The apostle John argues that we should love one another because of the love of God for us. He added that we love God because He first loved us.

"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that loves not knows not God, for God is love. . . And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love and he that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him." (1 John 4:7-16.)

Both the epistle of first John and the Gospel of John at 3:16 make a similar declaration about the love of God.

"Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." (1 John 3:16.)

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16.) There is little wonder why this passage is called the golden text of the Bible, for it certainly summarizes so much about God and the Gospel in one simple statement.

Why is God called love? Of all the attributes of God in Scripture, why is this one pointed out? The answer surely is because everything that He does is prompted by and motivated by love. All of the activity of God is done out of love. When he rules, He rules out of love. When God judges, he does so out of love. Love is so much the very nature of God that it conditions and guides all of His activity. John is not saying that love is just another of God’s many attributes, but that it is the nearest to God’s nature of all His attributes.

It is remarkable how many questions this simple statement about the love of God answers and how many difficulties it explains. Here are some major ones.

The Bible does not expressly say why God created the world. It repeatedly records that he did. But why would God create a world (man) which has given Him nothing but heart-breaking disappointment since the beginning? Man has been constantly disobedient, lukewarm, and rebellious to God. We have not properly responded to the love of God. There is constant bickering, division and trouble even among God’s people. We fail God so utterly. We do not accomplish much in his name. Why would God create a world, (knowing ahead what it was going to be like), that has brought nothing but trouble? Why?

Perhaps that perplexing dilemma can be explained by John’s simple declaration that God is love. Creation is essential to the very nature of God. If God is love, that means God cannot exist in lonely isolation. Love must have another to love. Why do humans keep animals as pets? Because they love them. For someone to say that if they had it to do over, they would not have any children, that surely is cynical at best and loveless at worst!

Philosophers have written and pondered over "the loneliness of God." Does God really get lonely as man does? To state it this way seems to imply that there was a necessity on the behalf of God to create man. It is perhaps better to say that the only necessity for God to create was the necessity which love prompts. It is the same concerning salvation. God could have remained just and righteous while allowing man to perish in his sin. The compelling factor was his love for man. There was no other necessity or obligation. In fact, much difficulty came into place over the very notion of God accepting sinful man in his presence. Paul declared the righteousness of God in doing so through Jesus Christ. The very righteousness of God was at stake because he wanted to save man, not because man might be lost forever! (Rom. 3:25-26.) Satan had grounds for being the accuser of the brethren until the death of Jesus Christ. (Rev. 12:10.)

One author said, "God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside himself, determined by nothing but his own mere good pleasure." (The Attributes of God, Arthur Pink, "The Solitariness of God," 9-10.) This is God’s sovereign self-sufficiency, but love motivates and obligates as nothing else can do.

Love not only explains creation, but it also explains why God made us the way he did. Churches are divided over the issue of free will; that is, whether man actually possesses free will. Unless we are deluded and do not understand our own mind and actions, we do have free will to act morally or immorally. The Bible does say, "Choose you this day whom you will serve" and "whosoever will let him come." (Joshua 24 and Rev. 22.) Those who argue that man does not have free will put the absolute sovereign of God over against the idea of free will. They say that if man does act freely, then God is not sovereign. But only are they putting God’s sovereignty against free will, but they also are arraying the love of God against it.

Unless love, our love for God, is a free response of choice, it is not love. It would be a mechanical response forced upon us by a sovereign God. Such a view destroys both our love for God and His love for us. God’s love explains why he gave us free will. It forms the very foundation for a personal relationship with God. Our response is not coerced, but freely given. No one would want the love of a mate or children as a result of force, but rather of choice. Otherwise, it is not love.

Biblically, I had rather argue for creation and free will on the basis of love, instead of sovereignty. This more accurately describes the heart and mind of God. Even when Paul forcefully argued the sovereignty of God, his point was not that God was capricious, arbitrary, and was showing respect of persons. Paul concluded that God did what he did for the salvation of man. Listen to these wonderful words:

"What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of glory on the vessels of mercy, which had before prepared unto glory, even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?" (Rom. 9:23-24.)

God endowed man with free will that the very purpose of creation might be fulfilled.

There are two major parts to the biblical story of man’s salvation. They are his lost condition due to man’s choice to rebel against God and his salvation in Christ Jesus. Or simply put, sin and salvation is the story. But there is something we best not forget. God was under no moral, ethical or legal obligation to save man. It would have, in fact, been easier if God had allowed man to perish. We mentioned this in the beginning of the lesson. (Rom. 3:25-26, Rev. 12:10.) He almost chose that alternative in the days of Noah. The Bible says, "God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart." (Genesis 6:5-6.)

God is not a man that he should repent. (1 Samuel 15:29.) He does not repent, as man must. But God does grieve over the choices of man when they are evil. Love prompted the creation in the first place and love is the reason for free will. Love is what made God grieve over man’s sinfulness. Love can be disappointed and hurt. Freedom is a gamble; it is a dangerous thing. It means that man can choose to do the wrong thing, the violently wrong thing.

Love is the reason given by biblical writers why Jesus came to be our Savior.

"But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8.) "That you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length, depth and height; and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph. 3:18-19.) "This is my command-ment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12-13.) "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it." (Eph. 5:25.)

Love explains what happened on the cross. Love explains the incarnation, all the suffering, and the resurrection. We sing these words: "Why did my Savior come to earth and to the humble go? Why did he choose a lowly birth? Why did he drink the bitter cup of sorrow, pain and woe? Why on the cross be lifted up? Then the chorus: Because he loved me so. He gave his precious life for me because he loved me so." (Song number 784, Praises for the Lord.) Those who will be lost eternally will be those who rejected and spurned this love. There is no greater sin than this. Paul ended his letter to the Corinthians by saying, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema (or cursed)." (1 Cor. 16:22.)

Providence simply means that God still works in our world for man’s good. Jesus said, My Father works until now, and I work. (John 5:17.) It is not a Bible word used in reference to God; however, it is a Bible concept and truth. The providence of God is much like parents caring for their children. Parents know what their children are experiencing and wisely intervene if they need to for their good. Providence is vision and understanding that is greater than man’s vision. It is action for good on the behalf of man. God provides because of his love for man. Parents provide for their children for the same reason.

"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matt. 7:11.)

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32.) God provides both His Son for our redemption and all else we need to be saved eternally. "But my God shall supply all your need according to the riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:19.) "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. 8:9.)

God’s love also explains why God disciplines us.

"My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loves he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? But if you are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are you illegitimates and not sons." (Hebrews 12:5-8.)

The Psalmist wrote, "Blesses is the man whom thou chastens, O Lord, and teaches him out of thy law." (Psalm 94:12.)

"He that spares the rod hates his son, but he that loves him chastens him sometimes." (Prov. 13:24.)

The only question concerning the chastening of the Lord is how he does it. When he chastens us is when we need spiritual or moral discipline. Discipline is not always in the form of punishment or rebuke. All teaching, guidance and correction is discipline. We are disciplined by God’s word; by its instructions about living. We are rebuked by his word. We do know that God sent other nations to punish Israel when they were wayward. How God chastens us today may not be fully known every time that it occurs, but be assured that if we are his sons he will deal with us as sons.