What does the Bible say about love?

Scripture reveals what God is in Himself, 'God is love' (used absolutely), 1 John 4:8; and 'God is light' (used relatively, in opposition to darkness), 1 John 1:5; and Christ is the expression of both in a Man.

He is holy. He is just, and therefore there must be judgment; but He is love, and love draws me. This is the spring of all His dealings... He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and therefore is forced to turn away the eye — in that sense forced to have done with evil... but love is His nature; that is what He is.

God's love in contrast to man's love is distinguished by this, that while man must have something to draw out his love, as it is said, "For a good man some would even dare to die; but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." God's love is without motive, there being nothing attractive in the object that calls it out. "In due time Christ died for the ungodly." God's love sees no good in us.

"Herein is love, not that we loved God." The first thing, legal commandment, disappears; though we ought to love God, it is true, as the commandment demands. "Not that we loved God." It is the fruit but never the ground of my fellowship with Him, because I learn God has loved me in my sins; and I learn, though excellent, it is a thing not required of a sinner. If it is required, I am lost! I now am shewing another thing — that the sinner is loved when he does not love God. It is the sinner's need that draws out His love.

The perfectness of God's love toward His saints is seen in the bringing them to be like Himself. The sovereign grace of God puts the saint into the same place as Christ, that we may have the same kind of fellowship with the Father that Christ had... If I have righteousness, it is a divine righteousness, "We are made the righteousness of God in him"; if eternal life, it is a divine life; if glory, it is the same glory, "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given them": if it is the inheritance, we are "joint-heirs with Christ"; if love, it is the same love wherewith the Father loved Christ, "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me."

If my heart has seized the truth that God as a Father is acting in grace towards me, there is no place for fear. In all my need, and even in that with which I ought to have nothing to do, in all my sin, I fly to Him. I could not in my sin fly to my judge, but I have confidence in my Father's love and I fly to Him without fear; for "perfect love casteth out fear."

Whatever may be our sorrow, the love of Jesus stands before it, walks beside it, and though there be delay, comes at last — it will unfailingly be true for all His own — as the Resurrection and the Life.

The work of divine love is not to guarantee freedom from suffering, but to make it serve the divine end. "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."

John, in Revelation 1:5, spoke of the love of Christ as an ever subsisting reality. In regard to our sins he said, speaking in the past tense, "Who has washed us from our sins;" but in regard to His love which had led Him to do the cleansing work, once for all, he said, "To Him who loves us." Praise His Name, He loves and shall go on loving His own.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" This is faith's confident challenge. "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

There is a constraint — a compelling power — in the love of Christ. Under that constraint there is a spontaneity of progress and response... If we have been constrained by His deathless love to apply the truth of the cross to ourselves we shall likewise be drawn to find in Him an Object outside of ourselves, One who so commands us; so absorbs us; that we cannot help living unto Him. We shall experience the liberty and spontaneity of responsive love. We shall not love because we ought; we shall not serve because we should. There is no legal, servile, bondage here. We shall love, we shall serve, we shall live to Him because we cannot help it.

"He that does not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother." Here we get a rapid transition from righteousness to love. Is it possible we may be mistaken as to the first test? We may, because of our imperfect discernment, mistake at times moral uprightness for the righteousness which is the result of being born of God; but we can scarcely err as to love. Find a man merely morally upright, and does he love the brethren? Far from it. But the man born of God does; he that loves Him that begat, loves him also that is begotten of Him.

All the love we find in the present world is that which we show the one to the other. From the world which gave the Lord only a cross, we expect nothing but hatred, rejection, and scorn; in the holy circle of the family of God we expect to find love, and that after a divine pattern. The order however is divine, righteousness first, then love.

God is perfect love, I say, but I cannot enjoy it, if there is uncertainty as to His love... God will never make us doubt about His love, but He will make us feel the loss of it. He will bring us into the conscious sense of the loss of His love. He may make us find out some positive wrong thing that has done it, or a slothful state of soul in not acting in the light. But He loves us too well to let us go on, without finding it out sooner or later.

It is wondrous to see that God is every moment thinking of us — how to bring us up to the full enjoyment of His love.