God is Love, and Love is God

God is love and Iove is not God conveys a subtle message that love is greater than God. Inherently, it is saying that there are some facets of love that our understanding of who God is disqualify Him from being the entirety of it. Ie. God satisfies some notions of love, but fails for the other notions of love.




This morning, I was reading an article titled "God is love and love is not God". The brief illustration of that idea utilized one single but arguably misquoted example to justify this point: if God is love, a loving God would never allow so-and-so tragedy to occur. This argument hinges upon our conviction of what love is and how it should look like. The flaw here is our understanding of love, not God's character of love.




So if we are talking about indulgent love, abusive love, insecure love, demanding love, then yes love is not God. But before we get carried away, these are no love at all!




The bible says God is love, in generic, for a purpose (I believe). It doesn't say God is a specific kind of love, only.




However, I want to propose this: God is love (this is established already), love is God (because God is big enough to satisfy the fullness captured by love), but love is not the entire God (simply because God is bigger).




Scripture says "we love because He first loved us." We are love, not because we can, but because He empowers us to. We get ahead of ourselves the moment we start thinking that we are capable of loving, by our own strength. 

What then is love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 give us a pretty cool definition of love: love is patient, love is kind. In the bible, many different versions of love had been utilized with each capturing an aspect of the critical love factor in context. We have agape, philia, storge, and eros. But God encompasses them all- for in 1 John, it has been made clear. We cannot love God whi we cannot see if we do not love our brother whom we see. And when Jesus restored Peter, the depth of love Jesus demanded from Peter increased in depth for each subsequent challenge. 

Love in the right vein reveals God's characteristic of love. When love competes, and love confuses, those are also points whereby love is confounded. Love is simple, just love~