God Is Love

Mayor Gerardo Balmori

The Salvation Army

Love is a very popular idea in today’s world, it’s on everyone’s lips. Songs are sung, books are

written, and films are made all about love. But, we often forget that love is a truly Christian idea. It

is seen in its fullness only in Christ. Love originated in the mind of God, John says that “God IS

love”. But what the world calls love is extremely different from what God in Christ revealed love to

be.

Love is used 180 times in the New Testament so it must be an important topic, it must be

something that God wants us to grasp, so:

I. What is love?

Look at Verse 7 & 8 – here we find the origin of love.

John begins by telling us that Love comes from God, and the person who doesn’t love, does not

know God. It is difficult to understand this statement until love is defined. So, what is love?

Webster’s dictionary, defines love as a “strong liking for someone or something, or a

passionate affection for another person”. Verse 7 though says that love is from God, well God is not

of this world, and Webster’s definition of love involves objects of the world using the word

“someone or something”.

A man fell in love with an opera singer. He hardly knew her; his only view of the singer was

through binoculars - from the third balcony of the opera house. But he was convinced he could live

"happily ever after" married to a voice like that. He didn’t even notice that she was much older

than he was, nor did he care that she walked with a bit of a limp. Her soprano voice would take

them through whatever might come.

After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony, they were off for their honeymoon together.

She began to prepare for their first night together. As he watched, his chin dropped to his chest.

She plucked out her glass eye and plopped it into a container on the nightstand. She pulled off her

wig, ripped off her false eyelashes, took her false teeth out, unstrapped her false leg, and smiled at

him as she took off her glasses that hid her hearing aid. Stunned and horrified, he gasped, "For

goodness sake woman sing, sing, SING!"

So straight away we see that the problem is evident, love is from God, and therefore a human

definition is not sufficient enough to describe love.

In modern English, love is one word that has many meanings but if we look at the original New

Testament Greek we can see what type of love John is talking about. In Biblical Greek, words for

love include philia, eros and agape.

Phileo is friendship and it means brotherliness or companionship. – This is the love that we

would have between best friends.

Eros (not found in the New Testament) means sexual desire, this is where we get the word

erotic from.

Agape is godly love, unconditional and totally unselfish.

In other words Eros is all take, phileo is give and take, Agape is all give.

All through this section the word for love that John uses is agape. It’s not sentimental love, it’s not

sexual, and it’s not social love. It is a supernatural love that the Holy Spirit can put in our hearts,

and only the Spirit of God can make it real to us. In other words it’s the love of God.

II. Why are we to love?

1. It’s a commandment – Old and New

Lev 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou

shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

So the old commandment was to love each other in the same way as they loved themselves.

However Jesus then put a different slant on this commandment and said in John 13:34 A new

commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one

another.

2. Because God loved us.

You heard about the old farmer whose friend said about him: "That Fred loves His wife so much,

he almost tells her!" One of the huge differences between the kind of love we offer each other and

God’s love is His moves Him to act. We give Him plenty of reasons not to love us!

But, He showed the greatest act of love there could ever be. Look at Verse 9: Christ’s death on the

cross for you and me is the greatest love that anyone can have.

• Before Jesus came He already knew who would hurt Him, who would betray Him, and who

would deny Him – and He loved them.

• Jesus knew the name of the man that made the crown of thorns for Him, but Jesus says I love