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God Is Love 3


 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)


          The second characteristic of God that Wayne Gruden lists is unchangeableness or immutability. He defines it as follows: God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.” (Systematic Theology, p 163.)
          As cynical as I can be, I don’t have any problem with the first part of this definition. Love does not change. If it changes, it is no longer love, and perhaps never was. To use Meatloaf’s description, it might have been wanting or needing because those change. We change. We start loving, we stop loving, how we feel abut love and the beloved changes, but love does not. “I love you to the moon and back,” isn’t what love says. Love says, “I love you.” (I love you, period.) 
          I’ll grant, I have some problems with the second half of this one. In the sense that God is love, I’m wrong about this, but I have a hard time thinking of love as feeling or acting. It produces feelings in us. It causes us to act, but while I am very willing to talk to God (who is love) I would find it more than a little unusual to talk to love. Love causes us to feel emotions, love inspires us to act differently in response to different emotions. But does love feel them, can love respond independently of our bodies, writing a check, touching a hand? 
         It may be my failure to understand love that leads me to that question. Certainly, however, it causes us to act and feel differently in response to different situations. Love causes us to take from a baby something the baby wants but that isn’t good for the baby. Love causes us to feel jealous of someone who is leading the beloved in a harmful direction. Love kisses the boo boo, and then lets us know what we did wrong to get it (or reverse the order.)  

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