God is Love!

We are all quite familiar, if not with the exact reference ( I John 4:8; I had to look it up too ), at least with this very revealing phrase, but what exactly, does it mean?

Like many other such phrases, we 'bandy' those three words, 'I love you' about, often without really thinking about what they truly mean. Many often mistake the feeling, whether a companionable, warm feeling, or one more akin to a lustful feeling, emanating ( rising ) from some sexual urge, and most usually, rising to the occasion and creating a big mess! While true love can result, and should result in the first of these feelings, and often, depending on many different circumstances, in the second; love, first and foremost, is an action. James said, as I've been known to quote before, 'faith without works is dead': he goes on later to say 'show me your faith without ( doing ) works, and I will show you my faith by ( doing ) my works'. As faith without works is dead, so love without action is useless, and dead; this is where the choice comes in: there comes ( 'trust me, I'm a doctor' ) a time in every relationship where we don't feel love, anymore, for our mate, or spouse, in my case, the wife of my youth. When this happens, we have a choice before us! Do we go with our feelings, which by this time, may have turned to feelings of distrust, dislike, disgust, or even hate, or do we, because God loved ( us ), choose, because of our commitment, and love for God, continue to actively love that person?

I have said before, maybe in other words, and at other times, 'if you tell your wife every day that you love her ( I know, I can cry 'mea culpa' here ), how can she trust your words unless you show, by doing things for her, with her, etc., that you truly mean what you say, that you love her?' How is she to know, unless she sees it with her own eyes, feels your gentle touch with her own body, that you love her? Here is where the kinship between feelings and an active love comes in; a truly active love, depending, again, on circumstances, like to whom it is directed, will, as it should, most often result in the release of those sexual urges, while, in other cases, it is more akin to a brotherly ( or  sisterly ) affection, which again, if true, will result in action ( of a different sort )!

'God is love'; okay, we get it, but do we really? Try looking at it this way; 'God is Love, Love is God': while love may seem to be just another aspect of the nature of God ( and it is that, an aspect of His nature ), it is so much more than that! Many have asserted the proposition, or position that, because we have become one with God, and God is Love, we therefore, are Love as well. To some extent, this is true; we have become one with our Creator, through marriage to His Son, and thus with God Himself, but we are not God, and only love finitely, whereas He IS Love, infinitely! God, in His very essence, along with many other attributes, is Love itself! If we do not have a right relationship with Love itself, how can we truly love others? The apostle John put it this way; 'If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can^[c] he love God whom he has not seen?' ( I John 4:20 ) I believe that this cuts both ways; if one does not love, or know true Love, how can he truly love another? God is Love, therefore, without God, there is no love, except what is often mistaken for love, and more often masquerades, sometimes quite successfully as love, feelings! To paraphrase a certain Scripture, 'feelings fade, but the Love of God lives ( abides ) forever'!

The way we feel toward a person, whether that person is our father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, can change, usually on a mere whim, and sometimes from day to day ( 'I don't like you today; go away!' Ever hear that? ), but the Love of God, and thus Love Itself, never changes!

'In' Love, being loved, and loving,
Charles Haddon Shank