The Love of God

Scripture focus

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:16 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Packer treats John's declaration 'God is love' as one of the most quoted and most misunderstood lines in Scripture, prone to being detached from its context and stretched into a vague, all-tolerating sentimentality that the rest of the New Testament does not support. He insists it must be read alongside John's other descriptions of God as spirit and as light.

He then turns to Paul's language in Romans of God's love being 'shed abroad' in believers' hearts by the Holy Spirit, drawing out three features: the imagery of abundant, overflowing generosity; the settled, ongoing character of the experience rather than a one-time feeling; and the Spirit's active role in making that love known and felt, not merely believed.

The chapter's larger aim is to secure the reader's assurance of God's love on a foundation more solid than mood: not a private feeling to be chased, but a settled reality grounded in what God has objectively done, which the Spirit then confirms within the believer's own experience.

Key points

• 'God is love' cannot be understood rightly apart from John's companion statements, 'God is spirit' and 'God is light.'
• Paul describes God's love as poured out generously and continuously in believers' hearts through the Holy Spirit.
• The experience of God's love is meant to be ordinary Christian experience, not reserved for a spiritual elite.
• Divine love, rightly understood, is holy love — never detached from God's other, equally real, attributes.
• Assurance of God's love rests on what he has done, confirmed by the Spirit, rather than on fluctuating feeling.

Related Scripture

• Romans 5:5
• 1 John 4:8
• John 4:24
• 1 John 1:5

For reflection and discussion

1. Where have you been tempted to flatten 'God is love' into something softer than Scripture actually teaches?
2. How does holding God's love together with his holiness change the way you understand his discipline or judgment?
3. What is the difference between chasing a feeling of being loved by God and resting in the fact of it?