God Is Love
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God Is Love
God Is Love
The attribute of God that we are going to look at this morning may be the most difficult and misunderstood attribute.
We are going to look at the Love of God.
And you may be looking at me like I’m crazy.
B/c it seems like a simple to understand concept.
We all know what love is.
Or at least that what we say.
But If I came up to you and asked you to define love, how would you respond?
Some people respond that love is an intense emotion.
A feeling of connection with someone.
Some would define love as attraction
Some would say that it is an evolutionary response to get us to procreate or have more babies.
Songs have been written about Love.
Love is all you need.
Lovin’ you is easy cause your beautiful.
I want to know what love is.
What’s love got to do with it.
Some have high standards for love.
Some have low standards for Love.
What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.
Not just songs, but books, plays, and paintings all about love.
Love is something that permeates our lives.
We love, Love.
And Yet one of the key issues is that we have a hard time defining love.
Or we at least have a hard time agreeing on the definition.
The difficulty with us agreeing on a definition of love, means that we should recognize that love is bigger than humanity.
Love is bigger than ourselves.
Love means more than we can imagine.
Which means that our understanding or thoughts about love have to come from somewhere or someone who is outside of ourselves.
And we have the answer of where this idea of love comes from.
It comes from the creator of the universe.
It comes from the God of the Bible.
He is the source and fount from which love flows.
This is why John can write in 1 Jn 4.8
1 John 4:8 (CSB)
8 ...God is love.
The Love of God permeates his very being.
and not only that, but every attribute possessed by the Godhead is connected with this attribute of Love.
And b/c God is holy, perfect, gracious, unchanging, sovereign, and good, all of these attributes are also infused with his perfect limitless and boundless and far-reaching love.
All of creation experiences God’s love on some level.
We get to experience from him.
We get to experience it from others.
This demonstrates the goodness of God.
B/c Without his love overflowing to his creation we wouldn’t be able to love anyone or anything.
So if we want to understand what love is.
If we want to understand how to truly love, we must look to God’s love as the marker and standard of love.
Why is this important for us who are following Jesus?
B/c God’s commands to those who want to follow him have to deal with love.
35 And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him:
36 “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”
37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38 This is the greatest and most important command.
39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Here Jesus is saying that loving God and loving people is how we obey God and follow after him.
But again that begs the question what does it mean to love God and love others?
Well in order to answer that question let’s look at how God loves.
and when we see how God loves, then we will have a fuller picture of what it means for us to love.
I want to begin with a definition of God’s love and then see how that plays out.
So a good definition of God’s love is
The Love of God: God eternally and perfectly gives of himself to others.
The Love of God: God eternally and perfectly gives of himself to others.
Before we start this journey looking at the love of God, let’s pray and ask for his guidance.
Trinitarian Love
Trinitarian Love
The first place we need to begin is with Trinitarian Love.
I know that this might be a somewhat weird jumping off place, but if we want to truly see how God loves then this is the starting place.
What exactly do I mean when it comes to Trinitarian love.
It means that the starting point of any type of love begins within the trinity.
God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit love one another.
In fact, the love within the trinity is the perfect picture and example of all love.
B/c it is where love originated.
Between the three persons of the Godhead, there exists perfect eternal love.
We see this love on display in the gospels.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.
We see here that Jesus expresses the love he recieved from the father even before the world was created.
So if we want to understand the love of God, we have to first understand that it began in eternity past.
If we could travel back in time we there is not a point where the love of God the father for God the Son ceased to exist.
We get this picture of Jesus the Son and God the Father in John 1.18
18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
“At the Father’s Side”
The literal translation of this is on the bosom of the father.
That language makes us think about a close, deep and loving image between the Father and the Son.
The Son resting on the chest of the father.
Love demonstrated in close communion between the two.
We see this love further in Matt 3.17
17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
Jesus is the beloved of the Father.
This is an open announcement from the Heavens, the father’s dwelling place that he loves the Son.
Speaking about the greatness of the love that he has for him.
This same love that the father has for the Son and the Son has for the father is shared with the HS.
This self-existing love of the triune God is the birth place of love for all of God’s creation.
And this is the love that God extends to those who believe in the Gospel message.
God the father loves us with the same love that he loves Jesus with.
23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.
God Loves Us
God Loves Us
This is a profound understanding of God’s love for us.
The eternal, perfect, limitless, and unchanging love of God extends to those who have been adopted into his family.
Those who have trusted and believed in the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
You are loved by God if you believe.
If you hold to Jesus, you are loved completely, fully, and passionately.
If we are honest with ourselves, most of the time if we think about the love of God toward us, we tend to think that God tolerates us more than he actually loves us.
And a lot of this depends on your relationship with your earthly parents.
If you felt like a burden or an after thought to your parents or other loved ones, you can then apply that same thought to God.
But the love that God has for those who believe isn’t like that it is infinite.
It is boundless.
It is true.
Perfect.
And the reasoning for this is that his love for us isn’t based on anything that we do.
