Barbara's Bakin' N bits

God Is Love

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."
(1 John 4:8)

The simplest description of God is the Bible phrase "God is love." Everyone responds to love, and everything seems empty and pointless without it. Little wonder, then, that the Scripture also says, "He that loveth not knoweth not God." If God were truly known, love--not hate--would be the result.
The love of God is not merely a theoretical concept or a theological doctrine. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
One of the first glimpses we have of God is when He was looking for Adam and Eve after their disobedience. One godly preacher noted, "When you read God's first question to man, 'Where art thou?' (Genesis 3:9), as though He were some sort of policeman seeking a fugitive from justice, you do not know anything about God. You must read it as though God were a broken-hearted father looking for a lost child."
God aches to help us. God loves us more than we can ever understand or even begin to feel. Our text tells us that "God is love." "The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Exodus 34:6), loves us.
Yet in spite of God's love and His never-ceasing desire to bless us with His love, our thoughts toward Him and our relationships with Him are often troublesome and uncomfortable--not warm and loving. Could it be that our "iniquities have separated between" us and God, and our "sins have hid his face" from us (Isaiah 59:2)? God is love, but God is holy, too (1 Peter 1:16). These meet together in Christ. When we come to Him, we need only to "confess our sins," for "he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
HMM III