God is Love

“God is love.” The concept and reality of God’s very essence is so important that it is mentioned not once, but twice in the Bible. Both 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16 declare “God is love” refuting descriptions rendered by the ancients that viewed Him as vengeful, jealous, demanding, and eager to punish… God through His love is compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. His “love permeates all religions.” He is not the “God” depicted by ancient writers who attached flawed human characteristics to His Being. The words of St. Augustine (354-430 CE) can attest to this – “God… our knowledge of [Y]ou is imperfect. In our ignorance we have… wrongly thought that [Y]ou take pleasure in punishing us for our sins; and we have foolishly conceived [Y]ou to be a tyrant over human life.” “I knew My love for thee… therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.” [Bahai’ism] “I AM therefore you are. I AM LOVE – DIVINE LOVE. I [l]ove you with an infinite and therefore perfect [l]ove… You are [l]oved into being.” Therefore, when scriptural messages, regardless of religion are divisive, ethnocentric, and promote intolerance and discrimination they do not reflect God’s true nature of love. Instead, they are merely the product of misinterpretation and subjective perception expressed by imperfect messengers due to human fallibility. In reality, God unleashed His creative powers as an expression of His infinite love – “God created the world because love needs another to love.” [Judaism: Kabbalah] Consequently, with creation in place to love, God gives us an “easy yoke and light burden” [Matthew 11:30] after having offered Himself as the Universal Savior, an act that extends beyond the limits of any single religion… Why? Because, “[t]here is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends” [John 15:13] and God could not create a single living organism without the prospect of salvation. Because of this, even though God could have granted salvation through any other means, He chose crucifixion on a cross since it consisted of extreme humiliation and suffering prior to death. He wanted to punctuate His love with an exclamation mark! For Him, there was no other way! “Love suffers…” [1 Corinthians 13:4] Per Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855 CE), a Danish philosopher and theologian, “God is love… You cannot even remotely imagine how He suffers. For He knows how difficult and painful it is for you. But He can change nothing of it, since otherwise He Himself would have to become something different, something other than love.” So when the question is asked – “If God is so powerful, why couldn’t He have given salvation some other way?” – Know, the answer is not a mystery except to one who does not or cannot fully grasp even a tiny portion of the depth and magnitude of God’s very Being. It is simple. He could have but He did not because it was not about His omnipotent power, might or strength. It was about love! He is love and it was out of love He chose to give of Himself the Universal Savior and thus die on a cross. Otherwise His love would not have been the greatest – a contradiction of the infallible truth, the infinite opposite of His nature, and a denial of His very Self! There is no greater love and that is God Who never stops loving, not even for a moment! Per Sufi poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273 CE), “The lover is a king above all kings.” Consequently, it is not surprising that God Who is the greatest Lover as demonstrated through the Universal Savior is not a King above all kings but the King of kings – “On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of Kings…” [Revelation 19:16] In fact God’s love is so great that “[e]ven the prayers of an ant reach heaven.” [Shintoism] Unlike human love, God’s love endures all things and “never fail[s] or lose[s] its glory.” “Pen and ink shall pass away, along with what has been written… [T]he love of God shall never perish.” [Sikhism – Sri Guru Granth Sahib] “O give thanks to the Lord… for [H]is steadfast love endures forever.” [Psalm 136:1] Per Baptist minister Job Hupton (1762-1829 CE), “What [God] is, [H]e ever was, and ever will be (which is love) … there can be no variation.” In addition, “[w]hat are termed the grace, the mercy, the pity, and the kindness of the Lord… [are merely] many modifications of the manifestation of [H]is love.” God’s love is dynamic. It is responsive to and is “influenced by those who are loved,” which means each and every being of creation.