Love

SCRIPTURE:  God is love. 1 John 4:8 ETB (Every Translation of the Bible)

THOUGHT: Three little words, and everyone agrees. All the serious scholars, all the intense intellectuals sitting around tables in dusty publishing houses, all those across time who’ve translated Scripture from its original languages, everyone. Kind of a miracle. Well, okay, to be fair the Jubilee and Wycliffe translations use the word “charity” for love, but Mr. Wycliffe translated in 1382, Jubilee is a translation unto itself, and charity is the old-fashioned word for love in Latin, cāritās, meaning affection or love.

Regardless, they all agree that God is love, and that’s something worth spending a minute on. It’s probably one of the first things you learned as a child if you grew up in church. And yet, it’s probably one of the truths that’s been challenged in your adult life most often. Like a voice in a garden, did God really say? we are challenged over and over, is God really love? And what does that even mean?

Saying that God is love is defining God by a character trait, it’s giving God a name and reputation, like “John’s-son” or “Baker” or “Farmer.” It’s saying that at the very core, the essence of God is love (or charity) – that is God’s entire character, there is room for nothing else.

So, however you define God (if you ever stop to think about it), start from love and affection, and you’ll end up at a truer place than you would if you started from justice or righteousness or holiness. God is all those things, but they flow from the essence of his character: love. And that’s a promise.

SONG: Be Stillhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mejGZ21N9CE

PRAYER: Oh God, you named yourself once to Moses as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (Ex. 34:6).” Help me remember that you are the essence of love when the voice of the enemy tries to tell me anything else.