So God is Love eh? What does THAT mean?

I have heard it and so have you.  God is Love.  Okay...I accept that, and it is true and Biblical.  1 John 4:8 says God IS love. What's more is that literally everyone understands it on a visceral level.  We, as humans, just know that it is true.  But what does it really mean?  Does it mean that God just hands out blessings to us like candy?  Does it mean that His will always feels warm and fuzzy because, well, it is *love* right and love always feels good?  We all know that love is not always warm and fuzzy, especially if as parents we have had to love our kids by giving them consequences.  We also might know that, as a friend we sometimes have to say hard things to love someone.  It is not always so much fun to love or be loved.

So what IS love and what does it mean to love?

I think almost every wedding I have ever been to quotes from 1 Cor 13.  It is ubiquitous and I thought it was talking about, well, you know...love.  Like, how should the newly married couple behave, and how should I feel about my husband and kids, and how should I treat my neighbor...love.

I think now that is part of it, but, I also believe that it is a chapter describing God the Father who we already saw IS love.

Let's look at what 1 Cor 13 (the love chapter) says God is by substituting the word God for the word Love:

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have God, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have God, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have God, I gain nothing.

⁴ God is patient, God is kind. (He) does not envy, (He) does not boast, (He) is not proud. ⁵ (He) does not dishonor others, (He) is not self-seeking, (He) is not easily angered, (He) keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ (He) always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ God never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part,¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and God. But the greatest of these is God."

Oh what a difference that makes in helping me know God better!  I see so clearly now how He loves me.  Not with fake promises but with the real stuff that makes me know I am safe and cared for, and held to a standard of behavior, but done in such a way that it is perfect LOVE!

I am loved and His child, whom He loves.  Wow.