What is God's love?

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God is love, and love never fails because God never fails. Love cannot be separated from God and cannot exist without Him. God's love is the foundation and definition of love, just as He is the source, fountain, sustainer, and enabler of love. God gives meaning to love, and without Him, love isn't only worthless but meaningless. Without God as its source and center, that which humans conceive of as love is impatient and unkind, envious and boastful, arrogant and rude, always insisting on its own way, irritable, resentful, rejoicing in wrongdoing and falsehood. Without God, love is nothing more than a hateful lie of Satan.

Every day we hear people talk about love as if it were some sort of impersonal force and independent energy that alone has the power to change hearts, restore homes, cure diseases, rebuild communities, and unite nations. The world is infatuated with the idea of love. Even the word itself, love, has degenerated into an all-encompassing, catch-all term that seems to be at the heart of a rising one-religion-politically-correct world language—a language of love that has become a religion unto itself. And although the world, the flesh, and the Devil would love to strip love of all its beauty and character in order to make it adaptable to every conceivable context and theology, such would be a futile attempt. For just as God defines God, God defines love.
For just as God defines God, God defines love.

In the end, the one, true definition of love will, indeed, win because truth will win, and truth will win because Christ has won, and Christ has won because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. To be sure, we deserve to perish—not just today but for eternity—and we don't deserve life—neither the life we have today nor life for eternity. The wages of my rebellious sin is death. Consequently, I deserve eternal condemnation just as much as Mahatma Ghandi, Adolf Hitler, and my own children. Every man, woman, and child—no matter how good or bad we think we are—will perish without repenting from self-trust and trusting in Jesus Christ, who is the only truth, the only life, and the only way to the Father. True love means proclaiming the truth. True love means proclaiming the gospel. True love means proclaiming the love of God and the wrath of God, and the most unloving thing we could possibly do is withhold the truth from those who are perishing without Christ—the truth about God's love, holiness, justice, and grace; the truth about man's sin, death, and hell; the truth about faith, forgiveness, and an eternal life coram Deo, before the face of God in heaven, where God's love will reign over us forever. 


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