How do we understand God is love? All we have to do is recognize that God is a Trinity. In the understanding of His Triune nature, God the Father/Son and Holy Spirit, we understand what God’s love is. From there, we recognize also that in his fullness and perfection, the Bible makes plain that, from all eternity, God has had a perfect image of himself, the radiance of his glory.
The Bible calls it “the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). And this image is so complete with all that God is that the Bible speaks of this image as the second person in God and uses the language of Son of God, not because there’s any biological way that he’s a son — like he had sex with Mary and had a baby; that’s not what the Bible teaches. He’s a son, the second person that has always existed in and as the perfect image of God.
This Son is a son to indicate that they have the same nature. They’re both personal, and love reigns between them. The Bible speaks of God the Father loving God the Son, and God the Son loving God the Father, and the Bible points to the reality that this Spirit between them — this love between the Father and Son — carries, as it were, such a fullness of all that they both are that a third person exists, stands forth, has always stood forth in God.
So, the biblical picture is that there’s one God — not three gods — and that this one God mysteriously exists as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is one reason that it makes sense to say, as 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.” Love has been surging from all eternity in the fellowship of the three persons of the one God.
One question we can ask now is how do we in a fallen world, though having been born again in the spirit, understand this love? The answer is in the question… having been born again in the spirit. We were created in His image, spirit and in love. His love is not the ‘love’ of this world for the love of this world is love of the flesh. Being born again, we are made a new creation, and being a new creation, we walk according to the spirit. And, in this way, we know God’s love and that such love comes from God.
1 John 4: 15-17 ~ Love Comes from
God
If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in
God. And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him. In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we
may have confidence on the day of judgment…
John 15:10-11 ~ No Greater Love
If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My
Father’s commandments and remain in His love. I have told you these things
so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
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