God Is Love
He that loveth... Someone may profess to be a Christian but only those who display love like their heavenly Father actually possess His divine nature and are truly born again.
Knoweth not (οὐκ ἔγνω)
The aorist tense: did not know, from the beginning. He never knew.
is love (ἀγάπη ἐστίν)
See on God is light (1Jhn. 1:5), and the truth (1Jhn. 1:6); also God is spirit (John 4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of God's essential nature. Love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. See on love of God (1Jhn. 2:5). Truth and love stand related to each other. Loving is the condition of knowing.
God is love... God is a person and dwells in the light that no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen in all His glory nor can see (1Tim. 6:16). The phrase God is light does not constitute the being of God. It must be understood in the same sense that we understand God is love, God is good, God is a Spirit, God is a consuming fire, and other statements about Him. In the same sense we understand that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, or the door (John 10:9; 14:6). These expressions don’t do away with the reality and personality of God and Christ. See, John 4:24.
God is a Spirit Being, not the sun, moon, stars; nor an image of wood, stone, or metal; and not beast or man. He is not the air, wind, universal mind, love or some impersonal quality.
He is a person with a personal spirit body, a personal soul, and a personal spirit, like that of angels, and like that of man except His body is of spirit substance instead of flesh and bones (Job. 13:8; Heb. 1:3). He has a personal spirit body (Dan. 7:9-14; 10:5-19); shape (John 5:37); form (Phlp. 2:5-7); image and likeness of a man (Gen. 1:26; 9:6; Eze. 1:26-28; 1Cor. 11:7; Jas. 3:9). He has physical parts such as, back parts (Exo. 33:23), heart (Gen. 6:6; 8:21), hands and fingers (Psm. 8:3-6; Heb. 1:10; Rev. 5:1-7), mouth (Num. 12:8), lips and tongue (Isa. 30:27), feet (Eze. 1:27; Exo. 24:10), eyes (Psm. 11:4; 18:24; 33:18), ears (Psm. 18:6), hair, head, face, arms (Dan. 7:9-14; 10:5-19; Rev. 5:1-7; 22:4-6), loins (Eze. 1:26-28; 8:1-4), and other physical parts. He has bodily presence (Gen. 3:8; 18:1-22) and goes from place to place in a body like all other persons (Gen. 3:8; 11:5; 18:1-5, 18:22, 18:33; 19:24; 32:24-32; 35:13; Zec. 14:5; Dan. 7:9-14; Tit. 2:13). He has a voice (Psm. 29:1-11; Rev. 10:3-4); breath (Gen. 2:7); and countenance (Psm. 11:7). He wears clothes (Dan. 7:9-14; 10:5-19); eats (Gen. 18:1-8; Exo. 24:11); rests (Gen. 2:1-4; Heb. 4:4); dwells in a mansion and in a city located on a material planet called Heaven (John 14:1-3; Heb. 11:10-16; 13:14; Rev. 21:1-27); sits on a throne (Isa. 6:1-13; Dan. 7:9-14; Rev. 4:1-5; 22:3-6); walks (Gen. 3:8; 18:1-8, 18:22, 18:33); rides (Psm. 18:10; Psm. 68:17; 104:3; Eze. 1:1-28); and engages in other activities.
He has a personal soul with feelings of grief (Gen. 6:6), anger (1Kgs. 11:9), repentance (Gen. 6:6), jealousy (Exo. 20:5), hate (Prov. 6:16), love (John 3:16), pity (Psm. 103:13), fellowship (1Jhn. 1:1-7), pleasure and delight (Psm. 147:10), and other soul passions like other beings (Gal. 5:22-23).
He has a personal spirit (Psm. 143:10; Isa. 30:1) with mind (Rom. 11:34), intelligence (Gen. 1:26; Rom. 11:33), will (Rom. 8:27; 9:19), power (Eph. 1:19; 3:7, 3:20; Heb. 1:3), truth (Psm. 91:4), faith and hope (Rom. 12:3; 1Cor. 13:13), righteousness (Psm. 45:4), faithfulness (1Cor. 10:13), knowledge and wisdom (Isa. 11:2; 1Tim. 1:17), reason (Isa. 1:18), discernment (Heb. 4:12), immutability (Heb. 6:17), and many other attributes, powers, and spirit faculties.
He has been seen physically many times (Gen. 18:1-33; 32:24-30; Exo. 24:9-11; Jos. 5:13-15; Isa. 6:1-13; Dan. 7:9-13; Eze. 1:1-28; Acts 7:56-59; Rev. 4-5), and can be understood by the things that are made. Man is the visible image and likeness making the invisible God clearly seen as in Rom. 1:20.
When you find a person filled with hate, you know that he, or she, has never experienced that great unselfish love that God has for each of us. There is a need in every person to be loved. Some have never realized that anyone loves them. When you find a person in this condition, if you can make them understand that God loves them, they will change.God is love (also 1Jhn. 4:16). This simple sentence embodies the profoundest religious truth; yet it can be perverted into a callow slogan, in which God is pictured as some sort of floating fuzz-ball of love, accepting everything and judging nothing. This is wrong for two reasons: (1) God's love is not mere feeling, but action, as the familiar John 3:16 teaches: God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son to die for us sinners who needed rescue (compare 1Jhn. 4:12 below and 1Jhn. 3:16-18 above). (2) God is not only love; he is also justice, pouring out wrath on those who reject his mercy (Rom. 1:18; 2:16; 3:19-20). Believers must proclaim not only God's love, but also his hatred for sin and his intolerance of human pride that presumes on God: God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7).
C. S. Lewis points out an interesting relationship between consciousness of self and love as spoken of in this chapter:
"There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a 'self,' can exist except in contrast with an 'other,' a something which is not the self. It is against an environment, and preferably a social environment, an environment of other selves, that the awareness of Myself stands out. This would raise a difficulty about the consciousness of God if we were mere theists: being Christians, we learn from the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that something analogous to 'society' exists within the Divine Being from all eternity-that God is Love, not merely in the sense of being the Platonic form of love, but because, within Him, the concrete reciprocity of love exist before all worlds and are thence derived to the creatures." (The Problem of Pain, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., paperback edition 1962, p. 29)
Hence, one who loves in the Christian sense of that term has been born of God (cf. 1Jhn. 2:29; 3:9; 5:1, 5:4, 5:18) and he knows God. Love stems from a regenerate nature and also from fellowship with God which issues in knowing Him (see 1Jun. 2:3-5). The absence of love is evidence that a person does not know God. Significantly, John did not say such a person is not born of God. In the negative statement only the last part of the positive one (in 1Jhn. 4:7) is repeated. Since God is love, intimate acquaintance with Him will produce love. Like light (1Jhn. 1:5), love is intrinsic to the character and nature of God, and one who is intimately acquainted with God walks in His light (1Jhn. 1:7).
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