God is love.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.
God doesn’t act contrary to His nature. Calvinists predestination is unloving. Tulip is unloving.
Love and Sovereignty
What is knowable about God is based on what he has revealed about Himself in scripture. Any proposition or doctrine of Him being otherwise without becoming contrary to who He has revealed Himself to be is nothing but the evilest assault on the character and nature of God. It amounts to proposing that God can be contrary to Himself without changing. God is immutable and does not change.
God is sovereign and also love. Both sovereignty and love as they intersect in God have been revealed plainly to us by God. He has done this both through his word and his works. And he has sworn never to change.
God's sovereignty is never exercised in violation of his love. His love is very everlasting, for God is love. It has not the slightest shadow of variation, and it, not his sovereignty, is the basis upon which his moral standards rest. Any promotion of any doctrine that represents God as acting in a way that violates his love appealing to the fact that He is sovereign and so can do it is pure evil.
With God, might is not right. The fact that he can do something is not a justification for him doing it. The fact that God can damn everyone without a reason is not an argument for justifying teaching that he does as in the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination. All that he can do is restricted by the rule he values most - love.
If it will violate love, God will not and cannot do it for that would be contrary to His nature and character as a loving God. And if it will violate love then it is not right. God cannot make it right by doing it just because he is sovereign. If he does it just because he is sovereign then he would not be God again but something else.
God can do any and everything is what sovereignty stands for. God will only do what is loving is what righteousness stands for.
Righteousness is the foundation of his throne. In other words, righteousness is the constraint of his sovereign rule. Love is how God rules His creation. Sovereignty, Righteousness, Justice, Mercy and all the other attributes of God fall under the umbrella of His love.
What if God’s essence, his spirit, is more like light, an orb radiating all his characteristics from a core of some type of energy, say love?
Not only does this configuration fit scripture declaring that God is spirit (John 4:24), that he is light (1 John 1:5), and that he is love (1 John 4:8), but it also fits the living out of God’s image in the body of Jesus Christ. In him, we do not witness a love regulated by sovereignty, but a sovereignty regulated by love.
Thinking and living in these terms does not in any way shelve the idea of God’s sovereignty, but it does place it within the heart of God’s love. From love, he rules.
Therefore, instead of asking how an all-sovereign God exercises his love, we might ask how an all-loving God exercises his sovereignty. This, I think, is the better conversation. l.meyers
1 John 4:7-5:4
God is love. The same construction is found in 1 John 1:5 ("God is light") and in 1 John 4:24 ("God is spirit"). The noun love, referring to a process, is the predicate of the sentence; it says something about God's quality, character, and activity. The translator must take care not to give a rendering that equates God and love. This would imply that the clause order is reversible and that God is love and "love is God" are both true propositions-which is certainly not what John meant to say.
After "love is of God" in v. 7a the present clause functions as a climax: God is not only the origin of love, but love itself. At first sight this construction might suggest that John intends to identify God with an abstract principle. That this is not the case becomes clear, however, when one looks at the context, where God is represented as the personal agent of the act of loving.
The proposition "God loves us" might stand alongside such statements as, "God creates," "God rules," "God judges." Accordingly, "God is love" does not mean to say that love is one of God's activities, but that all His activity is loving activity. Whether he creates, or rules, or judges, he does so in love. All that he does is the expression of his nature which is-to love. ‡
The Greek construction cannot be followed in several languages because a corresponding verbal noun simply does not exist in the language, or, if existing, cannot be thus construed, or, if thus construed, would not express the same meaning. Therefore, translators have tried to express the force of this construction otherwise, for example, 'God's character is to habitually-love,' 'all God's deeds are loving deeds,' 'God is one who continually and really loves,' 'God has-as-quality love.' (from the UBS New Testament Handbook Series. Copyright © 1961-1997, by United Bible Societies.)
God is love, God is light or God is spirit are what is known as an anarthrous predicate. John does not say that light is God, but only that God is light. The two phrases are not interchangeable. The word God in the Greek has the article, the word light does not so it means that the two words are not interchangeable. The absence of the article emphasizes ones character or nature. It literally would read: God as to His nature is light.The same is true with the phrase God is love. Love is not God. In other words He is a loving God. It is Gods nature or character to be loving.
1 John 4:8
God is love ho Theos agapee estin. Anarthrous predicate, not hee agapee. John does not say that love is God, but only that God is love. The two terms are not interchangeable. God is also light (1 John 1:5) and spirit (John 4:24). (from Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament)
conclusion: God is love and all His attributes flow from His nature as a loving God. God cannot act contrary to His nature. In Calvinism God acts contrary to His nature and by definition is unloving.
hope this helps !!!
