God Is Love

Chapter 10

God Is Love

God loves you. God is love is the theme of the Bible; all throughout the Bible this theme is perpetuated over and over. The Bible only declares that God IS one thing. God is not compassionate, he is not protective, he is not wrathful, and He is not just. He IS love. Love is the driving force of the universe, because Love is God. I'm not saying that God is loving, I'm saying that God is Love. It's a force; it's the essence of the universe. It isn't an emotion or an action it is existence itself!

Everything in creation was created to help us understand Love. I am going to capitalize Love because I am meaning Love as in God. I am substituting the word God for Love. Everything in existence, the universe, this planet, nature, you and me, was created to reveal the nature of God. God had one big problem when He was revealing Himself to His creation, how does the non-created one, reveal himself to the created. I don’t know if you finally have realized how big of a problem this is or not, but please understand, this is HUGE. God does not exist, so how does the non-existent explain himself to those of us who exist inside of a fixed dimension, inside space-time. God thought about existence, He planned what would be needed so that He could have a relationship with His creation. How does Love reveal itself though? How does an essence, reveal itself in a tangible way?

To solve this problem, God began to think up and construct reality around this fundamental principle of God. Love is what God is, therefore the entire Universe began to explode into existence in answer to the thought of the One who is the originator of all. The laws of physics began to testify to the existence of a God who cannot be understood or calculated yet is always true, never varying or wavering. A God who sets things in motion, and they do not stop unless acted upon by an opposite force. A God who knows yesterday, today, and tomorrow, who knows every possibility and every possible reality, yet has programed the ability of free will into existence, so that through quantum mechanics we can choose which direction to go without being controlled and micromanaged by the thoughts of an all-powerful dictator.

Then He gave us creation, the love a mother has for her offspring, both humans and animals alike, began to paint a picture of who God is and what His desire is for us. He created sense so that we could experience things around is in vibrant colors, smells, textures, tastes and sounds. He gave us the ability to enjoy existence, revealing to us the delight God has in His creation and the Joy that life brings to Him. He gave us emotion. The ability to feel sorrow, rejection, peace, happiness, acceptance, anger, and most importantly love. All these things God has wired into creation to help us understand the one universal constant in the universe, that which drives reality, Love.

This is why I do not say that God is loving. No, God does not have emotion, God created emotion. How could God have that which He created? Would He really create Himself? No, that is absurd. These things are a revelation of His character. They are the way in which God interacts and reveals Himself to a creation that cannot understand God, and can only experience Him through their limited perspective on reality.

 Thus, when we read the Bible, and are learning of the character of God, and who He is, we must always remember that when the Bible was written, it was written by humans who did not understand, and could not understand Love. They wrote in the language they could understand, and they interpreted what they saw, heard, and experienced in ways that made sense to their limited understanding. This is not wrong, this is How God reveals Himself. God brings His character down to our microscopic view of existence. He slowly reveals himself as we obtain knowledge. As we can handle more, God reveals more. This is how it will be for all eternity. Always growing in an understanding of God, yet never fully grasping His reality, because He does not have a reality. This makes me smile as I write it because it sounds so confusing and absurd, but it is true. God does not exist as we consider existence. He is something else entirely.

Moses, that ancient leader of God’s people, once asked God to show him His glory. He wanted to see God in all His majesty, perfection, and awesomeness. God responded,

“…I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.[1]

            When God revealed Himself to Moses what do you think Moses saw? Was it a brilliant show of fireworks, and otherworldly glory, power, fire, and awe-inspiring majesty? Moses makes no mention of any of that. He only records what He considered to be the important revelation of what God’s glory is, and who God truly is. What causes Moses to fall down with His face to the ground is not fire, it is not glory, it is the simple declaration, the voice of God declaring His own character.

