The God Who is Love

In his first letter, the apostle John twice affirmed that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). On page 371 of his commentary, A.E. Knoch wrote the following concerning this short but profound statement about God’s nature:

We are never told that God is justice, or God is power, or God is wisdom. These are His attributes, not His essence. The distinction is of vital import, in the conflicting maze of reasoning concerning God's ways and words. Justice and power and wisdom are relative, but love is absolute…All His attributes appear and withdraw at the beck of love. All serve it, and never go counter to its commands. We cannot reason that God will do thus and so because He is just, or strong or wise. Love may not give leave. But we can safely lay our heads on the bosom of His love and there learn the great lesson that He IS love, and has both the power and wisdom to carry out the dictates of His affection. What clearer proof can be given that all that He has done and is doing is leading up to that grand ultimate when He will be All in all, and love will rest in being loved?

Knoch makes an important point that is often overlooked (or at least poorly appreciated) within mainstream Christianity. God is certainly just and powerful and wise. However, as important as these attributes are to his divinity, God is never said to be these attributes. Yet God is said to be love. Since God is said to be love, love must be understood as his very essence. It is what motivates all of God’s actions.

When a Christian says (as they so often do) that “God is love, but he is also just,” I suspect that the following beliefs are being presupposed: 

1. Love is not the most fundamental divine attribute. 

2. God’s justice not only requires (or permits) that which is contrary to what his love requires, but it’s the dominant and prevailing attribute with regard to what the “final state” of most people is going to involve. 

According to these unstated-but-presupposed beliefs, when God acts justly toward a sinner, his love for them – assuming he loved them at all – has “taken a back seat,” so to speak. It has no influence on, or “say-so” concerning, the actions by which his justice is expressed. However, this view of God’s love – and how it relates to his other attributes – completely misses the point of John’s twice-repeated affirmation that “God is love.” Since God is love, any view of God that fails to see his love as the fundamental and dominant/prevailing divine attribute (and which, in doing so, thus minimizes the influence that his love has on all of his actions in relation to his creatures) must be understood as necessarily mistaken, and as promoting a false view of God. And this includes the view of God that is affirmed within mainstream Christianity.

According to mainstream Christianity, it’s God’s will that a vast number of his image-bearing creatures be eternally banished to a place of endless torment (i.e., “hell”). This incomparably nightmarish state of affairs is thought by most Christians to be an expression of God’s “justice,” and the means by which it is “satisfied.” Now, I deny that scripture provides us with any reason whatsoever to believe that God’s justice will ever find expression in the endless torment of anyone, or that God’s justice could possibly be satisfied through such a horrific (and pointless) event. However, even if one could possibly reconcile such a scenario with God’s justice, only the most powerful of deceptions could lead an otherwise rational person to consider the endless torment of any creature as being an expression of God’s love for them.

It might be objected that our understanding of the nature of love is simply too limited for us to make such a decisive judgment at this. However, scripture itself reveals enough concerning the nature of love (e.g., in Rom. 13:10 and 1 Cor. 13:4-7) for us to be able to reasonably conclude that a God who is love would not (and indeed could not) tolerate such a state of affairs as is affirmed by those holding to the doctrine of eternal torment. Only a malevolent or callously indifferent “God” could tolerate the eternal torment of even a single creature (let alone billions of sentient, intelligent creatures that he himself created). And this simple fact necessarily disqualifies the god of mainstream Christianity from being the God who, according to the apostle John, is love.

The identity of the God who is love

In addition to what’s said above, there is another way in which the god of mainstream Christianity is disqualified from being the God who is said to be love. In part one of my five-part study on the identity of the one true God (One God and Father of all), I sought to explain what the majority of Christians believe concerning the identity of the God revealed in Scripture. As argued in my study, most Christians do not believe that the one true God is a single, self-aware individual; rather, Trinitarians believe that the one true God is a triune being comprised of three distinct, divine persons (i.e., “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit”). In contrast with this view, I argued that the one true God is the Father alone – i.e., the divine person whom we find referred to on several occasions as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, if the position I defended in the aforementioned study is correct, then we would expect the God whom John said “is love” to be the Father alone. And, as I’ll be demonstrating in the remainder of this article, this is precisely what we find.