His love for us is based on his character alone.
God’s immeasurable love toward us is self originated.
When we believe the gospel message.
When we are transformed by the HS and know that Jesus is the one who died in our place.
Our status with God shifts.
It changes.
We are no longer God’s enemies, we are now his children.
We are no longer rebels we are sons and daughters.
1 John 3:1 (CSB)
1 See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are!
We are God’s children b/c God has lavished his love upon us.
He doesn’t love us b/c there is anything inherently good within us.
He loves us b/c of his own character.
And get this he loved us before we even loved him.
Before we even thought about God, before we even had an inkling of who he was.
He loved us.
10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
And this is good news.
If you did nothing to earn God’s love.
If you didn’t contribute to it initially then you can’t lose it either.
His love for us is not based on our love for him.
It is based on his initiating love toward us.
Now we do need to be careful here.
I don’t need us to get off the rails.
God’s love toward us, should initiate a response from us.
Here’s what I mean.
I know that someone can hear what I am saying and think.
“Man, God loves me and it doesn’t matter what I do. So, I can do whatever I want and God still loves me.”
That’s not what I want to convey here.
Yes God loves his children b/c of his character.
And if we are his children then we respond to his love, by loving him back.
And part of the way that we love him back is by obeying his commandments.
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands.
So out of our love for God’s love we pursue obedience to his instruction.
We must seek after and fight for holiness.
Our love for God should mimic his love for us.
And our love for God should overflow to others as well.
This is taking us back to the greatest commandments.
What does it mean to love God and love people.
So what are some characteristics of God’s Love.
Merciful Love
Merciful Love
First, I want us to see that God is merciful.
22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!
What is mercy?
A simple definition of God’s divine mercy is that he doesn’t give us what we deserve.
What do all people deserve?
Because of our sinful and rebellious state, we all deserve God’s wrath.
But God is merciful.
We are in a miserable state.
Rebels against him.
And instead of immediately wiping us out, he shows mercy on us.
This isn’t limited just to those who believe, mercy is given to all, but there is a special mercy that each believer receives.
The mercy of being born again.
The mercy of believing and knowing the Creator of the universe.
The mercy of Jesus’ sacrifice.
Similar to God’s merciful love, is God’ compassion.
God cares about and is concerned with the things that go on in the world and in the lives of individuals.
We see this often in Jesus’ ministry, he shows mercy and compassion on those who are sick and hurting.
Those who are the outcasts of society.
Those who everyone else looks at and thinks that they are less than.
But Jesus looks upon their helpless state and offers them love, mercy, and compassion.
To God you aren’t a nameless face.
You aren’t just a number.
You are loved by the one who knit you together in your mother’s womb.
You are seen in your sorrow.
You are loved in your afflictions.
God has deep and tender affection toward you.
The creator of the world isn’t divorced from your life.
He isn’t absent in the world.
Rather, b/c of his mercy and compassion he genuinely cares about you.
And what he wants us all to see from his mercy and compassion is that with out him we are all living a life of self-destructing sinfulness.
And that’s why the Father sent Jesus to this world.
To save us from the power of sin and death.
To show us the way of salvation.
Again, I want you to hear this,
God doesn’t simply tolerate you.
You aren’t a bother for God. His compassion for you demonstrates that he loves you deeply.
And how deeply does he love you through his demonstration of that love.
If we circle back to many people’s understanding about love it can be shallow, self-serving, and superficial.
But as we’ve seen so far God’s love isn’t any of those things.
God’s love is the purest form of love.
This aspect of God’s love is seen in it’s sacrificial nature.
Perhaps one of the best known and most beloved bible verses points this out.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Sacrificial Love
Sacrificial Love
In this verse, we see a few things.
We see that God loved the world.
And that his love is demonstrated to the world.
God demonstrates his love.
And it’s no small thing.
God gave his son.
His one and only son.
Monogenes-this is the Greek word for one and only.
But what does monogenes mean?
It means unique. Unlike any other.
One of a kind.
Jesus wasn’t and isn’t like all other humans in their relationship with God.
No he is the Son of God.
He is God.
He is the second person of the trinity.
There is no sacrifice that could have been greater than for The Father to give to the world His Son.
And Jesus didn’t just enter into the world, no he sacrificed himself on the cross for others.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God wanted us to see the love that he had for us.
He didn’t just use words, but through his actions and through his gifts he proved that he loves us.
And notice, in the proving that he loved us, it’s not because we earned it or deserved.
On the contrary, we are sinners.
We are rebels.
We are enemies of God.
And yet he proved his love for us by giving us his son.
What profound love is this?
To take it a little further, Jesus willingly died for us.
He gave of himself in perfect obedience and submission to the father.
He died for our sin.
but why?
B/c he loved us.
13 No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
So notice, both God the father and God the son in perfect unity demonstrate their love for us in the act of Sacrifice.
“Jesus gave the supreme demonstration of his sacrificial love at the cross.”
