Love! What is love? What is its nature? What is its source? How is it manifested? How is it sustained? These and many other questions press upon the thoughtful student of life's purposes and problems.
“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.
Love.—This little word of four letters is the largest word in the language; its capacity is unmeasurable. Its nature is boundless and eternally expansive. It is the only word which can express God's character, and that expression is the greatest thing which can be said of Him—God is love.”
What Love Is Not.—It is not a sickly, sentimental emotionalism, selfishly desirous of obtaining and enjoying some coveted blessing. It is not such a love as we often see between a man or woman, which is satisfied only when in such other's presence, when separation would doubtless be better for one or both. It is not such affection as is often manifest by parents and others toward children, reaching its highest enjoyment in fondling, caressing, and kissing the children, when such a course may be bad for the children in various ways. Selfishness is a large ingredient of such love. Love—divine love—is not mere sentiment, nor transient emotion, nor bursts of passion, nor flights of feeling.
What Love Is.—Love is a divine principle which embraces all good things. Its chief delight is in doing good, not to self, but to others. Divine love always seeks the good of the one loved. It is satisfied when the object of its love is satisfied. It is ever diffusive and expansive ; ever giving of its life that others may live and love, seeking recognition and emolument only as they serve the purpose of the greatest good to the greatest number. Love is more than charity, more than kindness, more than benevolence. It includes all these and more. “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth” (1 Cor. 13 : 4-8, R. V.); for
“God Is Love.”—That is His character. All that He thinks or does is molded by perfect love. And love in God is manifest in doing. In love He created man, and gave him a sinless world for a home. In love He made man an intelligent, worshiping being, to bind him to Himself. In love He made death the end of sin, that misery might not mar the universe forever. In love, when man had sinned, God gave His only-begotten Son,—gave Himself in that Son,—that He might buy back from sin and destruction a race of rebels, and win them by His unfathomable love.
“God Is Love.” He has told us that wonderful truth over and over again in His Word. “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31 : 3. His love exceeds that of the mother for the babe upon her breast. Isa. 49 : 14–16. But God's love is manifest not alone in words, but in deeds and in truth. All the good which ever came to the children of2men, all the blessings we have seen, unrealized though they are, are from the great Fount of all blessing and goodness. When the Son of God came to earth, it was but an evidence of what God gave in the beginning. He was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Rev. 13 : 8. He gave Himself then. Then—in the beginning—“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 events in the ministry of the Son of God during the whole of earth's travail are but steps in the carrying out of the great original Gift. He was giving Himself when He became Jehovah's Angel to the church of the living God previous to the first advent. He was giving Himself when He became the Babe of Bethlehem, when He met the temptations in the wilderness, when He gave His life to ministry amid weariness and painfulness, in healing the sick, comforting the mourner, instructing the single-hearted, pleading upon the mountain all night for a fallen world, in yielding to the powers of earth for sacrifice, in dying on Calvary.
