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An Object to Love

God is love. We know this concept and it warms our hearts. 1 John 4:8 famously says, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." The sixteenth verse repeats this truth that God is love.

We love this verse because it teaches us that the God of heaven loves imperfect people like us. This separates our God from other gods, like the god of Islam, who is impersonal. But what is sometimes lost in this verse is a deeper truth that points us to the Trinity. 

If God is love, there must be someone for God to love. There has to be an object of His love; otherwise, how could God be love? He doesn't just love in the abstract, but existentially. God being love can't just be an idea; it must be put into practice. It stands to reason then, that if God is love, there is someone to love. I think we all would agree with that.

Who does God love? Us! we shout with joy. But what about before there was an us? Who did God love before He made Adam? Or we could ask, Who did God love before they made Adam? He Himself described the creative act as being plural: "Let us make man in our image (Genesis 1:27)." 

We know there was a time when there was God, but no people. Besides the Creation account telling us this, science confirms the universe (and by extension, its inhabitants) had a definite beginning point. There was once nothing but God.

If Jesus was created later, as some groups say, then God wasn't love. As Hank Hanegraaff, known as the Bible Answer Man, put it, "Independent of creation, [God] would not have an object on which to lavish love." (Muslim, p.156)

C.S. Lewis went further in Mere Christianity, writing, "The words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons...If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love." (p.174)

In just the 2nd Century the Christian church formulated the doctrine of the Trinity, and codified it into church dogma via the Nicean Creed. We are not polytheistic; we do not believe in three Gods, but One God existing in three Persons. As James Walker put it, "Three whos, one what." (What the Qur'an Really Teaches About Jesus, p.134)

The truth this leads us to is that God is eternally loving by loving the fellow members of the Godhead--a love that has existed even before time began. The fact that the modern mind still struggles to fully comprehend something crafted by ancient writers is a testament to the depth of the richness of the God we serve.  

                            "How unsearchable are His judgments, and inscrutable His ways!"

Romans 11:33

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