God Is Love – 1 John 4:7-8

Hesed-agape is God’s loving kindness ~ His intense and unconditional love. Those words cannot ever be adequately described or defined. There must be a revelation of them before they can be understood and received. When you receive a revelation of real love, you receive a revelation of God, and vice versa.   God has faith, but He is love (Hebrews 11:1-6; 1 John 4:7-8) Love is not an emotion. It is a person. God is Love.

God the Father sent Jesus into the world to reveal His great love (John 3:16; 17:18) and to connect to His Name all who would receive Him (John 17:12). He made that connection through eternal unchangeable blood covenant ~ in essence, to ‘marry’ them (John 17:26; Ephesians 5:30-32). That’s why, in the same way, marriage is a covenant between a man and woman (Genesis 2:21-25). God made man and then woman from a rib from Adam’s side. Adam said, “’This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she will be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man’. Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they will be come one flesh” (Genesis 2:23-24). Marriage is to be a picture of the hesed-agape love relationship between Christ and the Church. The Apostle Paul, quoting this verse from Genesis said, “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.’ This is a great mystery but I am speaking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:30-32).

Jesus, praying to His Father, said, “I have declared Your name to them, and will declare it, that the love (hesed-agape) with which You love Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). Jesus is the delivery channel through whom the Father’s hesed-agape passed to get into you so you could stand in full covenant with Him. And He wanted believers to have hesed-agape with each other in the Body of Christ so the world could witness God’s covenant love through us (verse 20, 23).

Many assert that we can never understand God and the depth of His love. But the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 3:14-19: “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would give you, according to the riches of His glory, power to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ God desires for man to know and understand His hesed-agape love. If this were not true, the Apostle Paul would not have prayed in Philippians 3:10, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection”. And Jesus prayed to His Father for His disciples and all who would believe in Him through their word: “..that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). In Exodus 33:18 Moses cried to God “I pray, show my Your Glory.” God did show Moses His glory (Exodus 33:18-23; 34:5-7). His love is His Glory.

God’s compassion, mercy, and love have been His motivation all along. All of Creation, including man, was made and blessed by God because of His great love and mercy. Love can only beget love. Man was created from the very inside of God (Genesis 2:7), who is Love, to be a love being (Genesis 1:26). Jesus continually showed all who were around Him the love of the Father. The plan of Redemption was God’s love in action, restoring His fallen man to loving fellowship with Him. He is a giver, not a taker. He gave His only begotten Son, the ultimate sacrifice, for you because of His great love for you (John 3:16). And His spirit, who came to live inside you at the new birth, brought God’s own love to dwell in you (Galatians 5:22-23). He has only good plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11; John 10:10). Believe and receive His love for you (1 John 4:16), and realize He loves you as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23; 2 Corinthians 6:18; Hebrews 2:11)

From Kenneth Copeland’s Study Bible

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