Notwithstanding the clear scriptural evidence there is for this view, most Christians believe that the God who is said to be love is none other than the tri-personal God of their Trinitarian theology. Not only this, but some Trinitarians have gone so far as to say that God could not even be said to be love if “he” wasn’t, in fact, a multi-personal being comprised of at least two persons. For example, well-known Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote the following in his book Mere Christianity: 

“All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.”

Lewis’ argument for a multi-personal God could be expressed as follows:

1. God is love.

2. Love is something that one person has for another person.

3. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.

4. But God has always been love.

5. Therefore, God is not a single person.

In response to Lewis’ argument, it should first be noted that, in both the immediate and larger context in which the words “God is love” appear, it’s clear that the God to whom John was referring is the Father alone. Earlier, John wrote that “God is light.” But based on the immediate context in which he wrote this, it’s evident that the God whom he identified with “light” is the Father alone. In 1 John 1:3-7 (ESV) we read:

…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

In these verses we find that the God who is said to be “light” is the God of whom Jesus is the Son. The God who is light is, in other words, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Similarly, in 1 John 4:7-21 we read:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him...We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

As is evident from the context, the title “God” has a specific personal referent, and is interchangeable with “the Father.” It is clearly the Father alone whom John had in mind as having dispatched “his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him,” as being the God whom “no one has ever seen,” and as being the God who had “given us of his Spirit.” The God who is said to be love in John 4:8, 16 is, therefore, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This simple, contextually-informed understanding of the identity of the God who is love is in contrast with the view that only a triune god could truly be considered “love.” Any claim that the God to whom John was referring when he wrote “God is love” should be understood as being someone other than the Father alone is completely at odds with the very context in which the words “God is love” are found. If we are to remain faithful to the inspired source from which the statement “God is love” is derived, we should be able to use “God” and “the Father” interchangeably (so that “God is love” becomes “the Father is love”). So, irrespective of what Lewis believed concerning the sense in which God “is love,” the God who is said to be love in 1 John 4:8, 16 is, without question, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And unlike the triune being of Trinitarian theology, the Father is not multiple persons or selves.

Keeping this point in mind, let’s now take another look at Lewis’ argument:

1. God is love.

2. Love is something that one person has for another person.

3. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.

4. But God has always been love.

5. Therefore, God is not a single person.

As we’ve seen, the being whom John had in mind when he wrote “God is love” is the God and Father of Jesus Christ (and not a multi-personal being). When we revise the first premise of Lewis’ argument to reflect this scriptural fact, the entire argument begins to drift in a direction that doesn’t actually support Lewis’ conclusion. For the third premise would then have to be revised as follows: “If the Father was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.” Rather than getting us closer to the conclusion of Lewis’ original argument, we’re getting closer to having to affirm that the Father is more than one person (which is a conclusion that Lewis would’ve rejected).

But how, then, can it be the case that the Father has always been love (as would be the case if love is his fundamental and dominant attribute)? Answer: Because the Father has always had a perfectly loving disposition toward the beings that he always planned on creating, and has thus always intended to promote the best interests of every being he ever planned to bring into existence. 

In support of this understanding, it's clear from the context in which the words “God is love” appear that the love John had in mind is God’s love for his estranged human creatures (which was manifested most fully in history by his sending his Son into the world). That is, the love that God is said to be is, in the immediate context, connected with the Father’s love for those on whose behalf he sent his only-begotten Son into the world. This act of sending his Son into the world as “a propitiatory shelter concerned with our sins” is said to have manifested the love of God. Nothing else seems to be meant by the expression “God is love” than that the disposition of the Father toward the human race is that of perfect, unconditional benevolence. 

The most reasonable position to take concerning the meaning of the words “God is love” would, therefore, be that John was referring to that aspect of God’s nature, or essence, that determines how God relates to his creatures. Understood in this way, God is said to be love itself because of the fact that everything God does in relation to his creatures is necessarily motivated by love, and can be understood as an expression of his love for them. All of God’s actions are grounded in his unchanging, perfectly benevolent character.

Thus, even if we were to understand the words “God is love” to imply that God has always had love for one or more persons, it would be more in keeping with the context in which the words “God is love” appear to understand this love to be that which God has (and, by virtue of his perfect foreknowledge, has always had) for the created persons he has always planned on bringing into existence. The love which John had in view is clearly a love that God has for created persons, and not the love that God has for himself. That is, the love being emphasized is God’s love for that which isn’t God, and not God’s love for God.

