Having looked at faith and hope from 1 Corinthians 13:13, we now turn to love.

What we need to see is, the very essence of God is love. It is important we begin here if for no other reason so many people see God and portray God has a mean God, a killing God, an angry God. But John, the disciple who ranks high if not highest on the list of those who knew the Lord and walked with the Lord during His earthly ministry, writes “God is love” (1John 4:8).

If we were to try and paint a picture of God, we could not use normal paint and canvas like we would with a typical painting because Jesus told us “God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” So, since we cannot use paint and canvas, we would paint our picture of God with words. Inside the frame of our picture would be at least 11 attributes. We would say that God is

• Sovereign
• Absolute Righteousness
• Justice
• Eternal Life
• Omniscient (He knows everything)
• Omnipotent (He is all powerful)
• Omnipresent (He is everywhere simultaneously)
• Immutable (He cannot lie)
• Holy
• Merciful, and
• He is Love

Now, there is so much more to say and I will have more to say in the next several posts, but the emphasis I want to make here is God Is Love. He certainly does love people. We see that love in John 3:16. However, what we need to say and affirm first is – the very essence and DNA of God is love. That’s what John wants us to see in 1 John 4:8.