The True Nature of God

God Is Love

1John 4:7-12
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love
comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and
experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to
love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--
so you can't know him if you don't love.
This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into
the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we
are talking about--not that we once upon a time loved God, but
that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our
sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God. My
dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to
love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one
another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes
complete in us--perfect love!
 
The three most beautiful words in
the bible : God is love.
God is love. That is the start point,
the end point, and every point in
between for a good understanding
of theology. 
 “God is love”
(1 John 4:8, 16)
Love is God’s essence
“Love isn’t just something God does,
it’s who God is.”
Love is not one of the attributes
Love is the essence of all 
the attributes of God
love is not merely something God does;
love is what God eternally is. 
 How do you define “Agape”?

1) ‘’Unconditional Love’’
2) ‘’A love that sacrifices with no regard to getting a
Anything in return ‘’
3) ‘’To love someone with no strings attached’’
4) ‘’To love a person not based on their merits or performance.
5) A love that focuses on the party’s good and well being’’
 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love never gives up. Love cares more for others
than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't
have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled
head,
Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me
first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep
score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others plead, Takes pleasure
in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always
looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps
going to the end. Love never dies.
 SELF GIVIVNG
OTHER CENTRED LOVE
KENOTIC LOVE
In the eternal realm, the Father, Son, and Spirit have
always existed and forever will exist in a circle of
intimate love.

If this relational nature of God is the very first thing He

chose to show us about Himself in Scripture, it must be
central to how we see and understand Him.
(I John 4:7-19).
In these inspired words of the beloved
holy Apostle John, one see that man's
communion with God, his entire spiritual
life, is expressed in love. Where there is
no love, God is absent and there is no
spiritual life. Where love is, God is, and
all righteousness.
We are know by our fruit.
the fruit of the spirit is love
 Roman 5:5-10

(ALTNT)  and hope [or, confident expectation]

does not disappoint [us], because the love of
God has been poured out in our hearts by the
Holy Spirit, the One having been given to us.
 Romans 5:5-9 WNT Weymouth New Testament

and that this hope never disappoints, because God's love for us
floods our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to
us. For already, while we were still helpless, Christ at the right
moment died for the ungodly.
Why, it is scarcely conceivable that any one would die for a
simply just man, although for a good and lovable man perhaps
some one, here and there, will have the courage even to lay
down his life. But God gives proof of His love to us in Christ's
dying for us while we were still sinners. If therefore we have
now been pronounced free from guilt through His blood,
Rom 5:10 For if while we were hostile to God we were
reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, it is still more
certain that now that we are reconciled, we shall obtain
salvation through Christ's life.
 2Cor 5:18-19 And all this is from God, who has
reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and has
appointed us to serve in the ministry of reconciliation.
We are to tell how God was in Christ reconciling the
world to Himself, not charging men's transgressions to
their account, and that He has entrusted to us the
Message of this reconciliation.
Galatians 5:22 Fruit of the spirit is LOVE
Love is the key.
Joy is love singing.
Peace is love resting.
Long-suffering is love enduring.
Kindness is love's touch.
Goodness is love's character.
Faithfulness is love's habit.
Gentleness is love's self-forgetfulness.
Self-control is love holding the reins. 
Law is the fulfilment of the love
Gal 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in
this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
One Paul said Jesus said two
Paul said one word wait Jesus said two word
Mat 22:37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all
your mind.'
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.'
Mat 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the Law
and the Prophets."
Rom 13:8 Owe no one anything except to love God no
one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the
law. ( emphasis mine )
Not only Paul said that.
Peter says that in one word 1Pe 4:8 And above all
things have fervent love for God no it says one another,
for "love will cover a multitude of sins." (emphasis mine)
James said that one word Jas 2:8 If you really fulfill the
royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself," you do well;
One of the biggest problems is religion’s misuse
of the Law. This has done tremendous damage
to God’s image. The Law came by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John
1:17). The Law wasn’t inaccurate but
incomplete. And if it is not properly applied, it
gives a wrong representation of God.
A wrong understanding of the purpose of
the Old Testament Law leads to a
misunderstanding of the nature of God.
Most people believe God gave the Law to
show us what we needed to do to obtain
relationship with Him. But the Law was
never intended to bring us into relationship
with our heavenly Father
For 2,000 years, after Adam’s fall, God dealt with
mankind through mercy and grace, which wasn’t
evident when the Law came. For instance, God
protected the first murderer (Gen. 4:15) instead of
killing him as the Law later prescribed (Lev. 24:17).
Abraham married his half-sister, which the Law said
was punishable by death (Lev. 18:9). Jacob married
two women who were sisters, which the Law
condemned to death (Lev. 18:18). Yet Abraham and
Jacob became two great patriarchs of the Old
Testament because God wasn’t imputing man’s sins
unto him at that time (Rom. 5:13)
God really is like Jesus
The most defining difference
between the Old and New
Testament is that Jesus refines our
understanding of the character of
God. God is not the one who comes
to steal, kill, or destroy, that’s the
enemy; God comes to bring life (
John 10:10).
God does not accuse and condemn, that’s the enemy; God comes to
heal and save (John 3:17)
God does not demand the stoning of sinners, that’s the enemy; God
enables them to live free of sin (John 8:11).
 God dies for his enemies and doesn’t count their sin against them and
by doing so, reconciles them (2 Cor. 5:19).
God does not send evil spirits to torment and deceive people (
1 Samuel 16:14, 1 Kings 22:22), rather God casts evil spirits out (Matt.,
Mark, Luke, and John).
God does not want us to live in fear, but reveals a perfect love that
casts out fear (1 John 4:18). 
God’s intent is to free the oppressed, bring good news to
the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, heal the sick, and
set the captive free (Luke 4:18). God is Abba, the Father
of Lights, from whom all good things come, and there is
no shadow of turning from this (James 1:17). God is light,
and does not have a dark side (1 John 1:5). God comes to
heal us of our sin disease (Matt. 9:12, Mark 2:17), and
raise us up to the dignity of sons and daughters (
1 John 3:1). God cries out our forgiveness while we
murder him (Luke 23:34). God is Christlike, and in him
there is no un-Chrislikeness at all. This and this alone can
change our hearts of stone back into beating, throbbing
hearts of love that manifest the image of the divine.
The writer of Hebrews said that all before Christ was a mere
shadow of the reality (Hebrews 10:1). It's kind of hard to
decipher the true form of something by looking at its shadow.
You can get some stuff wrong. John makes the audacious claim
that "No one has ever seen God", even though Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekial had all claimed to have seen God. But
regardless of the dreams, visions, revelations, of these men in
scripture that claimed to have seen God, John says that no one
has ever seen God until they've seen Jesus. Jesus says, "Whoever
has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus appeared and was the
image of the invisible God, the exact representation of God’s
being, the radiance of the Father’s glory, the Word made flesh,
the fullness of God in bodily form.
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob should
interpreted through the Abba of Jesus
Jesus was the perfect representation of
God (Heb. 1:3). He said if we have seen
Him, then we have seen the Father
(John 14:9). He did exactly what He saw
His Father do (John 5:19)

No one fully knows and accurately

understands the Father except the Son