IMAGES OF GOD #11

God is love.

This does not mean that God is what we think love is. Our human experience of love is limited to kind of love we have received from other humans, whose love is conditional and changing.

To understand God as love, and to understand the kind of love that God has towards us, we must look at what he has done to demonstrate that love to us.

He demonstrated his love towards us in this: that while we were still ungodly, while we were still his enemies, while we were sinners, he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to take the full and complete penalty for our sins, and through that action, to reconcile us to himself forever.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

This perfect love of God, which provides the forgiveness of our sin and our reconciliation with God, banishes the fear of punishment, setting us free to love him.

Scriptures: 1 John 4:16; Romans 5:6-10; 1 John 4:10, 18,19.