The Love of God

By Alexandra Copeland  

Through the Apostle Paul, in 1John 1:5 (KJV), God informs us of a very important truth about His character. This verse tells us, “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” To see the crystal-clear beauty of this verse, we need to examine the definition of both ‘light’ and ‘darkness’. An examination of the meaning of the word ‘darkness’ reveals characteristics like wickedness, evil, ignorance, sin, immorality, and the total absence of light. On the flip side, for the word ‘light’ we see qualities like goodness, glory, intelligence, enlightenment, and illumination.  

God tells us in 2Timothy 2:15(NIV), “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” One of our responsibilities as believers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to work the Word. We’re to study it, and do all we can to make sure we have a good understanding of its truth, so that we correctly handle it when we’re witnessing or teaching it to others. We don’t want to leave anyone that doesn’t know 

Jesus Christ with the impression that God hurts people or that He dislikes or punishes them.  

This speaks to one of the mistakes that some of us make. We attribute the things that the devil does as acts committed by Heavenly Father, and vice versa. God tells us in His Word that He’s not the author of chaos and confusion, yet we see situations where peace is absent, and we will say that He caused it. People will call calamities of nature ‘acts of God’, and blame all kinds of negativity on Him, and it is because they don’t know what an awesomely loving Father He is. Heavenly Father does not cause disasters to happen; this is what the devil does, but because we have not studied God’s Word and given ourselves time to get to know Him, we believe things that aren’t true. 

1John 4:8(NLT) tells us, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” We tend to confine the commitment and act of love to our own definition of what it is, how it behaves, and what it produces; but we are not capable of defining love. That’s Heavenly Father’s territory. He has given us His Son, Jesus Christ, as the Savior of the world. John 3:16 tells us, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Not only has God told us about His overwhelming love, He demonstrated it through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ is our example. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Living how he lived, giving how he gave, and loving how he loved during his ministry on earth is our example for living a more than abundant life. So we are much more than recipients of God’s love, we are the givers of it. We can witness it in operation through our own lives. The Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:5-6 The Message (MSG), “Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful.”

Love comes from God, and love is how we keep our relationship with Him growing strong. If we’re not active in God’s love, making a conscious decision to respond to Him and others through the love of Christ, we’re not behaving like His children. If we don’t walk in love, we’re denying the very core of who we are and sleep walking through life. Paul tells in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-8 (MSG), “But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.” 

We are children of light, fully clothed in the faith, love, and joy of Christ; we have nothing to fear, but many of us have quite a lot of fear. These fears lead to addictions, phobias, and other kinds of sadness that feel very much like bondage. Jesus Christ has rescued us from these things. We don’t have to be filled with fear and worry, because this means that we have areas in our lives where we’re not trusting Heavenly Father as we should. One of the most defining characteristics about God’s love is that it has no fear. 1John 4:18 tells us that God’s perfect love expels ALL fear. We’ve been sealed in God’s love through the Holy Spirit, so we can be free to live with total confidence in Him, allowing His love to drive every component of our lives.  

God’s love is the greatest power in all of eternity. It changes things, it creates, and it produces the most wonderful results! His love is expansive and increases everything it touches. God wants us to be so influenced by His love that it controls our choices and decisions. Ephesians 5:2(NKJV) tells us, “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” Through Jesus Christ, God forgives us of our sins; therefore, we are to conform ourselves to the example of Christ. Ephesians 5:2 instructs us to walk in his love and forgive others as he did. We are to resemble Heavenly Father and be imitators of Him, because we are His children. So our goal should be to greet every day with the anticipation of infecting and influencing our worlds with God’s love, and our central motivation should be to put on more of it in our hearts.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by Permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.