God Is Love | Devotional
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:16
By saying “God is love,” the apostle is making a very strong statement about the character and the essence of God. It is God’s very nature to love—love permeates who He is.
This statement, “God is love,” is so profound that no less than Augustine saw it as an important evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity.
If God is love—that is, if love is intrinsic to His very nature—then He has always loved, even from eternity past, before there was any created object for His love.
Augustine suggested that this love must have existed between the Persons of the Trinity, with the Father loving the Son, and so on.
So according to Augustine, the very fact that God is love corroborates the doctrine of the Trinity.
Clearly the love this text describes is an eternal reality. It flows from the very nature of God and is not a response to anything outside of God.
The apostle does not say, “God is loving,” as if he were speaking of one of many divine attributes, but “God is love”—as if to say that love pervades and influences all His attributes.
Love surely tempers even God’s judgments. What a wonder it is that He who is a consuming fire, He who is unapproachable light, is also the personification of love!
He postpones His judgments against sin while pleading with sinners to repent. Divine love not only keeps divine wrath in check while God appeals to the sinner—but it also proves that God is just when He finally condemns.
How can you grow in your awareness of God’s love?
John MacArthur
John MacArthur is a profound teacher of the word of God, a zealous preacher of Christian doctrine, a renowned writer and speaker, and Pastor and Teacher at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California
