And the Greatest of These is Love

If there were one character trait of God that might encapsulate all the others, it would be love. This should not be understood to mean that love supersedes the other characteristics of God but that it precedes them. If we could fully grasp this one trait, the love of God, all the others would be evident by the display of this one. God is just because He loves. He is faithful because He loves. He is gracious because He loves. He is truth because He loves. Thus, it is that if we as believers love with God’s love we too will be all of these other things.

John writes in his epistle, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). In this same passage, John tells us that we know that we abide in God, and God abides in us because He has given us His Spirit vs. 13). He continues to say that love has been perfected in us, that as He is, so we are in this world (vss. 12, 17). Because we have the love of God, we are then enabled to walk even as Christ walked in this world.

This is what God is doing in the believer. He is filling him with His love, perfecting it in him that the believer might display to the world the very character and nature of God. John also wrote that no one has seen God (1 John 4:12), but because they see the love of God in the believer, they have seen God manifested before them. It ought be that when the world sees the actions and character of the believer, that they would see the very nature of God. This because it says that in the day of judgment we should not fear because as God looks upon us He will see himself in us (vs. 17). Should not this love then be seen displayed now also, and is this not the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? He is perfecting His love in us that we might be just like Him!