The Love of God

The Lover

The idea that there are many different kinds of love is a farce. Just as the Chinese word for love is ‘Ai’, so is the French word ‘Amour’, the Hebrew word ‘Ahava’, and the Greek word ‘Agápi’ (Agápē).

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:16



The verse above illustrates the first part of the transitive property of equality, which would have us know that if A is equal to B and B is equal to C, then A = C. "God is love" can be, otherwise, written as God = Love, hence A = B, where A = God and B = Love

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
James 1:17

God does not change. God does not vary. God is not different at any point in time. He would be God to the same measure tomorrow, as He is today. Therefore, if God is Love (A = B) and God does not change (A = C), then Love does not change (B = C), does not vary, is not different at any point. This will then prove the second and third parts of the transitive property of equality, proposing that B = Love, and C = ‘no change’, in a manner of speaking.

The question then would be "so why can we do more for, or be more intimate with one person, and not with another?"

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16



The phrase "for God so loved the world..." would give the impression, considering the apparent use of the word “so “, that there was an extent to which God loved the world, and that extend would be defined by the singular act of benevolently giving His son up to die for us, on charges of a crime He did not commit.

This, therefore, puts us in the position to say that Love can be given a degree. In other words, while Love does not change into different kinds of forms, the degree to which one loves another can change either in the positive or negative direction. This is why a person can say that they love their brother more than they love their course mate in school. It doesn’t mean that they hate their course mate. It just means that they love them to a lesser degree than they love their brother.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
 John 15:13



In the verse of scripture above, Jesus would have us understand that there is no love greater than that which a man who would lay down his life for his friend has, and by the use of the word "greater “, we should understand the comparison between one degree of Love and another.

From our conversation so far, it is safe to say that the love of God is certainly a force to reckon with, having been established as the greatest degree of love. Consider John 3:16 again for a moment. It has to be the most popular verse of scripture in the Christian Faith, and we have heard it so much that it has begun to sound cliché, but take a moment away from this article and read through it twice, then come back after words. I’ll wait.

Now, consider a business setting, where you want to purchase something which has a price tag on it. There are two reasons why you would not purchase it.
  1. You do not have enough to buy it.
  2. You do not believe it is worth the price it is allocated.
In the case where you do not have enough, you would find a way to raise the money to get it, if nothing, then for the singular reason that it is valuable to you. The idea is that you believe it is worth the price tag on it. Practically, if you buy a $3,000 phone, without hesitation, then the value that you have placed on that phone is $3,000.

This is most certainly what God did when He bought us with the life of His Son. The circumstance around this purchase has one message; it says “the value or worth that God allocates us is the same as that of His Son Jesus Christ, hence, when He weighs us on the balance of His Love, we would weigh the same as Jesus Christ”.

Can you believe it?

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