When the scriptures tell us that, “God is love” they do so in the context of the sacrificial love of the son for his people, and our need to love one another, as the people of God, as a result of God’s love for us (1 John 4:7-12). God’s love is revealed to us primarily in the sending of Jesus, his son, into the world to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. It is at the cross that we begin to comprehend the full extent of God’s love for us. God’s love is so great that he desires that none should perish; therefore, he sent his son into the world to deal with our sin and to bring us back into a restored relationship with himself. As John declares in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God’s love is manifest for the whole of the world, the cosmos, the entire created order, but it is manifest initially, and perhaps primarily in the calling out of a people to himself.
Consequently, as the people of God, we are called to “love one another, for love comes from God” (I Jn. 4:7). Likewise, “. . . since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ”(1 Jn. 4:11). Thus God as set us an example of love that we should follow in our relationship to one another. It is by this means that God’s “love is made complete in us” (1 Jn. 4:12).
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