“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (1John 4:8)
John didn’t write that God has love, but that God is love. His essence is love and is expressed in joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness and mercy. If you recognize those characteristics that’s because they are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He is the One working in us to make us more and more like our Lord. (Galatians 5:22) The Holy Spirit is at work in us to help us and to teach us to be like the children of the Most High God. We are born of God. He is our Father. We should have the characteristics of our Father reflecting in our lives. These are not characteristics that we create and develop in ourselves. It only comes from the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit in us. Looking at the list, we can truthfully say that we have a long way to go. God is love and expresses His love in His character. As children of God, we cannot express these characteristics without a touch from God.
The God kind of love is found in 1Corinthians 13. It’s a meter we can use to gauge how far we have come and how far we need to go. Any victory is nothing to take pride in because anything we have conquered doesn’t even compare to God’s standard. “Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.” (1Corinthians 13:4-7 GNB) At the end of the day, in review of the events, good and bad, we can determine if we came up to the standards of love described by Paul and God’s standard including His expression of love in the fruit of the Spirit.
How are we sure that we don’t come up to God’s standard and cannot and will not while we are here on this earth? I know I couldn’t go to the death chamber for a guilty person, even if it were my parents. I would experience deep sorrow and anguish if this were true, but I could not and would not take their place, their punishment and death. And I don’t believe even a parent would take the place of their child in the gas chamber and take their punishment and death if they were guilty. Although their love for their child may be with all their existence, they would not be compelled to do it. But Jesus did it. His love is divine and beyond our ability to love. He went in our place and not just for us, but even for those who mock and hate Him.
Titus wrote, “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3) We were haters. Our Scripture in 1 John tells us that a person who hates cannot know God. That word “know” in 1 John was translated from the Greek word meaning to be aware of. Those that hate are not even aware of God. How many people in a three-mile radius of us are not even aware of God. They awake without even an inkling that there is a God. They go about their day, tossed here and there without a purpose or direction except to satisfy their flesh and to do evil. They do not love because love comes from God. They are far from God and far from love. The existence of God doesn’t even enter their minds.
In Romans 5:10, Paul wrote that we were enemies of God before being reconciled to God. So then, unbelievers, haters of God and others are God’s enemies. If they are God’s enemies, they’re our enemies. Do we love our enemies enough to share the Gospel even if we know they will mock, ridicule and abuse us? God commanded us to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27) We may not know all the theology or even the Scriptures that point to Jesus as Lord and Savior, but we know what God has done in our lives. And we can share that.
We may think we love, but God’s standard of love is sacrificial. In the Greek there are eight words for love. Is our kind of love the sacrificial kind of love? Is it God’s kind of love? When we can answer that yes, we can take another’s punishment and death, then we can say that we love with the God kind of love. Don’t fret. We will never reach God’s standard, but in our journey with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can love with a sacrificial love that although not to God’s standards, is beyond this world’s standard.
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