The Word is Love
The
Apostle John gives us a powerful and beautiful insight into the word “love”.
Kenneth Taylor in his New Living Translation states is so well.
1 John 4:7-10 (NLT) 7 Dear friends,
let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves
is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know
God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and
only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This
is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a
sacrifice to take away our sins.
Love stems from a regenerate nature and also from fellowship
with God which issues in knowing Him. The absence of love is evidence that a
person does not know God. Since God is love, intimate acquaintance with Him will
produce love. Like light, love is intrinsic to the character and nature of God,
and one who is intimately acquainted with God walks in His light. (See 1 John
1: f regarding “light”).
If one wishes to know how God has demonstrated His love, he
need only look at the fact that God sent His One and only Son into the world
that we might obtain eternal life thereby (“One and only” translates “only born one,” which also is used in John
1:14, 18; 3:16). Moreover, this love was not a response to man’s love, but an
initiative on God’s part (1 John 4:10). By it the Son became an atoning
Sacrifice, “propitiation”. Nothing less than God’s love in Christ is the model
for the love Christians should have toward one another. [1]
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