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God Is Love 7


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) 

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4) 

          That the Lord our God is one does not mean only that there is only one God, but that God is also united in His characteristics. We are focusing on God being love, and lots of people love to focus on “their god” being a loving god, but at the same time that God is love and loving, He is also wise, just, holy, forgiving, omnipresent, all-knowing, true, independent, merciful, jealous, blessed and blessing, eternal, unchanging, wrathful, and all the other things the Bible attributes to Him. We may discuss these things as being separate, but they aren’t. Technical, God isn’t loving. God is God, and we attach the label “loving” to Him. We’re both correct and incorrect.
          The same is true of love. Love can be said to have all those attribute, and more (as we’ll see) but love is never just one of the characteristics correctly attributed to it, but it is simultaneously all of them. That doesn’t mean that every characteristic we demand or attribute to it is there. People like to talk about “unconditional love” as if the unconditional is a require part of it. I’m sure I’ve done so. I’m not sure that it’s true. I need to think about it more. It seems to me, however, that if God is love and love is unconditional, then God must be unconditional, too. There are ways that I can see that possibilities, and ways in which I don’t think it’s true. I suspect there may be other, truer ways to express the idea.
          As with God, we may perceive different characteristics at different times. Because we perceive that God is being merciful does not mean that He is not also being just, true, omnipotent, etc. It only means that “merciful” is the characteristic we noticed and put a name on. In addition to our perception being faulty, we must also note that a Human loving is not the same as love loving. Humans are fallible, inconsistent, weak, etc. Humans change. They fail. Love does not.

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