“And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”[2]

            Some read this and think that there are two sides to God, a loving merciful side, and a stern condemning side full of justice. This is not the case. God is merciful and gracious, He loves to the uttermost those He has created. So what then is this talk about visiting iniquity on the 3^rd and 4^th generation? This goes back again to what God is not willing to do, and that is force. Force excludes the ability to have relationship. If God held a gun to your head and told you to love Him, he could adjust your outward behavior, but your heart would not love Him. You would serve Him from fear. The reason God cannot clear the guilty, is because they do not wish to have anything to do with God. The reason God cannot forgive this type of iniquity is because it violates the right of the individual to do so. Sin is nothing more than a desire to be separated from God. Outside of God there is no existence, so the ultimate end of that desire is nonexistence. God gives to all that which is their greatest desire. God’s ultimate plan for us is happiness, and one way or another God seeks to fulfill that for us. So the wicked are lost and go unforgiven, passing their weaknesses on to their children generation after generation. However, God is able to forgive, and He is waiting to accept those who seek Him.

In Isaiah 63:8-9 God says,

"These are My people. These are my real children." So he(God) saved them. The people had many troubles, but he was not against them. He loved them and felt sorry for them, so he saved them. He sent his special angel to save them. He picked them up and carried them, just as he did long ago…”[3]

God Loves to the uttermost. God didn’t just redeem us; he carried us and was afflicted for us. I don’t think it is too far of a stretch to say that God still carries those afflictions right along with us. Jesus says,

“When birds are sold, two small birds cost only a penny. But not even one of those little birds can die without your Father knowing it. God even knows how many hairs are on your head. So don't be afraid. You are worth more than a whole flock of birds.”[4]

Who is it that notices when the sparrow falls? It is the father, and if he notices the sparrow we do not need to fear, because we are of more value to him than many little birds. We hold value before God. So often we spend our lives trying to get people to see value in us without realizing that we are already infinitely more valuable than any value man could place on us.

Jesus claims that the father loves Him, and what reason does He give for this? He says in John 10:17-18,

“The Father loves me because I give my life. I give my life so that I can get it back again. No one takes my life away from me. I give my own life freely. I have the right to give my life, and I have the right to get it back again. This is what the Father told me."[5]

Why does the father love Jesus? He gave His life up for us all. Jesus says that the father’s commandment for Him was to lay down His life for us. This plan of redemption wasn’t an act of Jesus to protect us from the wrath of the father! This was an act by God, Love itself, so that He could be reunited with the creation He had created. God is love and He is drawing us back to Himself. He longs to see us one with Him again.

Remember what Jeremiah 31:3 says? God has loved us with an everlasting love. The father is drawing us back to himself with loving kindness. He is not out to get us, or waiting to see what things we are going to do wrong. He longs to see us succeed and be made one with Christ.

Christ is pleading with us to accept the love of the father and consequently His love for us. In other words, God is asking us to accept Him for what He is. He is not a created being to be understood and known fully. He will never be fully comprehended because we are created and He is not, but He is continually revealing more and more about Himself. The most important of these revelations is that He IS Love. As we grasp a new hold on the love God has for us we will see the Bible in a whole new light. The truth of the Bible becomes alive and the joy of Christ’s victory over sin becomes real. The very power that Christ operated with here on earth is the same power the father offers to anyone who will follow in the footsteps of Christ.

“But in all these troubles we have complete victory through God, who has shown his love for us. Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love--not death, life, angels, or ruling spirits. I am sure that nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us or nothing below us--nothing in the whole created world--will ever be able to separate us from the love God has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[6]

            Jesus is the embodiment of the character of God. Jesus is Love revealed. Jesus is the foundation on which we base all scripture. As we look through the Bible and God’s dealing with humanity, we must ask ourselves if our understanding fits with what we know about God through Jesus. In other words, does our understanding reflect a God who is himself, Love. If it does not, then it is not the Bible that is wrong, but our interpretation of it. God is Love, and He is seeking to reveal Himself to you.

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[1] Exodus 33:19

[2] Exodus 34:5-7

[3] Isaiah 63:8-9 ESV

[4] Matthew 10:29-31 ESV

[5] John 10:17-18 ESV

[6] Romans 8:37-39

Who Is God? Part 3

Living Relationship

            When you have a connection with someone what do you call it? You might say you have a friendship with that person. Or you have a relationship with them. My Fiancé and I have a relationship, but what does that mean? Well, we communicate, we spend time together, we hold each other, and we laugh together. We are in a growing, developing, and loving friendship. The concept of a relationship is an abstract idea. We use the word to refer to something that is alive, it can grow and die, it can feel, be strained, and hurt. Yet, it is not tangible. A relationship cannot be touched, or heard, or seen. However, it is an intangible description of something real, something that really does exist, but its existence is housed in our relationship with each other. If our relationship stumbles on rocky ground and we end up breaking up (God forbid) than that is the end, we have killed the relationship, it has died, it ceases to exist.