God’s love is pure and unadulterated.
It is perfect and demonstrative.
And as his followers we are called to share in his Love
Both toward him and toward others.
And at the beginning of the sermon I asked the question how do we do that?
How do we imitate God’s love?
How do we Love God and Love Others?
Or why should we
Imitate God’s Love
Imitate God’s Love
If we truly understand who God is and what he has done for us, it should be a natural overflow of our gratitude to imitate his love.
Now here’s something that we have to get right.
In order to imitate God’s love, we must know God’s love.
So that’s why it’s important to know how and why God loves his creation.
It is our knowledge of God’s love.
And our devotion to God’s love that allows us to imitate it.
Listen to what Jesus says one more time.
37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38 This is the greatest and most important command.
39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
So where is the starting point of obeying God’s commandments?
It is to love God with your whole being.
And we know how to love God, by examining Jesus’ life.
Jesus was the perfect example of how to prove our love for God.
Remember he loved the Father from eternity past.
So how did Jesus Love God?
He lived in obedience and submission to him.
That may be easy for him to do, right?
He is after all God in the flesh, so how do we do that?
Jesus tells us in Luke 9.23
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
If we want to follow Jesus.
If we want to live a life that Imitates Jesus’ life, then we must lay aside our own desires.
We must sacrifice our own life for the glory of God.
That means we must lay aside everything that will hinder our walk with God.
Denying yourself is living a life of self-sacrifice.
To our ears, you may hear, you must give up what makes you you.
You might hear that your life doesn’t matter.
But let me tell you that’s not what this means.
This means that the greatest good you can do.
The greatest you that you can be is when you look like, act like, and live like Jesus.
And if you have trusted in his sacrifice and believed in what he did on that cross when he exchanged his life for yours, then I want you to know that your life isn’t yours anymore.
Listen to how Paul puts it.
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
As a follower of Jesus, your life doesn’t belong to you any more.
It’s his life.
And if you truly believe and understand the weight and beauty of Jesus sacrifice you will want to live this way.
You will want to live for Jesus.
B/c trusting in Jesus isn’t just a prayer that was said and some water you were baptized in.
Following Jesus is a change of heart and a change of direction.
You were dead and now you are alive.
That’s why Paul can write in Romans 12.1
1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.
It is b/c of the mercies of God.
It is b/c of the love of God.
It is b/c you know who he is and what he did that you gladly offer your life to him.
Knowing that if you try to save this life you will lose it.
But if you lose this life for Jesus’ sake you will find it.
So loving God is sacrificing your sin and selfishness in order to seek out his goodness and Glory.
But that’s not where Jesus stops.
He also says that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
How do we do that?
By imitating God’s love for you.
Living a life marked by mercy.
Showing compassion to people.
Sacrificing for the good of others.
There are a lot of practical lists in the NT when it comes to living out a life that imitates Jesus, but I want to present to you with Romans 12:9-17
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good.
10 Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.
11 Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord.
12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer.
13 Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes.
And Gal 6.10
10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.
As followers of Jesus.
As those who love God, we should constantly and consistently doing good in the world around us.
To many believers are known more for what they are against than what they are for.
There are many of us who are known by what we hate rather than who we love.
We need to be loving our neighbors.
Showing them the goodness of God.
Demonstrating our devotion to him, while also being full of grace and truth.
This means that we don’t have to compromise God’s commands and God’s word, but we do need to proclaim the truth in Love.
The only things that we should really and truly hate is our own sin and the wickedness done in the world.
Other than that we should seek every opportunity to be good.
Our christian ethic, the way that we live our life as we pursue Christ should look radically different from the world.
It should look like Jesus’ ethic.
Confronting sin, loving mercy, and walking humbly.
We should focus on the kingdom of God and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.
We should focus on helping the hurting and loving the lost.
This is what it means to love our neighbor.
But the greatest thing you can do for your neighbor is tell them about the love of God.
Certainly we should fill their bellies.
But the gospel will nourish their souls.
And what is our motivation for that?
We do this b/c of the love that we have received from God.
The love that is demonstrated by God toward us as sinners.
19 We love because he first loved us.
If you haven’t experienced the love of God, I pray that you would open your heart, ears, and mind to how good he has been to you.
I pray that you would recognize that you are a sinner and deserve death, but God loved you and wants you to know him.
If you have forgotten the love of God that you once knew, I want you to know that God is wanting you to run back to his arms.
I can’t help but think about the story Jesus tells in Luke 15 about the prodigal son.
The son abandoned his father.
And he wallered in the sin and filth of the world.
He did with his life what he wanted to do and found it ultimately empty.
Sure there was fun, but there was no joy.
He ended up eating and sleeping with pigs.
Then the son came to his senses and realized that even his father’s servants were better off than he was.
So he went back home
20 So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him.
21 The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father told his servants, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
23 Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast,
24 because this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.
This is the love of the father.
Come to him and celebrate the life that he has given you.
Let’s pray.