So, assuming that God’s being love necessarily means that he has always and necessarily loved another, it doesn’t follow that the love God has always had for another is a love that exists between two or more uncreated, co-eternal, divine persons (who collectively constitute this God). For insofar as God has always possessed knowledge of every person he has ever brought (or will bring) into existence, then one can believe that God has always loved each and every created person who will ever exist. And this is, in fact, precisely what I believe. I believe that God has always intended to create every created person who has ever existed or will ever exist, and that he has always loved every created person he has always intended to create.

Now, another Trinitarian (who, incidentally, affirms the truth of the salvation of all) has attempted to strengthen Lewis’ argument by formulating it as follows:

1. God is love.

2. Love is essentially other-oriented.

3. Therefore, God is essentially other-oriented (from 1+2).

4. God can only be other-oriented if there is an other for God to be oriented to. Therefore,

5. God requires an other to be what God essentially is (from 3+4).

6. God is self-sufficient and does not depend on anything outside of God to be who God essentially is.

7. Therefore, the other that God requires to be who God essentially is must be an other that is not outside of God (from 5+6).

8. Therefore, within God there must be God and an other.

Although the first three premises could use some further clarification,[1] I believe it's premises four and five that are the most problematic. According to premise four, God can’t be essentially other-oriented without the existence of another.[2] But this premise could be disputed as follows: if a single divine individual (i.e., the Father alone) had always intended to bring others into existence (before actually doing so), he could justifiably be said to have been essentially other-oriented even prior to the time when he began bringing others into existence.

A single-person God does not, therefore, require the eternal existence of “an other” (or others) alongside him in order for him to be considered essentially other-oriented; rather, God’s being essentially other-oriented simply requires that he has always intended to bring others into existence. As long as God has always intended to bring others into existence, the (temporary) non-existence of others is perfectly consistent with God’s being essentially other-oriented. This fact places premise four in need of revision. So let’s revise it as follows: God’s being essentially other-oriented means that God has always intended to bring others into existence.

In response to this revised premise, the Trinitarian may object, “But that would still mean that God needs others to be what he essentially is.” But that’s not the case at all. Saying that God “needs” others to be what (or who) he essentially is would be to confuse the cause (i.e., God and his other-oriented nature) with the effect (i.e., God’s decision to bring others into existence). Given the fact that God is essentially other-oriented (as is affirmed in premise three of the argument), God’s choosing to bring others into existence must be understood as the result of what God essentially is (i.e., other-oriented). Thus, it’s not that God must bring others into existence in order to be what he essentially is; rather, it’s that God chooses to bring others into existence as an expression of what he already essentially is. The creation of others should, therefore, be understood as the effect of God’s being essentially other-oriented rather than the cause.

This consideration, I believe, undermines the entire argument.

We could also understand the second premise as follows: in relation to other existing persons, love is essentially other-oriented. Understood in this way, premises four and five of the original argument do not follow from premise two. If the second premise (“love is essentially other-oriented”) simply means that, in relation to other existing persons, love is essentially other-oriented, then it would in no way follow that “God requires an other to be what God essentially is.“ God could still be referred to as love apart from the existence of others, since God’s being love would only mean that God is essentially other-oriented in relation to other existing persons (i.e., when there are others in existence, God is necessarily oriented to them).

When Paul, for example, wrote that love is not rejoicing in injustice or taking account of evil (1 Cor. 13:5-6), he didn’t, of course, mean that love cannot exist apart from the existence of injustice and evil. He simply meant that, when there is injustice and evil, love does not rejoice in injustice or take account of evil. But a person can have love apart from the actual existence of injustice and evil. In the same way, a single-person God (i.e. the Father) can be said to be essentially other-oriented even apart from the existence of others; it’s when others become “part of the equation,” so to speak, that his other-oriented nature manifests itself. The nature of love is such that it will manifest itself in certain appropriate ways depending on the circumstances in which it exists, but it does not require the circumstances in order to exist. 