            I believe God gave us the ability to enter relationships with each other to reveal another layer or dimension of His character, a living, and growing experience between himself and the Son and himself and us. This is where the Holy Spirit is explained. The Spirit of God is not a person, or a created being, just as God is not a person or a created being. The Holy Spirit is a complex idea that represents something about the One True God. Bear with me as I walk through some scriptures that prove this point. Romans 5:5 says,

“And this hope will never disappoint us. We know this because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts through the Holy Spirit he gave us.”[1]

So God’s love is somehow tied together with the Holy Spirit. Now read Romans 8:16,

“And the Spirit himself speaks to our spirits and makes us sure that we are God's children.”[2]

The Spirit of God is a surety that we are connected to God in a way. It gives us confidence that we are not alone. 2 Corinthians 1:22 states,

“He put his mark on us to show that we are his. Yes, he put his Spirit in our hearts as the first payment that guarantees all that he will give us.”[3]

The Holy Spirit is a mark distinguishing a relationship. Now move to 1 John 5:14,15,

“We know that we have left death and have come into life. We know this because we love each other as brothers and sisters. Anyone who does not love is still in death. Anyone who hates a fellow believer is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life.”[4]

The Holy Spirit gives us the confidence that we are alive in God and not dead. And we know we have the Spirit when we have healthy relationships with other people! How did God teach this to us though? God taught it to us through His love, manifested in His Holy Spirit, just as Romans 5:5 said. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:14,

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.”[5]

The Holy Ghost is communion with God! It is that living, growing, experiencing relationship between two individuals. This is where the Holy Spirit begins to exist in our own life, when we have a relationship with God. The Bible says in James 4:5,

“Do you think the Scriptures mean nothing? The Scriptures say, "The Spirit God made to live in us wants us only for himself."[6]

This doesn’t sound right. God made the Spirit to live in us? Does this mean that unless we allow a relationship with God, the Spirit does not exist? In a way, yes. The Spirit of God is not something to be grasped, or to be “poured” out per se. The Spirit of God is a living, breathing relationship. The Spirit has always existed in the universe because the Spirit is God. When Jesus was on earth, that relationship with His father was hampered by humanity. He was no longer in contact with the divine mind of God because the finite human body cannot house the infinite mind of God. Jesus had to rely on the finite human relationship He could develop with God. Thus Jesus spent time alone, and much time in prayer with His father, seeking to develop that relationship as closely as He could. Jesus was nurturing the Holy Spirit.

This was so because God was revealing to humanity how we can relate to Him, that though we have frail intellects and created existences, we can have a real relationship with God. Jesus was answering the charge of Satan. Satan assumed that God was being unfair, that He was withholding power from the created. Jesus came to reveal that God had indeed given to all of creation the ability to be one with Himself. It was most drastically seen in humanity since we had fallen and deserved it least. The Holy Spirit is friendship with God, what Jesus had with His father, is available to all.

This explains why a loving, forgiving God cannot forgive the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, because blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means, purposefully engaging in actions that destroy the relationship you have with God. Remember our discussion about Lucifer in the last section of this chapter? Satan could not be forgiven, not because God did not wish to forgive him, and not because God wanted him to suffer, but because Satan rejected the relationship he had with God, a relationship that was present since the dawn of creation.

            God cannot force. Force is against His character. Everything ever created was given the choice of being in a loving relationship with their maker, or choosing to reject that love and destroy the Spirit that existed between them and God. This is the truth of freewill. God cannot force individuals to love Him, for if love were forced, it would cease to be love. Love is given out of a willing heart. When Satan became jealous of God, and desired equality with the creator, he severed his relationship with God. It was not that God was withholding equality from Satan, but simply that God cannot make a creation in to himself, anymore than Steve jobs could have made his iPhone a clone of himself. By existing, Satan was already in the highest form of equality with God that a created being can attain, for existence is contained inside the intellect of God. Instead of recognizing this, Satan rejected the love of God. Of his own freewill, Lucifer killed the relationship, destroyed the Holy Spirit and sought to over throw the peace of heaven. God was forced to allow Satan to leave, because God could not force Satan to love.

