God is Love, Part 1
God is Love, Part 1
Characteristics of God, God is an Example to Imitate
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We just finished the Remain in Christ word study, where we talked a lot about remaining in God’s love and the command to love one another. We will look more at the “love one another” command in our upcoming “one another” series. So I thought this would be a good time to look more deeply into God’s characteristic of love. What does it mean that God is love, and how does that change how we live our lives? Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at four topics related to God is love:
The scope of God’s love
Other characteristics associated with God’s love
How we should respond to God’s love
God is Love
To start, we first need to establish that love is a characteristic of God. That’s pretty easy. The Bible is filled with evidence that God loves his people. But it’s not just that God loves. The Bible says that God IS love. Without God, there would be no love on this earth. This is described clearly in 1 John 4:7-21:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Through this passage and many others, we can see clearly that one of God’s primary characteristics is love. As humans, our understanding of love is often finite and conditional. But God’s love is described as unfailing and enduring forever. Let’s look at the scope of God’s love in more detail.
The Scope of God’s Love
Great
In the most generic terms, God’s love is described as “great.”
Psalm 117:2: For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.Praise the Lord.
Lamentations 3:22-23: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Ephesians 2:4-5: 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
1 John 3:1: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
The rest of this lesson will help us understand more completely what it means that God’s love is “great.”
Reaching to the Heavens
As humans, one of the things that seems unfathomable and unending to us is the heavens—the sky and outer space in general. The Bible tells us that this is how great God’s love is:
Psalm 57:10: For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Abundant
God’s love is also abundant—so abundant that we cannot grasp the enormousness of God’s love.
Psalm 86:15: But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Ephesians 3:17b-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Endures Forever
God’s love also endures forever. It’s not something that will ever stop or end. It is as enduring as God himself.
1 Chronicles 16:34: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.
Psalm 100:5: For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Jeremiah 31:3: The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
Unfailing
Not only is God’s love eternal, but it is unfailing. This is one of the most common adjectives used to describe God’s love. We can put our trust in God’s love because we know that it will never fail us.
Psalm 13:5: But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
Psalm 33:5: The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
Isaiah 54:10: “Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Nothing is Stronger
Another reason that we can trust in God’s love is that nothing is strong enough to defeat God’s love or to keep God’s love from us.
Romans 8:35-39: 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It Is for All Sinners
Despite the fact that we are sinners, and God cannot look on sin, he loved us so much that he sent his Son to die to pay the penalty for our sins. This sacrifice was for everyone—for the whole world.
John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
It Is for Those Who Are Obedient
Although God loves all people enough to send Jesus to earth to die for their sins, God is especially loving to those who are obedient to him and who believe in Jesus.
Psalm 25:6-10: 6 Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
7 Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you, Lord, are good.8 Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
9 He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way.
10 All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.
John 16:27: No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
Conclusion
These verses give us a picture of God’s love that is almost too big to comprehend. No matter what box we try to put God’s love in, God’s love is always bigger. It always goes beyond any boundaries we can try to put on it. As humans, boundaries are all we know. Everything is finite. But God’s love is abundant and enduring and unfailing. It is deeper and wider and higher and longer than anything we can imagine. It is so abundant that he was willing to give up his Son so that we could have eternal life.
Premium Resources
Each individual characteristic of God study will come with two resources: a word search just for fun (including an answer key), and a list of verses for if you want to investigate that individual characteristic of God more completely.
You can access these resources by clicking here: God Is Love Resources
Or you can download them here:
