God Is Love
God Is Love
If our pastors were to stand up next Sunday morning and say, “Please turn in your Bibles to ‘the love chapter,” most of us would probably know exactly where to turn.
Popular in everything from church sermons to greeting cards to romance novels, whether you’re a Christian or not, you’ve likely heard the following verses before; and if you are a Christian, hopefully, it’s your ambition to look more and more like this with each passing day:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
I think this is certainly the standard to aim for, but realistically, none of us measures up perfectly to this standard. Some of us don’t even come close.
Several years back, I set out on a well-meaning, albeit extremely misguided, mission to become “more loving” than the people around me, so that I could teach others how to be better at “loving people like Jesus.” You can probably guess how well that went.
At the end of a year of climbing up onto my high horse, I fell harder than I ever had before or ever have since; and the impact of my fall left some of the people closest to me wounded more than my own pride.
I was no better at loving than anybody else. If anything, I might have been the worst at it.
The kind of love that I could produce out of my best efforts wasn’t really love at all. You can’t produce water from a rock. Well, you and I can’t… though God can… and that’s kind of, actually, the whole point.
There’s another passage in the Bible, written by the Apostle John, that talks about love. It’s a bit less popular in modern culture — both inside and outside of church — but I would argue that this passage deserves to at least be known as “the other love chapter.” And when read alongside 1 Corinthians 13, it adds a bit more clarity for how we can understand and apply that passage to our lives:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
- 1 John 4:7-21, ESV
It’s interesting to note that the words translated “perfected” in this passage mean “to complete,” or according to HELPS Word-Studies, “working through the entire process (stages) to reach the final phase (conclusion).”
Toward the end of 1 Corinthians 13, in what might seem like an oddly placed declaration, the Apostle Paul penned these words: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. - 1 Corinthians 13:11, ESV
It sounds odd, but it’s really not odd at all. See, 1 Corinthians was originally a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a group of Christians (the Church in Corinth) who were not looking very Christ-like. And the portion that we refer to as “the love chapter” was written to teach them (and us as well, today) what it looks like to be transformed into the image of Christ. So this verse (13:11) is describing a sort of growing-up process that each of us must go through to reach a mature state — to ultimately look like Jesus.
For those of us who have received God’s love for ourselves by faith in Jesus Christ, empowered by His grace, we are currently working through this entire process of sanctification (Hebrews 10:14) to reach a final phase: our glorification (2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:4).
And when we reach that final phase, you and I are going to look exactly like Jesus — God incarnate — perfect love! Because as John pointed out repeatedly in 1 John 4…
God is love.
And since God is love, and 1 Corinthians 13 tells us exactly what love looks like lived-out, what we’ve been given is more than just a to-do list, or a way to act more loving. You and I have been given a vivid depiction of the God we worship — the God in whose image we were created, and the God whose name we bear! Therefore, it’s no stretch whatsoever for us to read and understand 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 in this way:
God is patient,
God is kind,
God is not envious,
God is not boastful,
God is not arrogant,
God is not rude,
God does not insist on His own way,
God is not irritable,
God keeps no records of wrongs,
God does not rejoice over injustice,
God rejoices in truth uncovered,
God never throws in the towel,
God is ever faithful,
God is always full of hope,
God endures forever…
Because God is love.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a & 1 John 4:8b (paraphrased adaption)
It shouldn’t surprise us or discourage us when we fall disparagingly short of this description of the One whose name we bear. Instead, it should encourage us to press in further to know God more, or as the Apostle John put it, to abide in love (1 John 4:16)!
By His grace, God has provided us with everything we need (His Spirit, His gifts, His Word, and one another) so that, as we humble ourselves and surrender to Him, we can be shaped into His likeness. And the more we look like Him, the more we’ll look like love.
Fallen people are not good at love.
Even Christians are bad at loving others, in their own power and wisdom.
But God isn’t just good at love. He is love.
Isn’t it a relief to know that God’s not expecting you and me to love perfectly, or to measure up to this perfect standard of love that He’s demonstrated toward us? Rather, God is inviting us to simply surrender to Him, moment by moment, and to let His love flow from Him to others, through us.
And if we’ll let Him, He’ll do the work.
“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – Jesus (John 13:34-35, CSB)
For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. – Philippians 2:13, CSB
Friend, stop trying to muster up a love that you lack! Just lean in to the work God’s already doing in you, and let His love flow through!
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Based on 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John 4, while wearing this t-shirt or hoody, you can proclaim the truth of God’s love everywhere you go! (Available in multiple colors.)
