesus does. God's nature cannot tolerate sin. To speak only of His love and reject His light would be to falsify the love and rob God of half His character.
One common mistake is to flip the sentence around, so that our notion of love becomes the standard God is judged by.
A J PollockLove has been called the greatest thing in the world, and that is surely true, for "God is love." But we cannot reverse the statement, as many try to do, and say "Love is God." That is to make a god of love… until government is dethroned and God cannot punish sin, but all is love, love, love and nothing else; in reality a false love, not the real thing at all.
What Knowing It Does To Us
Where this love is actually believed, the dread of being judged goes.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIt has nothing to do with our love, as some take it, nor with seeking an experience of being "perfect in love." It is His love that casts out fear — believing that love and dwelling in it… We await the coming day of judgment not only without fear, but with boldness, for that day will only bring the full display of what Christ is and what we are in Him and with Him.
It also reshapes the person, so that the measure of a believer is not ability but love.
F. B. HoleIt will be found in the end that the greatest saint is not the one with the most striking gift, but the one who most truly dwells in love, for "whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 John 4:16).
Summary
- Nature — Love is not one of God's moods or activities but what He is; it existed between the Father, Son and Spirit before creation.
- Necessity — Because it is His nature, it must act: God can no more stop loving than fire can stop burning.
- Proof — That love is measured at the cross, where God Himself supplied the sacrifice our sins made necessary, rather than needing to be won over.
- Balance — "God is light" stands beside it; drop the light and you falsify the love, and the sentence reversed into "love is God" produces a counterfeit.
- Result — Where His love is truly believed, fear of judgment goes, and the person who dwells in love dwells in God.