James Nisbet Commentary - 1 John 4:8 - 4:8

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James Nisbet Commentary - 1 John 4:8 - 4:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

GOD IS LOVE’

‘God is love.’

1Jn_4:8

This Epistle was an Epistle General, that is, it was not directed to any local Church. St. John was now a very old man. St. Peter, St. James, and St. Paul had all gone ‘to be with Christ,’ and St. John survived them all. The beginning of the Epistle is much the same as the beginning of St. John’s Gospel.

‘God is love.’ That is one of the golden sentences only to be found in the Book of God. It is ‘an ocean of thought in a drop of language.’ Bengel says, ‘This brief sentence gave St. John, even during the mere time he took to write it, more delight than the whole world can impart.’ They were written by him who at the Last Supper lay on his Master’s breast.

I. Here is the source of salvation.

(a) God sent His Son. That was love.

(b) Christ came. That was love.

(c) The Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in the heart (Rom_5:5). That is love.

So every soul that is saved is saved by love.

II. Here is the fountain of comfort.—‘How refreshing to be able to fall back upon this truth in a world in which there is so much to make us welcome it—tears, difficulties, anxieties, burdens, clouds, heart-achings, heart-breakings, sick-beds, death-beds, graves—but “God is love.” ’ Every believer may say—

Not a single shaft can hit,

Till the God of Love sees fit.

III. Here is our hope for the future.

(a) Heaven is rest.

(b) Heaven is light. ‘Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’

(c) But above all, heaven is love, for ‘God is Love.’

Rev. F. Harper.

Illustration

‘We feel almost under a moral compulsion not to leave Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Whitsuntide, Trinity, till we have placed upon all its own proper crown. The whole subject grows up so naturally to its grand, simple apex, that every thought can find expression in no other words but these, “God is love.” Therefore, in part, for this very reason, this little, inimitable, most eloquent sentence was reserved for almost the last book in the Bible. We do not find it in the Old Testament; nor till the whole scheme of our salvation was finished and revealed; and then, on the entire temple of truth, this was placed as the top-stone—“God is love.” And it was only right his hand should set it up who had been admitted into the closest intimacy with that dear Saviour Who had brought that “love” to us, and Whose whole life was only its embodiment; and therefore it was reserved for St. John to lay the pinnacle, “God is love.” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

DIFFICULTIES ANSWERED

‘God is love.’ Doubtless there are difficulties. The brightest lights throw the deepest shadows. But the mists which cloud the summer morning are only made to melt into the sweeter noonday brightness.

I. ‘Was it love,’ a man says, ‘to make man, and then to let him fall into sin and misery?’—The answer is twofold.

(a) First, man was made a free agent. This was a first principle in the creation of this world. It was a necessity. Why we are not informed. But man could not be a free agent without the capability of falling.

(b) Secondly, and by far the best answer, man, the whole race of man, is better for the fall. Had man not fallen, Christ would not have come to this world; and if Christ had not come, there would have been no heaven for man. As much therefore, as the heaven we have gained is better than the paradise we have lost, by so much are we the better and the happier for Adam’s fall. ‘God is love.’

II. But another objects:—‘See all the suffering and wretchedness there is now in this world. How is that consistent with the Divine government of love?’

(a) First, all the suffering, in the main, is man’s own fault. The suffering is the result, directly or indirectly, of voluntary sin, which might have been avoided. Man is responsible for it, not God.

(b) But secondly, this world, having fallen, is now passing under discipline and training for another and a better world; and the suffering is the discipline essential to the educating processes of the present life.

(c) Thirdly, if there are degrees in glory, the degree of the glory must depend on the degree of the grace; and, to a great extent, the degree of the grace is dependent on the degree of the schooling. And thus it may be that the more suffering for a little while the more happiness for ever and ever. And so the suffering all turns to reward, and the compensation is abundant! My own experience of dying beds would lead me to say that many in their sickness and last days regret their too sunny prosperity in the world; none regret their trials and sorrows in life in the retrospect. Take away all suffering, and you have very nearly emptied heaven! What a proportion of the saints owe all their happiness to suffering! ‘God is Love!’

III. But I hear it said again: ‘Why has God left such a vast proportion of the inhabitants of this earth ignorant of Christ and of the way of salvation?’

(a) God has not left them ignorant. He willed and provided that ‘all should know Him.’ He commanded His people from the very first to ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’

(b) Had the Church done her part, the earth would by this time have been enlightened. But we have not done it. The Church is responsible.

Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘The Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is contained in the truth that God is love. Love is self-sacrifice, and the death of Calvary is the self-sacrifice of God. Take away the Divinity of Christ, and it cannot be maintained that God is love; because there is wanting to His nature, so far as we know it, and there is absent from the manifestations of Himself which He has made, love in its highest form, in its most wonderful character. Men say that by the Divinity of Christ, and by His death considered as an atonement for sin, we destroy this aspect of the Divine nature. But it may surely be replied that to deny the Divinity of Christ, and to deny that the sacrifice of the Cross was God’s own act as man and for man, is also to deny that God is love; because thereby love of the highest kind is excluded from the Divine nature and the Divine manifestation.’