There is a single sentence, composed of a mere three words, that states the total truth about God:
“God is love” (1 John 4:8).
It’s not that God is merely loving, nor that God merely loves.
No, God is love, the noun, the thing itself.
Yes, there are other things that can be said about God, but nothing that contradicts the essence of the divine identity. God is love, full stop. Everything else is exposition, explanation, elaboration.
Everything that is true of God is true of God because God is love. God is merciful (the adjective) precisely because God is love (the noun), which is to say, mercy is a dimension of God’s love. God is just (the adjective), precisely because God is love (the noun), which is to say that justice is a dimension of God’s love. Both mercy and justice are two ends of a single spectrum that constitutes the total reality of God’s identity.
The devil is a vocabulary thief, and he has definitely attempted to steal the word love from the church by reducing it to a flimsy, wispy nothingness void of the power of moral integrity.
It is vitally important to understand that love, as defined in the Bible, is not the weak sentimentalism or transitory feeling that our popular culture often means with its use of the word. The love of God is not a fluctuating emotion dependent on circumstances external to God. When the Bible says “God is love,” it means God is absolutely and consistently committed to all others above and before Himself. It is relational integrity, faithfulness, commitment, devotion, that cannot be altered by what we humans do or fail to do. With regard to the character of God, “there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). This means, not that God’s actions don’t vary from one set of circumstances to the next, but that He always behaves with fidelity to His love. God does many things, but nothing that violates the integrity of His character. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). That is, He cannot act contrary to His essential goodness. And it is this integrity, this unfailing love, that constitutes the stable foundation of reality upon which we can confidently build our lives.
God’s Law and Justice
According to Scripture, God has one law: that law is love (Rom. 13:10). This law of love can be divided into two parts for clarity: love for God and love for neighbor (Matt. 22:36-40). Then, the two laws of God-ward love and human-ward love can be divided into 10 laws, called the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments outline the vertical relationship between humans and God, while the remaining six pertain to the horizontal relationship among fellow humans. The Ten Commandments are then expounded upon by Moses in the first five books of the Bible, known as the “Torah,” where God’s law of love is applied to agriculture, animal care, economics, and the treatment of the poor, widows, and orphans, as well as in foreign policy. In addition to the Torah, we also have the writings of other Hebrew prophets that further illustrate what God’s law of love looks like across all levels of social and economic interactions. In the New Testament the entirety of the Old Testament is referred to as “the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12; 22:40; Luke 16:16; Acts 13:15; Rom. 3:21), and all of it equates to love.
When the Bible says “God is love,” it means God is absolutely and consistently committed to all others above and before Himself.
As we read the Old Testament, the words justice and righteousness are used again and again to encapsulate the practical application of God’s love. Moses described the character of God with incisive clarity and poetic beauty:
“For I proclaim the name of the Lord: ascribe greatness to our God. He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He” (Deut. 32:3, 4).
Everything God does is just and right, and that fact, according to Moses, is what makes God great.
Not His raw power.
Not His sheer authority.
Not His magnitudinous strength.
But, rather, His just and righteous ways.
Israel’s Calling and Failure
God distinguishes Himself from all the “gods” of the pagan nations—who were “by nature . . . not gods” (Gal. 4:8) but rather “demons” (Deut. 32:17) masquerading as gods—by His fundamentally different character. These demon “deities” were characterized by injustice and unrighteousness. Molech, Dagon, Ishtar, Marduk, Chemosh, and Baal—all fallen angels pretending to be gods—were capricious, arbitrary, and brutal in character, leading the people to engage in “detestable things” (Deut. 12:31, NIV) to violate their fellow humans, even to the point of dictating that the people engage in the horrific practice of human sacrifice. Yahweh was different. Moses taught the children of Israel to think of God in terms of justice and righteousness. They could expect God always to do the right thing. And it was the reliable consistency of God’s good character that was to constitute Israel’s witness to the other nations. Moses explained the missional plan to Israel like this:
“Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?” (Deut. 4:4-8).
Israel was an evangelistic project, not an ethnic one. Yahweh intended Israel to be a missional witness to the world. God pulled out a controlled study group to demonstrate what His law’s principles look like when living out in a community. God called Israel out from among the other nations, not to create an elite group of separatists, but rather to demonstrate that His just and righteous ways inevitably generate relational and economic flourishing. In other words, Israel was meant to be a living testimony to the nations of God’s love and its transformative power, not a hostile attack against the nations.
God’s law of love is a law of justice, meaning that it regulates integrity between individual persons. When its principles are applied, the quality of life improves at every level.
To Abraham, God expressed His desire that he would lead his family to “keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice” (Gen. 18:19). The nuclear family unit would form the foundational testimony to the power of God’s law to generate thriving stability.
Through Moses, God admonished Israel as a nation, “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice” (Ex. 23:2). On the judicial level, Israel was to refrain from perverting justice by always doing the right thing in every dispute.
God explained to His people that He is a particular kind of God who behaves in a particular kind of way, and that He desired that they would be like Him:
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:17-19).
With regard to business dealings, God insisted, “You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous” (Deut. 16:19).
The Torah, or the law of Moses, was the most advanced social and legal system the world had ever known, and remains unsurpassed to this day. Long before the great political and social revolutions of Western civilization’s Enlightenment era, Moses had already articulated the lofty and noble concept of equality before the law.
Once the law of Moses was in place—more specifically, God’s law of love applied to all aspects of social and economic life—the prophets served as impartial moral auditors who held Israel accountable for any political, economic, or social actions that violated God’s good law. Moses is the framer of the constitution that was to govern Israel. The prophets were God’s impartial truth-tellers, resisting the allure of money or power. On the contrary, they were deployed as God’s agents who must always speak truth to power. “Wait just a minute there, you rich and powerful—this is not what love looks like in action. Repent, or you’re heading for serious trouble with God.” Such was the prophetic vocation. God intended for Israel to operate by His superior principles of love for the purpose of attracting the other nations to the worship of Yahweh, so they too, along with Israel, could enjoy the blessings that come from just and right relational dynamics.
The Messiah and the Fulfillment of God’s Love and Justice
Unfortunately—and this is one of the great travesties of history—Israel defied the prophets and chose instead to violate God’s principles and become dependent on power and money, just like everybody else. Therefore, the prophets proclaimed the good news that eventually the Messiah would come and make all wrongs right:
“Behold! My Servant whom I uphold,
My Elect One in whom My soul delights!
I have put My Spirit upon Him;
He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. . . .
He will bring forth justice for truth.
He will not fail nor be discouraged,
Till He has established justice in the earth;
And the coastlands shall wait for His law” (Isa. 42:1-4).
Everything will be good in the end, because Jesus has lived out, in our very humanity, the principles of God’s love. The evangelistic mission of Israel is fulfilled in Christ. All who believe in Him, all who locate their true identity by faith in Christ, will, by His redeeming, regenerating grace, experience the wonder of His love and join with Him in the grand mission of taking the gospel to the nations. As His followers, we are called upon to live out the relational implications of His love toward all:
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
What a calling!
What an amazing privilege!
What a good and glorious Savior!
