Love’s Person

Origin

Three points may be made about John’s description of God as “love.”

(a) Its background is the Jewish (OT) understanding of God as living, personal and active, rather than the Greek concept of deity which was abstract in character.

(b) To assert comprehensively that “God is love” does not ignore or exclude the other attributes of his being to which the Bible as a whole bears witness; notably his justice and his truth.

(c) There is a tendency in some modern theologies (especially “process” thought) to transpose the equation “God is love” into the reverse, “Love is God.” But this is not a Johannine (or a biblical) idea. As John makes absolutely clear in this passage, the controlling principle of the universe in not an abstract quality of “love” (see a, above), but a sovereign, living God who is the source of all love, and who (as love) himself loves (see vv 7, 10, 19). Stephen S. Smalley

Expression

Propitiation—the satisfaction of God’s wrath, particularly through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross, which is the basis for God’s declaring sinners righteous in Christ (justification) (Rom 3:25–26 ESV; 1 John 4:10 ESV). A Concise Dictionary of Theological Terms

Maturation

We are to love each other, first because God is love (8–9), secondly because God loved us (10–11), and thirdly because, if we do love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us (12). John R. W. Stott