The Being of Love

    We've all likely said or thought it in some manner: "I don't see how God could love me so much considering how often I fail Him."

     While perhaps humble in its intent, such a sentiment actually belies an incomplete or misguided perspective of both God and love.  "God is love" declared the Apostle John, revealing that love is something far more than the doings of our Creator (I John 4:8).  Love rather involves "being" in God.  It is who and what He is, and His holiness requires that He can never be anything less.

    Of no one else can this be said.  All others who know, experience and express genuine love do so in response to God's involvement and working on their behalf.  "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5).  We cannot be love as God is love, and thus our experience waxes and wanes according to our response of faith and submission to Him.  This is never true of our Heavenly Father.  He always is who He is, and He cannot be other than Himself.  Accordingly, He loves us based upon who He is rather than upon who and what we are, or what we do.  Our often faulty understanding of love results from this completely different sensibility in God than exists in us.

    Humanity carelessly tosses about the word and concept of love when we actually have little real understanding of what love actually is.  The Bible alone defines love in its truest sense, and the Holy Spirit alone reveals genuine love in those who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Growing understanding and experience of this sublime beauty of God's being and character will lead us not to wonder how He could love us, but rather to worship because He cannot be and do anything else.

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."

(Ephesians 3:14-19)