            Can the unpardonable sin be rectified? Yes, you have no fear that you have committed the unpardonable sin. The sin is only unpardonable so long as you continue to reject the call of God to enter a relationship with Himself. God can do nothing until you give Him permission to work in your life. And for those of you praying that God would “pour” His spirit out on you, stop! God has already given it freely! He is waiting for you to develop what is already waiting. The Spirit is not something to all of a sudden be given, at which time you will be given power and ability. No! The Spirit is a relationship developed with a loving creator! You must see God as He is. You must discover Him for who He is. He is not a God to be appeased, or feared. If God exists, He is love, and by that revelation of His character, you will discover a friend, not an authority, a trusted confidant, not a judge.

            The story of Elijah illustrates this point very well in 1 Kings 18. Israel had turned their worship to ba’al, and thus, at the prayer of Elijah, God withheld the rain in all the Middle East for three years. “Why was the worship of ba’al such a bad thing?” I ask. “That’s easy!” you might think. “After all ba’al was a false God.” Let me explain to you who ba’al is. Ba’al, in Hebrew, means husband. God calls himself ba’al many times in the bible. Speaking of himself as Israel’s husband, God calls himself ba’al. Ba’al was the son of El, the almighty God, and creator of the universe. Ba’al fought with the great serpent, who was the father of death, destruction, and storm. In that fight with the serpent, ba’al was killed, but was raised to life by El, and brought with him healing and life to all. Does this sound familiar? What was wrong with the Israel essentially worshiping Jesus? It was this, the people had lost sight of the character of God. They began to see God as a God of anger, who was mad at the sin of the world and had to be appeased. Thus they offered sacrifices to appease god’s wrath and anger.

            Through Elijah, God says, “That is not me! I am not a God who must be appeased. I am not a God who requires death for sin.” God requires a relationship. He requires that you allow Him to give you the greatest gift of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of relationship. That is why God would not answer the prayers of the priests of ba’al on Mt. Carmel. He desired to show that what was required was the simple prayer of faith in a friend. Elijah prayed to God as though he had a relationship with Him. He was not seeking to appease the wrath of an angry God, he simply spoke to God as a friend, and fire came down from heaven and consumed Elijah’s sacrifices. So I ask you once more, to put aside your misconceptions of God, throw out the idea of a wrathful, vengeful God, and discover with me the character, not of something imaginary, but of the real, loving, creator.

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[1] Romans 5:5 ERV

[2] Romans 8:16 ERV

[3] 2 Corinthians 1:22 ERV

[4] 1 John 3:14,15 ERV

[5] 2 Corinthians 13:14 ERV

[6] James 4:5 ERV

Who Is God? Part 2

Can Two Equal One?

            “Let us make man in our image.”[1] God states. So what of it? We just went through a study showing that God is one, and we even discussed why God would reveal himself as 3 separate individuals, but how do these three separate individuals reveal to me who God is?

“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”[2]

Jesus Himself says, “I and my Father are one.”[3] How does this make sense? How can you be separate and apart of the same at the same time. Timothy calls this the great mystery of God,

“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”[4]

Paul says that Jesus,

“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”[5]

This is the craziest of all doctrines in the entire bible. Follow me very closely as I try to unfold this amazing God into our dimension, in a way we can understand. For all eternity, God has existed. God’s existence is not like we understand existence, He has just been. There was nothing before God because He causes all things to be. For all eternity passed Love has been the experience of God. “…God is love.”[6] God’s character is so multidimensional that He cannot be explained by just stating He is one.

When God created His first creation, He was faced with a problem. How does He relate to His creation when He himself is not created? How could He bring his creation into a loving friendship with Himself if His creation could have no grasp of what He is? God made a decision before creation began that He would “create” Himself in a way to relate to the created. And so, as God created marvel after marvel, Jesus was made the representation of God to His creation. The angels knew Jesus as Michael the Arc Angel.[7] You see, it is because it is relationship that God desires. He wanted friendship with His creation. God did not create beings because He needed something to worship Him, God created beings for communion, for friendship and love. Jesus embodies that character of God that desires intimacy with all of creation. To the Angels, God revealed is Michael, to Humanity, He is Jesus, to the unfallen worlds…Well I’ll leave it up to your imagination to picture what He may be. This is the mystery of God, that while relating to us in our creation, He remains God.

