God Is Love.

“God is Love” (A message on true love for Valentine’s Day)

1 John 4:7-12, John 15:9-13

Robert Warren

February 10th, 2002

1 John 4:7-12

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how god showed his love among us; He sent his one and only Son into the world the we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This is the Sunday before Valentines day so you can be sure that all across this land preachers will be preaching on love. More specifically, they will be preaching about romantic love and most likely they will be condemning it. They will point to the futility of trying to find true happiness in the world’s definition of love. Love, they will say, is more than flowers delivered to your office, more than candy in a heart-shaped box, more than a sentimental card, more than a sappy song on the radio. Of course, they’re partly right about all that. Love is more than all that.

We can look at our world and see that a superficial love is like cotton candy, it looks filling but hardly makes a dent in your appetite. I’m sure that over 90% of all the songs on the radio are about love, yet you only need to take a look at the divorce rates in America or watch an episode of Jerry Springer (if you can stand to) to see that romantic love often falls short. We talk about love for our fellow man and sing songs like “We Are the World,” but then we see nations go to war with one another. We hold up the model of family love and then hear of mothers hurting and even killing their children, children disrespecting their parents, and brother turning on brother. Even the church, which should be the best example of a loving community, is often wracked with division and strife. Yes, our feeble attempts at human love often fall short of the mark.

Simply put, the love that we show one another, whether it be in romance, marriage, the world, the family, or the church is only a weak reflection of the way love is supposed to be. Blame it on our parents. No, not your mom and dad, but Adam and Eve, the father and mother of the human race. When they brought sin into the world by disobeying God they messed everything up, including love. It didn’t take long for the results of their sin to show up, either. First, they showed a lack of love to God by lying to Him and hiding from Him. Then the family was affected, with Cain killing his brother Abel. Before too long nation was hating nation and war and hatred became the norm rather than the exception.

But, as I hope to show you today, it wasn’t meant to be that way. God had better things in mind for us when He created us and it is possible for us to return to God’s plan of love. This is no minor thing, because love is what God is all about.

Yes, the first thing that I want you to remember from our scripture today is that God is love. People have long wondered why God created the universe. Some say it was so that He would have someone to worship Him. Others have suggested that He was bored. But, even though we will never know the answer to this question on this side of eternity, I have a good idea why He created the universe: He wanted something to love. Another minister and I were discussing the nature of God one day and we started talking about what God desires more than anything; that is, what is the most important thing to God? He stated that he thought that God wanted to be glorified more than anything. Thus, God did what He thought was best to bring glory to His name and the best thing that we could do as His subjects was to glorify Him. That means that we were created to glorify God and that if God could get glory by bringing a plague on Egypt or by condemning some people to hell than so be it, since that was God’s greatest goal. I had to respectfully disagree. I believe that God’s greatest desire is summed up in 1 John 7 and 8, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The scripture doesn’t say that we should love because God commands it or expects it. No, it says that we should love because God is love. He’s not just loving, He’s not just loveable; He is love. This sums up God completely, He is love. When you consider the motives of God, the nature of God, the laws of God, the holiness of God...anything about God, you have to put it through the filter that God is love. Why did He create us? Because He is love. Why did He send Jesus? Because God so loved the world. Why is He patient with us? Because God is love.