“God is love.” 1John 4:24
We spoke last week of how God’s love toward us is not influenced in any way other than by His own absolute sovereign will. That kind of uninfluenced love is foreign to us, as our love is caused and exercised by those who may attract us or respond to us favorably. They deserve or win our love. This may well beg the question; “Why and how does God love without being influenced by anything or anyone”? The answer, is to grasp who God is in His very essence. “God is love.”
I wish to quote Octavius Winslow here to help us understand;
“God is essentially love. Love is not so much an attribute of God as it is His being itself. He would not be God were He not love. To deny that He is love would be to deny that he is God...... [His love] is the central perfection around which, as satellites, all the others [perfections/attributes] revolve, and from which, as harmonized in the salvation of man, they derive, heir position and luster. Thus, for example, omnipotence is the power of love; omniscience is the eye of love; omnipresence is the atmosphere of love; holiness is the purity of love; justice is the fire of love. Thus might we travel the circle of the divine perfections, and each one would be found to be but another form of the essential perfection of love.”
In other words, all God’s perfections/attributes are but emanations or expressions of the essence of His being, which is love.
Winslow again states that, “love is so completely the essence of God that it shines out in every perfection of His nature and is exhibited in every act of His administration” [actions].
This means that every action of God toward us, whether it be mercy, justice, truth, faithfulness or His holiness is encircled, bathed and proceeds from the essence of who God is, which is love!
Let us pause and adore Jesus Christ whom we love, because he first loved us!