God is love

Last week we talked about how God is holy. Today we will be talking about how God is love. Now, I have heard people use the phrase “God is love” to condone their sin or their bad behavior. God is love but His love does not exist in a bubble. His love co-exists with His holiness and His righteousness.

So before we get into the details I will say right at the start, God’s love for us will never outweigh His holiness or His righteousness. He is perfectly balanced within Himself. That means I cannot live a sinful life and expect God to “pretend” it’s ok just because He loves me. God’s love for me will never change and is not dependent on what I do or do not do. However, my relationship with God is dependent on what I do and do not do.

If someone rejects Jesus, God still loves them, but it does not mean when they die they will go to heaven simply because God loves them, they will still be destined for hell. Now that sounds brutal and not at all like something you’d want to read in a post about how much God loves us but that is reality. It is not helpful to anyone is we explain the love of God like it is emotional and airy, passive and weak. God’s love is none of those things. Emotions come and go, God’s love for us is not an emotional response. God loves us because He Himself is love, it is who He is, see 1 John 4:8.

John 3:16 says, “For here is the way God loved the world—he gave his only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life.” That is a wonderful verse. The word for “love in that verse is the Greek word, “agapao”. This word is a verb which means it is not passive it is active. God loved us so He gave us His Son, Jesus, who came and died on the cross for our sins. Love in action. What I love about John 3 is that it tells us that God’s love is not exclusive to Christians, God loves the whole world, that means everybody including those we think are unlovable. John 3 also tells us that God’s love does not excuse us from judgment for our sins.

John 3:17-21 says, “God did not send his Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it! So now there is no longer any condemnation for those who believe in him, but the unbeliever already lives under condemnation because they do not believe in the name of the only Son of God. And here is the basis for their judgment: The Light of God has now come into the world, but the people loved darkness more than the Light, because they want the darkness to conceal their evil. So the wicked hate the Light and try to hide from it, for the Light fully exposes their lives. But those who love the truth will come into the Light, for the Light will reveal that it was God who produced their fruitful works.”

God’s love works hand in hand with His righteousness. Just because God loves us does not mean He will excuse our bad behaviour or hide our sins. God does not operate in darkness He always works in the light. It is love that makes God confront us when we do the wrong thing. It is love that God gave us Jesus to pay the price we could never pay so we can have right relationship with Him.

It is love that God, the Creator of the universe who needs nothing and lacks nothing even thinks about us at all. Yet Psalm 8:4-6 says, “Why would you bother with puny, mortal man or care about human beings? Yet what honor you have given to men, created only a little lower than Elohim, crowned with glory and magnificence. You have delegated to them rulership over all you have made, with everything under their authority, placing earth itself under the feet of your image-bearers.”

How crazy is that? God, when it came time to create us decided to make us like Him so that each time He looks at us, He sees a piece of Himself! That is love. He didn’t create us so we could be stuck in life trying to figure it out. He created us for relationship with Himself so He could lavish His love on us in this life all the way into eternity. He loves us in more ways than we can ever understand. He is more concerned about our lives than we are, so much so that He gave us Jesus long before we knew we would need Jesus, see Romans 5:8. He gave us Holy Spirit long before we knew we would need a Helper, see John 15:26-27.

God is thinking about you, and His mind is full of thoughts about you and how He wants to help you. It doesn’t change His life one bit what we do with ourselves, but it makes all the difference to us. God does not love us because of what we can do for Him. Think about it, what can you do for the God who created the universe as we know it with His words? God loves you simply because you are you.

If you haven’t given your life to Jesus, stop playing hard to get. The time for hiding in the dark is over, step into the light and accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour. You are already loved but your life will be much better with Jesus in it, that’s just facts.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano