July 20

God is love. - 1 John 4:8.

WHEN John says, “God is love,” he means not only that love is God’s attribute, but that it is God’s character. Indeed, we cannot apply the word character to God precisely as we do to men. Among men, character is always the consequence of habit, as habit is frequently the result of previous disposition, and always the result of repeated action. But love is God’s character, inasmuch as he is peculiarly distinguished by it: and that all his perfections are, so to speak, so many parts and modifications of his love.

His wisdom is love devising; his power is love executing; his truth is love fulfilling; his holiness is love forbidding whatever would be injurious to us. His anger, chastising us for our faults and reducing us to reformation and repentance, is the expression of his love to us, and it is our guard and our warning, and is designed to prevent the very evil it denounces. Let us, then, illustrate the doctrine, “God is love.” We observe, therefore, that God has written two huge volumes upon this subject. It would take years and ages to read them through properly: all we can do is to quote a chapter or a verse or two from each of them.

The first of these volumes is Creation. Creation is immense; but let us fix upon our own world, with its seas and continents, and all the seasons of day and night, summer and winter, succeeding each other in a regular order, so that they are prepared to melt into each other without any disruption, and all of them bringing forward their appropriate advantages and pleasures, so that the year is crowned with his goodness. There, we may observe, it is that God intended not only to provide for our wants, but for our gratification; not only for our support, but our delight. Eating and drinking are essential to our support; but our God might have rendered our food as nauseous as medicines. He has rendered them agreeable, so that, in partaking of them, we never think of necessity, but only of gratification. The perfume and the beauty of the rose and the lily can only be designed for indulgence. The apple-tree yields a fruit important to man, but God could have caused it to yield this fruit without the precious power of blossoming; this was intended to charm us before it enriched us.

But let us glance at the other volume, the volume of Revelation, which is much larger and nobler than the first. God has “magnified his word above all his name;” as sings good Dr. Watts-

“God, in the person of his Son,

Hath all his mightiest works outdone.”

But general reflections impress little compared with facts and incidents. The one is like surveying a province from a high hill; the other is like descending into the vale and examining each particular scene or object. The author of the book of Job, “the finest drama,” says the poet-peer, “in the world,” shows his genius when he would display the perfections of God in the universe; he brings forward from the universe four or five specifications, each of which he has rendered a perfect picture; and who does not know that the very essence of poetry is to be found in the absence of abstract terms used in the blending of individualities. Upon the same principle John proceeds in this epistle. Having asserted “God is love,” he immediately mentions an instance of it, from which the angels fetch their fairest and fullest proof of our doctrine; for, says he, “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”