GOD IS LOVE: Perfect LOVE Disperses Grace & Wrath

God is LOVE (1 John 4: 8-16). This does NOT mean that He is "just" loving and caring. Our Heavenly Father's very Being Itself is Love; it is not simply one of His attributes; it is HIM. (Yes, I wrote "Him;" God is spoken of in the male gender in Holy Scripture. Jesus always refers to God as "The FATHER.")

In context, God created the World and Universe via Jesus Christ, The Word (John 1, Genesis 1-3), and it was good. Love made the World. Before "the Fall," God the Father loved His Creation.

Perfect love, however, demands and requires discipline of those created. God chastises and punishes those He loves (Proverbs 3:12, Rev 3:19, Hebrews 12: 6-11). But, there is more. 

God, Whom is Love, also often kills or punishes harshly those He hates. Yes - God does also HATE; He names 14 people and groups in the first 50 Psalms alone that He hates; He also hated Esau before he was even born (Romans 9); He ordered the Genocide of the Midianites (Numbers 31); He tells us in Ecclesiastes 3 that there are times to HATE and to Kill. Want more examples? Read on. 

God also flooded and killed all of mankind but 8 (and some animals, etc) in the Great Flood (Genesis 6-8). And, how about the Egyptian Plagues? (Exodus 7-11), and God's exacting of justice and revenge upon mankind in the Book of Revelation? Let us not forget eternal Hell either. No one all-powerful would allow anyone they love or loved to spend forever suffering in Hell; that is diametrically against what love is.

What is the point being made here? Except for the very GRACE of God (via Jesus Christ) and His substance of love, we ALL would be dead and damned eternally in our sins. Why? 

As humans, we cannot fellowship with God due to our sinful nature that separates us from Him and His holiness, apart from accepting the payment of our sins via belief in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. This Payment was foreordained by God for us, because He loved/loves us (His own) so much!

Since God is Love, He is also PERFECT and this Love is perfected. This demands justice and rightiousness, as we have previously seen. 

Imagine if our Heavenly Father was not Love and loving, and treated we evil-hearted human beings exactly as we deserved to be treated? We All would be doomed, and eternally apart from this love of God Whom is Love....

- Jimmy Hall, MS/BBA