So premise two need not be understood as implying the necessary existence of another in order for it to be true to say that “love is essentially oriented.” All that this premise need be understood as requiring is that love is essentially other-oriented in relation to others. That is, an individual who has love will be other-oriented when others exist by virtue of the fact that this is how love manifests itself when there are others.

The God who will be All in all

There are some Trinitarians who believe (as I do) that all people will ultimately be saved. Among these “Trinitarian universalists,” some believe that the trinitarian understanding of God is actually more consistent with the truth of universal salvation than is the understanding of God for which I've been arguing in this article. According to their view, we can have more confidence that all will be saved if God is multi-personal in nature than we could have if God were “merely” a single individual (i.e., the Father alone).

The problem with this position is that there’s nothing logically inconsistent with the idea of a tri-personal God  – i.e., a God comprised of three divine persons – failing to possess the same love for their creatures that is shared between the divine persons constituting the tri-personal God. That is, there’s nothing incoherent about the idea of three uncreated divine persons who, despite loving each other perfectly, choose to bring into existence created persons whom they ultimately hate, or toward whom they are completely indifferent (arguably, Calvinism affirms just such a god as this).

Such a malevolent god as this could, of course, be considered fundamentally irrational and unworthy of being worshipped by its creations, but this only shows that there’s nothing about being “multi-personal” that somehow makes it more likely for a three-person God to love and will the salvation of created beings than a single-person God. We have far more reason to believe that an essentially rational and benevolent single-person God (i.e., the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ) will save all created persons than we have to believe that an irrational and malevolent multi-personal god would ever do so. 

Thus, logically speaking, the number of persons that God is (or isn’t) is completely irrelevant with regard to how likely God is to desire (and thus seek to bring about) the salvation of all created persons. The only way that God’s being love can be understood as supporting the truth of the salvation of all is if the love that God essentially “is” necessarily involves a love that God has for all of the created persons that he has chosen to bring into existence. Unless the love that God has and “is” necessarily involves a love for all created persons, it doesn’t matter whether God is understood to be one person, three persons, or an infinite number of persons.

That the God who will, in fact, accomplish the salvation of all is not the triune god of Trinitarian theology is evident from what Paul himself wrote. In 1 Timothy 4:9-11 we read the following:

Faithful is the saying and worthy of all welcome (for for this are we toiling and being reproached), that we rely on the living God, Who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers. These things be charging and teaching.

What is the identity of the “living God” who we’re told is “the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers”? Answer: Paul undoubtedly had in mind the same God to whom Peter referred when he correctly identified Jesus as “the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). It therefore follows that the “living God” who is “the Savior of all mankind” is the Father alone – i.e., the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

This fact is confirmed by what Paul wrote in 1 Tim. 2:1-6:

I am entreating, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, pleadings, thanksgiving be made for all mankind, for kings and all those being in a superior station, that we may be leading a mild and quiet life in all devoutness and gravity, for this is ideal and welcome in the sight of our Savior, God, Who wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and mankind, a Man, Christ Jesus, Who is giving Himself a correspondent Ransom for all…

The same God referred to as the “living God” and the “Savior of all mankind” in 1 Tim. 4:10 is, in this passage, referred to as “our Savior, God” and as the “one God!” The one God of whom Jesus is the one Mediator is not the triune god of mainstream Christianity. Rather, the one God of whom Jesus is the one Mediator (and who sent Jesus into the world to save all mankind) is the divine being who Christ referred to as his God and Father.

That the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God whose will it is that all mankind be saved – and who, through the mediating work of his Son, will actually be successful in accomplishing this incomparably great event - is further evident from what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28:

Yet now Christ has been roused from among the dead, the Firstfruit of those who are reposing. For since, in fact, through a man came death, through a Man, also, comes the resurrection of the dead. For even as, in Adam, all are dying, thus also, in Christ, shall all be vivified. Yet each in his own class: the Firstfruit, Christ; thereupon those who are Christ's in His presence; thereafter the consummation, whenever He may be giving up the kingdom to His God and Father, whenever He should be nullifying all sovereignty and all authority and power. For He must be reigning until He should be placing all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy is being abolished: death. For He subjects all under His feet. Now whenever He may be saying that all is subject, it is evident that it is outside of Him Who subjects all to Him. Now, whenever all may be subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also shall be subjected to Him Who subjects all to Him, that God may be All in all.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, being vivified (or “made alive”) in Christ means more than “merely” being resurrected. It means being introduced into the same incorruptible, deathless state into which Christ was introduced when he was resurrected by God three days after his death. The only way that death can be “abolished” is if all people are ultimately made immortal and thus unable to die. That being vivified in Christ means to be given the same permanent life that Christ has is further confirmed in 1 Cor. 15:42-44, where Paul described the body that those resurrected will have as being incorruptible, glorious, powerful and spiritual (cf. :53-54). Thus, it follows that all mankind will ultimately receive the same “power of an indissoluble life” which, in Heb. 7:16, is said to be possessed by Christ. And since death is the penalty of which sin makes us deserving (Rom. 1:32; 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:56), it follows that, when all humanity has been vivified in Christ, they will have been justified and thus saved from their sins (which, of course, is what Christ died to procure).

Now, according to Paul, the “consummation” of which he wrote in the above passage will be occurring “whenever [Christ] may be giving up the kingdom to His God and Father, whenever He should be nullifying all sovereignty and all authority and power.” Since the “last enemy” to be abolished is death, it follows that Christ will continue to reign until death is abolished, and that the “consummation” referred to will involve the abolishment of death. When death is abolished, Christ’s reign ends. Thus, the abolishing of death is the event by which Christ subjects himself to God so that God may be “All in all” (v. 28).[3] But notice what Paul reveals concerning the identity of the God who, at the consummation referred to, will be “All in all.” According to Paul, the God who is going to be “All in all” is the God to whom Christ will be subjecting himself after he has abolished death. 

Christ is not, of course, going to be subjecting himself to a tri-personal God. No; he’s going to be subjecting himself to his own God and Father. And since the God who will be “All in all” is the same God to whom Christ is going to subject himself, it follows that the God who will be “All in all” is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – i.e., the same God whom John had in mind when he wrote the words, “God is love.”

From everything said above, it follows that the triune god of Trinitarian Christianity is neither the God who is love nor the Savior of all mankind on whom believers are to rely. Rather, the god of Trinitarianism is a false god, and ought to be rejected by all people as such. And one day - thanks be to the one, true God - what ought to be, will be. And then (to quote the words of A.E. Knoch once more) all people will  ”safely lay [their] heads on the bosom of His love and there learn the great lesson that He IS love, and has both the power and wisdom to carry out the dictates of His affection.”

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[1] In premise one, love is being personified. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with personifying love; Paul does the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and Romans 13. However, when formulating a logical argument, literal and more precise language is preferable to more figurative and poetic language. So what exactly does “love is essentially other-oriented” mean? Well, when Paul wrote, “love is patient” (for example), he likely meant that being patient with others is an expression of one’s love for them. Love and impatience are incompatible and cannot co-exist. In the same way, to say that “love is essentially other-oriented” is to say that one cannot have love for others without necessarily being “oriented to them.”

[2] If the second premise of the argument is to be understood as implying that love cannot even exist apart from the existence of at least two persons (and that love thus requires the existence of at least two uncreated persons), then the very conclusion of the argument is hiding in this premise (for if God is love, and love cannot exist apart from the existence of at least two persons, then God must be at least two persons). Thus, if that’s what the second premise actually means, then we can reject it as question-begging.

[3] Paul’s sequence of events in this passage, therefore, goes as follows: (1) Christ, “the Firstfruit,” is vivified; (2) “those who are Christ’s in His presence” are vivified; (3) the “the last enemy,” death, is “abolished” (which is the consummation), and God becomes “all in all.” And since the abolishing of death means that no death can remain, it follows that every human who has ever lived will be immortal when God becomes “all in all.” Contrary to the belief of most Christians, there must be another category of human beings who will be vivified in Christ after the vivification of “those who are Christ’s in his presence.” Otherwise, it wouldn’t be true that all who are dying in Adam will be vivified in Christ. And this class of humanity must be understood as constituting a third and final “order” in Christ’s conquest of death. Thus, we can conclude that those who do not fall into the second category of those who are to be vivified in Christ will be vivified at a yet future time – i.e., when Christ’s reign ends, and he delivers the kingdom up to God. It is at this future time that every human being not yet vivified will be vivified.