God is Love

Pastor Carol Grace ♦ May 14, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

(NIV) 1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

We just celebrated Mother’s Day, and for many of us our mother’s love was the first love we knew. But may I tell you as deep as a mother’s love is, it is the love of God that is the supreme example of that word.

Love is both a noun and a verb. To describe the qualities of love is one thing, but putting those qualities into action is quite another.

In today’s scripture we see that God showed His love by not only sending His Son to be born upon this earth, to live and to die, but it was the sacrificial death of Jesus that saved us from the punishment of sin. It is that same love that spans the gulf that separates us from God, and that love is in the form of a cross.

I have never liked the saying “hate the sin, love the sinner.” Why? Because I have seen too many people wear this saying like a badge of honor, when it should produce a deep humility that moves us to not only care for others but care about their situation. When Jesus confronted the Samaritan woman at the well, love did not prevent Him from pointing out her sin. When healing, Jesus did not ignore the sin. Instead, He cautioned the person to go and sin no more.

In the post-modern world, we have confused loving the sinner with accepting the sin. Part of the problem is not just that the definition of sin has become blurry, but in an effort to become tolerant we are trying to strike the word sin from our very lexicon. How do we eliminate the notion of sin yet leave the Bible intact? We cannot, and therefore people are trying to label the Bible as archaic, thus ridding ourselves of any suggestion of sin. And so the folly of man has come full circle where man tried to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil but choked on it.

God’s love comes naturally to Him because it is part of His nature. It seems our nature does not produce love, and so we have to fight against our nature and the result is often messy. We need to realize, once and for all, that becoming Christ-like does not mean we turn a blind eye to sin. Instead, we speak the truth in love, for a love that allows people to remain in their sin is not love at all, but an acquiescence that their choice will separate them from God for eternity.

May each of us bow before a holy God, asking for the ability to show Christ’s love to our family, friends and even strangers—a love that is neither blind nor judgmental, but patient and kind.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.