I like to use the analogy of a computer. You can take a computer and copy the hard drive exactly, so that it is the exact same computer, but as soon as someone uses the original or the new one, it becomes separate, while still having the same information as the original. Yet, to keep these computers the same, updates must be made regularly so that they will not become out of sync with each other. Jesus is an extension of God into humanity, He is fully God, but made into the likeness of humanity. This is why Jesus was in constant communion with His father, because that connection had to be maintained in order that the will of God could remain one. The act of prayer brought Jesus back into the collective mind of God. Jesus did something special with Humanity that He did not do with the angels He became fully human. Why? Because of one creation in particular.  

The First Of All Creation

            Lucifer, Son of the morning. Not just A son of the morning, THE son of the morning. Lucifer was the beginning of all creation, the first of God’s creative acts. The Bible gives a startling picture of Lucifer,

“You have been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was yout covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of your tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in you in the day that you were created. You are the anointed cherub that covers; and I have set thee so: you were upon the holy mountain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till iniquity was found in you.”[8]

            Lucifer was perfect, created by God to be the most beautiful of all created beings. And when he came into existence what was the first thing to meet him? It was Jesus, Michael, God. Lucifer was created to be the friend of God, the crowning act of all creation up to that point. So Lucifer became the friend of God, continually standing in the presence of the almighty. He knew the character of God better than anything ever created. He led the angels and all of heaven into praises to Him. If Lucifer was all that, how did he fall? How did something that knew the character of God so well, fall? He was daily in communion with God, if any angel in the universe knew who God was, it was Lucifer, how could he be so wrong? That no doubt is the very question angels asked themselves the day Lucifer fell. Isaiah asked the same question. He stated,

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”[9]

The Bible says that Iniquity was found in him. What was this iniquity that was found in Lucifer? How it happened will forever remain a mystery because sin has no logical cause, but Lucifer became jealous of Michael, the arc angel, the presider over the congregation of heaven, God himself. Lucifer saw Michael entering the presence of God the father. He saw God leave created form and re-enter at will as he went back and forth in communication with His Father, and Lucifer desired that position. He saw that he had been there at the foundation of creation. He watched as worlds, creatures, galaxies, and possibly universes were created, and he began to question the foundational understanding of God. He no longer saw God as giving him everything possible for his pleasure, but began to imagine that God was withholding a dimension of reality from him. Lucifer did not realize that to enter the reality of God would be to cease to exist since God does not exist inside a created universe. Lucifer some how missed the point that his very existence was housed inside the intellect of God, and that to be outside of the presence of God would be to not exist at all. For instance, if I asked God to take my body and remove every particle of energy from it, I would cease to exist entirely because my body is made entirely of energy. It is the same with desiring to be outside the presence of God. To do so would cause me to no longer be since all of reality is constructed by the energy that flows from God himself.

Yet Lucifer, who became Satan, began to view God as a part of his creation. He misconstrued the friendship he had with Jesus and started to view the greatest gift of God as weakness. God became something that he could attain to. No longer was he satisfied with being the friend of God, continually standing the presence of the almighty, and always in communion with Michael, the image of God in created flesh. Lucifer made the same mistake many make today, he made God in to his own likeness and started to see God as nothing more than a created entity. He attributed to the creator created attributions. As we will see throughout the remainder of this book, this is precisely what humanity does on a daily biases, constantly construing God as something to be grasped and attained to. The Bible documents his fall in this sad account:

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”[10]

            Lucifer committed the unpardonable sin, a sin that not even a forgiving God could forgive. Lucifer blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Jesus says,

“Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”[11]

What is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and why is it so bad that God cannot forgive it? To answer that question we have to find out who the Holy Spirit is. This is one of the most amazing truths about the God I believe exists. Hold on as we explore the next dimension of God’s character.

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[1] Genesis 1:26

[2] 1 John 5:7

[3] John 10:30

[4] 1 Timothy 3:16

[5] Philippians 2:6-7

[6] 1 John 4:8

[7] Daniel 10:13, 21; Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7

[8] Ezekiel 28:13-15

[9] Isaiah 14:12

[10] Isaiah 14: 12-14

[11] Mark 3:28-29