Tuesday - God Is Love

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." — 1 John 4:8

Our society talks a lot about love, but we know very little about it.

Teenagers say "I love you" to someone they met three weeks ago. People say "I love pizza" and "I love my wife" in the same breath. Our idea of love has gotten pretty muddled.

Part of the reason is that in English we only have one word for love. The Greek language of the New Testament had several:

Eros — romantic love
Phileo — friendly love
Agape — and that's the word John uses here

Agape is unconditional, divine love. It's a love that loves without expecting anything in return. It's a love only God can produce. The New Testament writers took that word and filled it with so much meaning that it became the word for God's kind of love. His love was so revolutionary that ordinary words couldn't hold it.

And notice what John says. It's not merely that God loves. God is love. Love is His very nature. Everything He does is rooted in and motivated by love.

He loved you first.

"We love him, because he first loved us." — 1 John 4:19

Think about that. God knows all. He transcends all. He's magnificent beyond anything we can imagine. And yet His love for you has been in His heart longer than the world has existed. This almighty God loves you with an almighty love.

You'll never find the bottom.

Maybe you're thinking, "Surely there's a limit. Surely I've done something that put me outside of that love."

You'd think so. But that's not what the Scriptures say.

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." — Romans 8:38–39

Look at the people God used in the Bible. David was an adulterer, and he never found the end of God's love. Peter denied Jesus three times, and he never found the bottom of God's love. Paul persecuted and killed Christians, and he never found a limit to God's love.

All of them hit rock bottom in life. None of them ever found the bottom of God's love.

"…Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." — Jeremiah 31:3

A lot of things are going to change over the course of your life. But one thing never will — God's unconditional, unrelenting, everlasting love for you. God will never love you any more than He does right now, and He will never love you any less.

His love is long enough to last forever. It's wide enough to embrace everything about you. It's deep enough to pull you out of your deepest despair. And it's high enough to cover every sin you've ever committed.

That's agape love.

And here's the hard part: the person you're struggling to love today? God loves them with that same love. They may not deserve it. But neither do we.