God is Love!

The Apostle John writes that"God is love." But how do we define love? The American Heritage Dictionary defines love as "an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties." Often that "intense affection" stems from sexual attraction for that other person. We love others, or we say we love other people when we feel attracted to them and when they can make us feel good. Notice a key phrase in the dictionary definition, "based on." That indicates that we love conditionally, in other words, we love a person when he or she fulfills a condition that we require before we can love them. Our love is not only conditional, but it is also mercurial. That is, our love is based on feelings and emotions that are subject to change from one moment to the next. Can anyone comprehend unconditional love? Perhaps the love of parents for their children is the closest we can get to unconditional love without the help of God's love in our lives. God is love and His love is very different from human love. God's love is truly unconditional, that is it's not based on feelings or emotions. He doesn't love us because we're lovable, or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. He created us to have a loving relationship with Him, and He sacrificed His Son to restore that relationship after we exercised our free will and choose not to love Him. When Scripture says that God is love, they are not telling us that God is some nebulous, warm and fuzzy feeling. When Biblical writers speak of the love of God, they aren't comparing His love to our limited form of human love; they are teaching us that God defines love and His love sets the standard of what love can be. God is the very definition of love itself. There is no such thing as love without God. As hard as we try, love can't be defined outside of knowing Him. Our human definition of love then is false. The best way to describe God's love is to say that it's unconditional in its truest sense. His love doesn't respond to us. He loves, because He is love!