God is Love

1 John 4:7-12 (ESV)
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

You may have heard this last phrase many times that 'God is love'. The phrase does not just say that God is loving, or that God is full of love, but that God IS love. God is the definition and the epitome of love. Love is who God is. But what is love? Here in this verse we see that love is something that one does, as it says, "anyone who does not love, does not know God". Love is a verb, a doing word. Love is not a feeling, the warm and fuzzy feeling that we feel towards another. That is not God's love. God's love always works, and all God's works are love, because He Himself is love.

And because God is love, His law and His commandments towards us, His creatures, are also love. Read what Jesus said:
Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)
And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. [38] This is the great and first commandment. [39] And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. [40] On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
Jesus is saying here that loving God and loving man was the summary of ALL of God's law and His statutes. God commands and expects us to be loving people. That is why God created us, so that we may love Him, our Creator, and love our fellow man as our own selves. This is our purpose in life. God wants us to love Him above all things, and not put other things above Him in our priority. God does not want us to make other things to replace Him, that we serve those things instead of Him. God wants us to use His name in a holy manner, that we may use His name only to give Him praise and honour. God also requires us to respect the weekly Sabbath, that we may rest, and acknowledge Him as the Creator who created the world in seven days. God wants us to honour our mothers and our fathers. He does not want us to hate others, or to call them names, nor want us to talk about others behind their backs. He does not want us to be unfaithful with our husbands and wives, and he does not even want us to look lustfully at those whom we are not married to. God does not want us to steal other people's things, even if it is the smallest thing that the other person do not notice. God does not want us to lie, and say things that which are not true about our neighbours. God does not want us to desire that which belongs to someone else, but that we be content with those things that we have. These are the things that our God who is love, expect us to do as people who were created in His image.

But we have not done these things. We have not loved. We have loved other things more than God. We have hated having God in our mind. We rarely think about this world as His creation, and we do not give thanks to Him for the things He has given us. We use His name lightly, and even use His name for a cuss word. We don't honor Him and give Him the glory as King of this world, but we instead think of Him as if He was one of His own creatures, and compare Him to a mere man or an animal, and even make statues or images to worship instead of Him. We don't love God. We also are not loving to our fellow man: We are disobedient to our parents; we have hated and had murderous and injurious thoughts of our neighbors; we are lustful in both heart and deed; we have stolen things from other people; we have lied and spoken falsehood against our neighbors; we have desired what others have. We are never content with what we have, but always lust after things we don't have, having greedy hearts. These things that we long for are like our gods that we serve, for whom we live and we devote our lives to, instead of the God that created us.

We are not people of love. We don't do any love. All the acts that appear 'loving' are always done for self-gain and for self-pleasure, but not really for that person. We don't love God and others, but we only love our selves, living for our selves and doing everything only for our own profit. We dare not sacrifice anything for others purely for the others' sake, but only if it makes us feel good or if there is something favorable for us in return. We are not patient, we are not kind, but we are envious, we are arrogant, we are rude, we insist on our own way, we are irritable, we are resentful. We are not love:
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant [5] or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [6] it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. [7] Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We don't perfectly and unconditionally love God and people. And this is a problem. Why? Because "anyone who does not love does not know God". And why is not knowing God a problem? Because it is eternal death:
John 17:3 (ESV)
And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Jesus said knowing God is eternal life, which means not knowing God is not having this eternal life. God, who is love, cannot grant eternal life to a people who is not loving both to God and to people. God, because He IS love, must punish our acts of lovelessness. God is love, and therefore He HATES the acts of lovelessness that we have displayed. Our lovelessness does not reflect God's loving character, which we were created to reflect. We have failed His standards of love miserably, and therefore God must judge us eternally. He cannot stay in fellowship with us forever, since we haven't even come close to fulfilling His standard of love, by which we will be judged on the Day of Judgment. We, with all our lovelessness, are detestable to Him, and He will make us to be separated from His presence forever in Hell, a place where we will be punished forever for the lawless, evil, loveless crimes we have committed against this God of love.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

But the Good News is that God has made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins, that we may have eternal life and fellowship with Him forever. It is by the display of GOD's love towards unloving sinners. This above verse says that in this way God's love was made manifest to us: "that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him". Out of His love, God sent His only Son into this world, to be born of a virgin, that He would come to earth as a human being. This God-man is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lived on this earth, and did many miracles, and healed many who were sick, even raising those who were dead. He did many great things, but the main purpose why He came to earth was to fulfill one mission: to die for the sins of His people and to rise again from the dead. God demonstrated His love toward sinners by taking the punishment, guilt, condemnation and the curse of their sins and placing them on the body of Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, and by crushing Him by the full force of His anger, killing Him on the Cross as a sacrifice for sins. This is the way God showed His love towards His people. And His promise is that anyone who trusts in this sacrifice of Jesus Christ is no longer condemned, but can have the assurance of eternal life with God:
John 3:16 (ESV)
"For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
This is the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus Christ. It is the good news of God's love towards us. All we must do is to turn away from our loveless deeds, and to believe and trust in this Son of God to take us to heaven when we die. When we believe in Christ, we go to heaven not because of what we have done, since we have done nothing but to offend God with our lovelessness. But we get to go to heaven purely and only because of what Christ did on earth to fulfill all the righteous requirement of God's law of love, by His life, death and resurrection.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This verse says truthfully that we have not loved God first, but it is God who loved us first. Indeed we have not loved God at all, but actually we have hated Him. We have offered Him nothing but our hatred. We have ignored Him, and have barely acknowledged Him our whole life. But see how great God's love was, that He sent His only Son to be a propitiation - which means the Satisfaction - for our sins. We are the ones who sinned, but it was Jesus Christ who paid the price. God's justice and His punishment was fully satisfied when His own Son, by His own will, chose to die for our sins. We haven't done anything worthy to deserve heaven, but we have done nothing but condemn the sinless Son of God with our sins. There is nothing we have done to receive this great gift of God. It is God who loved, because He is love, and this was the best act of love that He could offer us.

All that remains for you is to receive this love of God by putting your trust in this Satisfaction offering that God has made for your sins. Jesus Christ bled for you, so that all your sins may be forgiven, only if you believe in Him. Trust in Christ, and God will make you to be righteous before His eyes. Jesus Christ's perfect love to God and to man will be reckoned to be yours, if you only, by faith, reckon your sins to be crucified with Him on that cross. Throw yourself to Jesus Christ. He is still alive today, and He is the one whom God has appointed to be the Judge of all the earth. He will come back one day and call us to account everything we have done that was not loving. How will you escape this judgment on that Day without Christ? You will never escape, if you reject Jesus Christ today. There is no other name that God has given under heaven that we may be saved. Save yourself today. Turn away from your sins, and trust in Jesus Christ to be your righteousness, so that the love of God will come to you, and be in you to be a well that springs up to eternal life!:
John 4:13-14 (ESV)
Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, [14] but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."